I headed west and south across the bottom of the Bruce Peninsula and was soon following the shore of Lake Huron through the rich farmland, small towns and resort communities that characterize the area.
There aren’t anywhere near as many or as densely packed wind farms as Cowley Ridge in southern Alberta, but they didn’t exist the last time I rode this route 30 years ago!
Most if not all the farms have large arrays of solar panels that, like the windmils, rotate to take advantage of their natural power source. In addition, there were the huge, high-tension power lines that connect the nearby Bruce nuclear generating station to the power-hungry Ontario grid.
It’s a reminder that Ontario can’t satisfy its insatiable demand for electricity almost exclusively with costly natural gas the way energy-rich Alberta can. Alternatives like solar, wind and nuclear are much more necessary here and ways will have to be found to overcome objections to their existence.
The other kind of energy was self-generated. I worked at the Sarnia Observer for three years in the early ‘80s and hadn’t been back more than once or twice since leaving.
I stayed with Terry, a former sportswriter, and Jonna, his Danish-born wife. Their son Brian had stayed with us in Edmonton for a few days last winter and they were very grateful for the assistance we could offer Brian.
The ride down ON Hwy. 21 along through brilliant sunshine and temps in the mid-20s was a joy. I still haven’t seen many bikers, although as I got close to the beach resort town of Grand Bend, that started to change. Groups of three, four and five roaring along along with carloads of beach boys and wave babies.
No offence to owners of Harley’s and anyone else with straight-through pipes, but there’s no way I could stand riding alone with that kind of noise, let alone in a pack of three or more!
I believe that loud pipes can indeed save lives, given the number of times I’ve been told “Oops! I didn’t see you!” -- especially in urban areas. But 6-8 hours a day of 120+ decibels would be no fun for me.
There wasn’t much in the way of twisty roads on the way to Sarnia, but I suspect that’s going to be par for the course as I enter the built-up sprawl of the Golden Horseshoe over the next week to 10 days. I know there are some good rides and I will seek them out, but I’ve got a lot of family and friends to see and doubt I will be riding wild Ontario most of my time in and around Toronto.
Terry organized a reunion and it was great catching up with Brian, Glenn and JR. Working for notoriously cheap Thomson Newspapers meant we spent a lot of time entertaining ourselves, house parties, camping and the like.
I made some good friends in Sarnia and it was a pleasure to see them again after all these years. Most have had to make careers elsewhere in the community -- communications jobs, for the most part -- but at least they got out with their sense of humour intact. We laughed a lot remembering past exploits and adventures.
It’s a sad commentary on the state of Canadian newspapers that so many of them are now just dreadful ghosts of their former selves, with little or no staff providing little or no news and still wondering where their subscribers went. I think perhaps if more reporters had been made publishers instead of penny-pinching bean counters and subservient ad managers, perhaps the papers of my earlier career would have survived in a more robust form.
I spent a couple of days with Terry and Jonna before heading to London. I took the back roads through little towns like Wyoming and Petrolia, Canada's first oil boom town, where I had once run the Observer‘s rural bureau. It’s vastly changed, lots of chain stores and such and even the little house I rented has been added on to and modified almost beyond recognition.
You can never go home again, but you can visit, even if it might take a while before you see something you recognize.
I met an 85-year-old pastor who had lived all over the world. He was visiting from California to attend -- and officiate -- at the weddings of two of his children. We had a nice little chat and he took my picture before wishing me Godspeed and good luck on the rest of my journey. Very nice man.
Wish he had said a wee prayer for better weather. I’d forgotten just how nasty those southwestern Ontario thunderstorms can be. The temperature had jumped to the low 30s and the 100 per cent humidity had me sweating like crazy despite my supposedly breathable Scott riding suit.
We had no sooner opened our cans of Bombardier Real Ale when the skies opened and a torrential rain started falling. I was going to wait for her husband Bob to get home, but once the rain eased up I decided to head back to London on four-lane Hwy. 401 as quickly as I could.
I was just turning off the 401 when the downpour resumed in earnest with high winds blowing gusts of rain right in my face. That was enough for me. I sloshed into the lobby of the first motel I saw and called it a day.
Once I’d dried off and got a stiff whiskey into me, I got in touch with Susanna and Rob, a friend and colleague from my Ottawa Sun days -- another journalist-turned-communications guy. He’s director of comms for the city and he was keeping busy after a series of fraud convictions forced the mayor to resign.
Susanna and I had a fun time recalling friends and colleagues back in Ottawa over a thoroughly lousy meal at Smoke-n-Bones, a barbecue joint that had come well recommended. The loud and drunken hillbillies being over-served at the bar didn’t help the ambience or improve the shabby service and third-rate BBQ.
Next morning, I headed out under leaden skies that promised scattered showers along my route to Port Colborne, Welland and ultimately St. Catharines and a much-anticipated couple of days with Gloria, my mother-in-law.
Maybe it was the weather or maybe the generally rundown condition of economically depressed Welland -- where I’d worked as a reporter and editor in the Port Colborne office -- I didn’t even stop to see if there was anyone I still knew at The Tribune.
I headed up Hwy. 406 feeling pretty much the same as I had 30 years earlier, just glad to put it behind me.
I’m spending a delightful time with my mother-in-law, a retired doctor in St. Catharines. I haven’t even looked at the Bike-a-Lounger. Mindy gave me strict orders not even to suggest she climb aboard -- not even for just for a picture! No danger of that.
We made a visit to the grave of my father-in-law, Robert, a wonderful man from Bangor, Co. Down in Northern Ireland who welcomed me to the family 20 yearsby saying “He’s an Irishman, he’s OK by me!”
Bob twice sailed the Atlantic in boats under 100 feet and he’s been on my mind since I first began planning my 16,000-kilometer journey. When Mindy only half-jokingly asked “What will I do while you’re away?“ I said, “The same as your mother did when your father sailed the ocean and you’re not raising three children!“
I’m really enjoying Bob’s logs from those two voyages. Imagine navigating a small boat in 300 million square miles of ocean and my trip is really not that big a deal!!
Next stop is Toronto and several days visiting with family and friends. It’s going to make it tough to find time for anything but in-city driving, not the hulking Beemer’s forte (or mine)! But I’m hoping to get up into the Caledon Hills for at least a short ride on some roads that I used to know when I worked in Brampton after leaving the Trib.
That’s if they haven’t been straightened out by the folks living in the sprawling suburbs north and west of Toronto. They like to move to the country and bring the city with them!
I think I’ll leave it at that before I offend any more people!
No comments:
Post a Comment