Day 1 – Getting to Santa Barbara
The first ride of the season is a journey of acclimatization. You are reacquainting yourself with your bike, and with riding in general. You are shaking out the cobwebs, finding equilibrium and generally embracing the rhythm and balance of life on two wheels. As a general rule, then, starting out on an LA highway just before Friday rush hour on someone else’s motorcycle would at the best of times be considered unadvisable.
Day 1 – To Calgary
Eventually, my profound inability to proactively prepare for a motorcycle trip will disappear as a footnote to my many and storied adventures. This is a hope. The reality, however, is that it will probably be an on-going and increasingly pathetic prologue to my desperate attempts to enjoy what is an admittedly impressive though currently underused fleet of motorcycles. Read more…
Day 1 – To Kamloops
As we’ve already established, and despite every pretence of planning, the concept of advanced preparation in the face of a long motorcycle tour seems to be an elusive one. While I also got the GPS unit installed on Thursday evening, and I have a list of everything that I want to pack, the actual packing only starts at about 9pm on Friday evening. And continues until about 1 am.
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Prologue – Getting Ready
You would think, after a 6000km trip last year, that getting ready to head out on Wolfgang would be a straightforward exercise. You would think, given the planning and preparation of a winter, that he’d be ready to ride. You would think that after a shake down tour to Jasper to work out the kinks, that heading out would be short work. You would be wrong. Read more…
A Shake Down Tour Of The GS
I’m really going to have to figure out what it is about me and packing (or preparation in general). An entire winter of Edmonton weather (to be clear, not conducive to riding) and still I can’t quite get the fleet to be ready. May 12, with beautiful weather and 4 bikes in the garage, and only one of them is ready to ride. Read more…
Day 2 – Victoria to Ucluelet
Breton
Woke up Friday morning suffering from altitude sickness causing by drinking too many martinis at lower elevations. Yeah, a wee bit foggy but still anxious to ride. Of course, before we headed out, Mark had to install all of the electronics needed to undertake a perilous journey of this magnitude; iPod mounts, heated vests, GPS and radar detector. Read more…
Day 1 – To Victoria
Breton
Landing in Victoria I got that bittersweet feeling I always get when I come out to the west coast… The island was where I lived for seven years…and only caught one salmon. It’s where I hiked the West Coast Trail…and blew both knees. Where we started Pangaea…and I almost married Carolyn. Ok, maybe more bitter than sweet… Read more…
Day 0 – Getting ready
Breton
Not exactly sure how the idea originally came up but I’m pretty sure it involved wine. Mark and I had been grumping for a while about the length of winter and the desire to ride. Somewhere along the way we started talking about doing a Ewan/Charley style epic journey and eventually landed on the idea of a ride across Vancouver Island all the way from Victoria to Ucluelet. Read more…