From salt to salt at last!

HALIFAX -- One rider, two wheels, four cylinders, six time zones, 10 provinces (but only nine pictures of the Beemer in front of legislature buildings), 96 days on the road and 16,096 kilometers equals one helluva ride!

I spent almost a week in St. John’s, NL, with my friends Vaughn and Elaine, soaking up the sights and sounds of this busy Atlantic seaport. After three days jigging for cod off Garden Cove on Placentia Bay, I was ready for a little urban downtime.

My friends are renting a house in the funky Fogtown section of the city while they work on completely renovating their 122-year-old house in The Battery right on the harbour. It’s a complete gut-job, taking the house back to the studs. It’s not a big house, but it faces the harbour and the town sprawling over the hills behind it.

I can imagine them waking up, looking out their windows and watching naval frigates, cruise ships, supply vessels ferrying materials to the offshore oil platforms and every other type of seagoing boat coming and going while they sip their coffee!

I told Vaughn it was probably the closest he could get to having his childhood home in the cove and still be in town. No matter where you are in Newfoundland, St. John’s is known as “town.” Folks are known as either townies or baymen. Vaughn’s a bayman to his core!

I had arrived in a downpour from Goobies on NL Hwy. 1, the Trans-Canada Highway. Not sure how I made it, considering the state of my rear tire. It had been bald as a cue ball since running the Cabot Trail a couple of thousand kilometers back.

But as Vaughn and I prepared to head out to Cape Spear, the easternmost point in Canada, he noticed the cords of the Metzeler Marathon showing through the tread. It was done, finished, kaput.

I located The Toy Box, Avalon BMW Motorrad’s service shop in nearby Mount Pearl, and made arrangements to have the Bike-a-Lounger flatbedded to them for a new tire and an oil change. Easy-peasy, no drama. They had me back on the road the next day! Anything for a CFA – Come From Away – as folks who are neither townies or baymen are called.

Once again, I was reminded just how unfriendly and unhelpful Pacific Motorsports in Richmond, B.C., had been when an out-of-kilter rear brake rotor had eaten the final drive out of my K1200LT in May. Pinheads!

Vaughn and I headed out of St. John's for the short trip to Cape Spear to complete te "salt-to-salt" -- Pacific to Atlantic -- portion of this ride of a lifetime! It's the easternmost point in North America and as close as I could get to  could get to my relatives in Ireland and England without getting the bike wet!

Stompin’ Tom Connor’s Gumboot Cloggeroo provided the background music (That's a very young kd lang introducing the song in the video!) as I snapped a couple of pictures of the bike in front of the historic Cape Spear lighthouse, toasted my accomplishments with a tot of Redbreast I had been saving for the occasion and shed a couple of tears.

Tears of joy, that is. Riding coast-to-coast has been a dream of mine for more than 40 years. But a dream’s a dream and reality is another thing entirely. I feel truly blessed to have had the opportunity to ride this great country and see much – certainly not all – of the beauty, hospitality and marvels it has to offer.

When I set out on this lark on May 11, I really didn’t know if I could do it. Would I get sick of the endless days of riding? Would the bike hold up? Would my body hold up? Would my bank account hold up?

I told my wife Mindy that I really wouldn’t know if I could complete the ride until I got to Winnipeg, which I reached in mid-June, seemingly an eternity ago! If I got there and wanted to continue, I would. If not, I was still close enough to Edmonton to turn around.

Well, I got there and continue I did!! And I feel such a sense of accomplishment, something that has proved elusive over the past few years.

Vaughn and I had a celebratory lunch in Petty Harbour -- home of Great Big Sea's Alan Doyle -- at Chafe’s Landing, a great restaurant where the chef keeps the secret of his amazing fish batter – even from his family. Our server, the owner’s daughter, told us her dad didn’t mix the ingredients in the restaurant or at home.

“He has a shed on the beach where he makes it up,” she said.

Neither Vaughn nor I could identify the key ingredient of the lightest batter/breading I've ever tasted! It’s a little like Panko, but lighter. Possibly cake flour? It will have to remain a mystery, a tasty one for sure.

With the Bike-a-Lounger back in business, I headed up Signal Hill, which guards the entry to St. John’s harbour. At night in the fog, cars coming up and down the hill look like those Imperial starfighters from Star Wars chasing each other round and back!

No fog on the day I was up there. I’d forgotten that this is where the first trans-Atlantic radio signal was received by Guglielmo Marconi in 1901, as well as the site of harbour defences for St. John's from the 18th century to the Second World War.

I also managed to squeeze in a visit to Portugal Cove and Chris, a friend introduced to me by my brother in Edmonton. Chris and his parents Winston and Karen, welcomed me with a tasty lunch and one of Winston's books, this one on the Ruby Church, built near Goulds by one of Chris's ancestors.

Later, Chris showed me round his childhood home, including the spot near his parents' house where he dove in to save a child from a submerged car that had rolled over the cliff's edge into the sea!! He and his dad both have certificates from St. John's Ambulance testifying to their selfless act of courage and daring.

Portugal Cove is a rocky port with a busy ferry carrying people and goods to Bell Island. It was fascinating watching the ferry make a 180-degree turn on a dime as it backed out of the terminal and headed to the rocky cliffs across to the island, the largest in Conception Bay.

I spent my last Friday night in St. John’s, at least for this trip, on George Street, the city’s bar and restaurant strip. It’s the local version of Edmonton’s Whyte Ave. or Toronto’s Queen St. West. I must be getting old, because as the party bars were just starting to hop, I fled for the comfort and relative quiet of Fogtown! Besides, I had a two-hour ride to Argentia in the morning and still had some packing to do.

At the ferry terminal, I was subjected to a random search to make sure I wasn’t carrying drugs, guns or bombs back to Nova Scotia. Good thing I ditched the dynamite before I made the ferry terminal!!

Cars and trailers -- but not bikes -- were required to undergo a wash to remove any vestiges of potato wart that might threaten what I now know is Canada’s No. 1 vegetable crop.

A school (pod?) of porpoises escorted us out of the harbour, something I was told was very rare! They may have chased a bait-ball of capelin into the bay or maybe they were just glad to see us go!

The 16-hour overnight ferry crossing was just as boring as the nine-hour voyage to Port-aux-Basques two weeks earlier, but there was a lively bar and lots of bikers from the Maritimes, Quebec and British Columbia to share a rum with before turning in.

I got back to North Sydney and debated on whether to see the old French fort at Louisbourg or to run the Cabot Trail a second time in as many weeks.

Louisbourg will always be there and I can visit it again sometime. But I’m pretty sure I won’t be riding the trip of a lifetime again, so I opted for the Cabot Trail. (So excited, I forgot to stop in Sydney to collect a prescription Mindy had mailed to family friends there. Guess I’ll be visiting a clinic here in Halifax to get a prescription refill. Dammit!)

There’s some debate about whether to run the loop of the Cabot Trail clockwise or anti-clockwise. Having done both, I can say each has its share of twisty roads and spectacular views, but riding with the ocean on your right is more fun. Chacun son gout, as the French say. (Ever notice they have a different word for everything!)

After a long night on the ferry, nearly 400 kilometres of the trail and a waning adrenaline rush, I got turned around in Port Hawkesbury coming off Cape Breton Island and ended up lost on some pretty gnarly backcountry roads in rural Nova Scotia.

So little travelled were these roads, there were weeds growing in the cracks and potholes. I unintentionally added a couple hundred clicks riding the Acadian Eastern Shore to an already-long day.

But I did snap a pic of the road sign for tiny Larry’s River which I sent to my buddy back in Edmonton. I got to Guysborough, but everything was closed on Sunday evening and I kept pushing on through little villages like Goshen and Lochaber until I stumbled wearily into Sherbrooke.

It’s a quaint little village on the St. Mary’s River, once a gold rush town and then a salmon-fishing Mecca for fly-casters. It’s also the Sherbrooke referred to in Stan Rogers’ immortal ballad The Last of Barrett’s Privateers!!

Exhausted after a nearly 600-kilometer ride, I stayed the night at a cool B&B called The River Lodge. After a good night’s sleep and a tasty breakfast, I hauled butt for Halifax, 200 kilometers south down NS Hwy. 7.

It’s a great bit of motorcycle road that hugs the shore, winding and curving through places like Eecum Secum, Mushaboom and Musquadoboit into Halifax. The last 50 clicks of it was in a torrential rain. Nearly a day later as I write this, my gloves are still wet!

Doesn’t matter! Having ridden the Beemer from salt to salt, I can honestly say I’ve done what I wanted to do, I can cross the biggest item off my bucket list. I’m going to have to start thinking about what comes next, but that can wait at least another two weeks or so. 

I still have a ways to go before I’m back in baby’s arms. I’m going to spend a few days soaking up some more Maritime history, culture, cuisine and beer! Then head down the south shore of Nova Scotia, through Lunenburg and Peggy’s Cove to Digby and to St. John, NB, and south through New England to Boston before Sept. 1.

The end of my two-wheeled odyssey is at hand, but there’s still time to make a donation to my Ride for Sight. The money goes to the Foundation Fighting Blindness to fund Canadian researchers looking into the causes and prevention of blindness. Please consider making a donation to help support their work.
Ride for Sight is Canada’s largest and longest-running motorcycle charity endeavour. Bikers cover their own expenses so that every penny raised goes to the foundation.