Trip days: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8-9 | 10-12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20
I awoke this morning to the sound of motorcycles leaving the hotel across the street. Peering out my window I noted 3 Ducati Monsters, a new Ducati 749, a BMW K1200RS, a couple of cruisers, and 2 Suzuki Hayabusas. After rolling over I heard the sound of a lone Ducati roughly idling and revving every few minutes. Peering through my blinds again I saw that someone was working on his Duc in the hotel parking lot. Hmmmm... So far this trip I've seen two Ducati Monsters on the side of the road, one being pushed to get gasoline obviously, and the other abandoned waiting for someone to fix it, and now this. Ducati reliability? I'm sure it's great, just a weird coincidence I suppose. Maybe an hour later after taking a shower and getting all my things packed up I was still hearing the Ducati being revved behind the hotel across the street, so I rode over to see if I could be of help. The bike in question was maybe a 1993 Ducati Supersport painted in the colors of the italian flag. The tank was up, the airbox was open, and three stout short guys (one with a closely cropped mohawk) all in their mid-30s were tinkering on it in turn and cussing at each other with lovely boston tough guy accents. I offered tools, spark plugs, and any help I could give and they replied that they were fine but that the carburators had developed a hiccup in the midrange, then after retuning them the bike didn't want to idle, and now it was shooting flames with every twist of the throttle. Not good, but I couldn't be of any help so I offered my encouragement and left Port Hawkesbury heading west on highway 104 to New Glasgow and then north to the coast so that I could catch the ferry to Prince Edwards Island. In the ferry line I met two bikers from Halifax, one who rode a new Valkyrie and the other a late 80s Honda CB750. They were enjoyable to talk with and we yakked about the Atlantic Provinces, motorcycles, and travel. The ferry ride to PEI took about an hour and fifteen minutes and I spent most of the trip sitting on the upper deck, basking in the sun of this great 65 degree weather. I wasn't expecting anything of Prince Edwards Island to be all that different from Nova Scotia, but I was suprised to see that the flora and fauna, landscape, and houses were all quite a bit different. PEI is where Anne of Green Gables was filmed and I came to find out that most of the islands houses could have been used in place of the Green Gables house. The island is extremely photogenic with victorian style houses set atop rolling hills surrounded by fields and appealing looking trees. The terrain with mixed open fields and tree outcrops was strikingly like the farmlands of skagit valley between Sedro Wooley and Mt. Vernon. I felt right at home. I rode from the ferry docks to Charlottetown, then northwest on highway 2, then 7, and finally 6 up through Rustico and to Cavendish. Cavendish is know for it's nice beaches and the Anne of Green Gables house. I stopped and had a snack at the Cavendish park beach and then headed south to the Confedrate Bridge that spans the strait between New Brunswick and Prince Edwards Island. I crossed into New Brunswick and went west on trans-canada highway 2 towards Fredricton. New Brunswick is really beautiful as are the other atlantic provinces, but it has more of the flavor of Prince Edwards Island than of Nova Scotia. Unlike the other atlantic provinces New Brunswick has extremely smooth grippy pavement on most of it's roads. As such, I have decided to award New Brunswick the "Smoothest Pavement of the Trip" award. So far I have found that New Brunswick has a close resemblance to western washington. I located the Mactaquac Provincial Park west of Fredricton and got a camping plot for the night. After talking with some New Brunswickers, they strike me as being very much like pacific northwesterners. No real accents to speak of and they have the same sort of clothes and general look. As I set up my tent I realized that I could just as easily be in Larabee State Park on Chuckanut Drive south of Bellingham. The environment of the campground is exactly the same. I'm a little bummed because my rear tire is starting to get low on tread and again it's happening on a saturday afternoon. That means that I can't get a new tire for my bike until tuesday because motorcycle shops are closed sunday and monday. This may halt my progress somewhere on monday as I may not have enough tire to continue unhampered by my rubbery friend.
Total Mileage for Day: 384 |
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©2003 John Meloy <jam@nas.com>