Day 5 – To Victoria
N48º 25.261? W123º 22.121?
There is no such thing as an uneventful motorcycle journey. For some, this is probably the appeal of travelling on two wheels. For others, it is probably their principle source of horror. But, once again, I seem to be getting ahead of myself…
Monday dawned to beautiful blue skies, the occasional white fluffy cloud and a gorgeous, sun-shiny day. In essence, the meteorological equivalent of the neighbourhood bully that, when caught and cornered, channels an angelic ‘who, me?’ and promptly befriends everyone in sight — at least while authority figures are in view. Not one to begrudge this temporary hiatus, however, we packed up and headed for the hills. At least, we tried really, really hard.
Rain? Don’t know what you’re talking about. We don’t have any rain in these here parts…
Sadly, the last 24 hours had managed to fell Dianne with a cold. While she managed dinner at the Wickaninnish Inn, the concept of breakfast was far less palatable. A cup of coffee and a glass of cranberry juice were about all that her disposition would allow. Attempting to work through this and make it to Victoria before her cold evolved into something worse, we packed the car and checked out, and I got kitted up for a final motorcycle ride back to Victoria. As so often occurs with best laid plans, something was destined to go awry. In this particular case, problems emerged in the form of a motorcycle that was completely unwilling to start.
The astute reader will now no doubt be connecting biblical downpours and failing motorcycles and coming up with the reasonable inference of ‘rogue electrical problem.’ To those who leapt to this conclusion, we award a gold star. A brief flicker of life from the battery turned in to a complete lack of electrical activity when the starter button was pressed. This wasn’t an aneurysm, a seizure or a heart attack — the patient was full-on brain dead. So, having spent the previous 5 minutes getting dressed, the next 5 minutes were spent getting undressed as I baked under the now ever-present sun. Not that rain would have been a particularly welcome alternative.
A trip up to the resort offices failed to yield any jumper cables, and rental cars just don’t come so equipped. Falling on the largess of strangers, I asked a passing guest, who thought they might have some in the car. While they searched, I went about unscrewing the panels hiding the battery. (See?!? It pays to find out where these things live!) Interestingly, though, as soon as I started to unscrew the panel the hands of the speedometer and tachometer swept the dial just as if I’d turned on the key. On an off chance, I turned the bike on, thumbed the starter and was rewarded by a cranky four-cylinder engine whining in to life. Weird.
Weirder still, after gassing up the bike and the car and turning on to highway four, the communication system kept on powering off, powering on, cycling up to full power and then repeating the cycle. Over, and over, and over again. Clearly the bike is not very happy when its electrical system gets wet. My planned solution by the time we hit Port Alberni was to disconnect the communications system before anything worse happened. By the time we reached Port Alberni, though, I had consistent communications and the bike was still working reasonable well. Channelling the philosophy of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” I left well enough alone and we continued on our way back down the island to Victoria.
Sadly, the beautiful weather gracing Ucluelet did not extend to the rest of the island. As we passed Nanaimo and moved towards Duncan, the weather ranged from cloudy to drizzly to rainy to sunny and back again, with a brief spurt of full on, torrential hail to keep life interesting. The result being variable driving conditions (lurching from wet pavement to dry in the space of 50 metres) and even more interesting electrical conditions, as the bike started to resume some of its earlier quirks.
After a brief lunch in Duncan (at a Subway, if only to hold in stark contrast all of our other meals on the trip) we began our last leg into Victoria. To quote Hunter S. Thompson, “When the going gets tough, the tough get weird.” This is where the going got truly weird. Getting caught by a yellow light, I made it through an intersection that Dianne was (quite reasonably) not willing to risk. Pulling over to the side to wait for her, my turn signal went from a normal flash to a hyperkinetic one, before stopping altogether. Revving to 4K on the tachometer returned normal operations, only to have the same situation repeat itself when the engine returned to idle. From that point on, stopping at a stop light and pulling in the clutch would see my rear tail light start to flicker. And every so often, just to make life really interesting, the engine would stall. Moreover, the communication system would allow Dianne to transmit to me, but would balk at any attempt by me to transmit to her. Clearly, my Yamaha was not a happy camper.
Fortunately Victoria was close. I mimed for her to follow me, got into the right-hand lane, and kept my eyes peeled for the nearest coffee place with a parking lot. Tragically, astonishingly or predictably (depending upon your perspective) this turned out to be another Starbuck’s. Yes, on the coffee coast of North America, where drive-through espresso bars are a dime a dozen, the only coffee place we could find is a mega-chain that sizes their coffees using words no one has heard before. Being cold and deeply mistrustful of my bike, however, this would do just fine.
After warming up over an Americano, it was time to disassemble the bike of my electronics, and see what gremlins still remained. This would be a theoretically much easier exercise, having already learned the location of the battery and having familiarized myself with the foibles of gaining access to it. Of course, the use of ‘theoretically’ in this sentence is a form of foreshadowing. In Hollywood, ‘foreshadowing’ is a fancy term for ‘giving away the plot’. In other words, there would be nothing easy about this little operation.
The panels of the bike came off easily enough. The next step was to drop the ground from the battery (always disconnect the negative before the positive, lest you be bestowed with an impressive and electronics-destroying light show as the positive lead arcs back to the battery). At this particular moment, a guy chose to saunter over and see if I could spare some change. I had no money on me, and told him so. Participating in this exchange, however, briefly distracted my attention from the fact that I held the negative lead and the bolt that connected it to the battery in my hands. I moved the negative lead out of the way, where it couldn’t accidently come back in touch with the battery. Sadly, to this day I have no idea what I did with the bolt.
This realization dawned on me while I disconnected the positive lead. Knowing this, however, is only part of the battle. Being able to do something about it is a far more critical issue. Motorcycles need power. Without it, they do not start. Nor do they run. Without the bolt for the negative terminal, my bike wasn’t leaving the parking lot under its own power. Thus began an extended search for what might have become of it. An extended and ultimately fruitless search, I might add. Having left Dianne inside the Starbuck’s drinking her tea, I had some time to figure out what had happened. Eventually she got bored and came out to find out just what the hell was going on. An extensive search of the bike, the ground, the tank bag, my pocket (I only have one), repeated with astonishing and ultimately fruitless regularity, produced no worthwhile results. There was nothing for it but to try to find a replacement bolt.
So, without further ado, we jumped in to the Mustang to find a Canadian Tire. Which, coincidentally, was only a half-block away. Things were looking up. Tragically, they had nothing like the bolt I was looking for. This, of course, was less positive. Knowing that Home Depot can have a better selection of bolts, we ventured to one of those (the nearest one being somewhere in the north east of the city). The further we drove, however, the less certain we got of finding it. Eventually, in a fit of frustration, we pulled over to the side of the road to look up other potential locations that might be able to help. In previous years, this would have involved a phone booth and the yellow pages. Sadly, in the age of cell phones, these devices are rare and not easily found. And 411 won’t give you a listing based on category; they’ll only give you address and phone number once you can name the business. Fortunately, I had a laptop and a wireless modem with me (and will never travel without them again) and a Google search indicated a motorcycle dealer that might be able to help. Said motorcycle dealer was only a block away — from where the bike was. We, however, were now many kilometres further away.
A phone call revealed that yes, the service department should be able to help with a bolt. Which was good. The call also revealed that the service department closed in 15 minutes. Which was bad. 12 minutes driving hell-bent-for-leather back the way we came had me in the sales room of SG Power, and then sprinting down the stairs and out the back to get to service before they closed. Which I did, just. And they had a bolt. And they didn’t charge me for it. All of which was very, very good. They also locked the doors to the showroom in the time I was in the service department, which meant walking all the way back around the block to get back to the car. I had a bolt, however, and the bike would live to ride another day.
Returning to the Starbuck’s parking lot, I proceeded to put the bike back together. In the rain. Juice from the battery and a brief prayer for ignition left me mobile, however, and we headed back downtown to our hotel. By this time, it was well past the scheduled return for the bike. What had originally allowed for a window of opportunity that would allow us to get downtown, return the bike and let Dianne have a nap became a sprint to check in, get upstairs and change before Dave and Allison showed up for dinner. This we managed to do, however, and settled back to enjoy the Bengal Lounge, which is rapidly becoming the official waypoint for all motorcycle travel on Vancouver Island. Not that this is a bad thing. They make pretty damned fine martinis, after all.