Where I’m headed - map quest(ions)!

What? Quoi? You gotta be freakin’ kiddin’ me!

One of the first things I did when I started planning this cross-country odyssey from Tofino, B.C., to Cape Spear, Nfld., was order up some fresh highway maps. As one guy who has two-wheel travelled with me will tell you – at just about any opportunity – an up-to-date set of maps is worth its weight in rum.
Every single province in this great country sent me a free road map – all, that is, except one! Care to hazard a guess? Yup! Quebec!

Every other province responded to my online requests with at least a free map. Most were quite comprehensive in their responses.

British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, even tiny P.E.I., somehow ponied up the resources to send me a current highway map and their 2013 travel guide.

New/Nouveau Brunswick – Canada’s only bilingual province – managed it dans les deux langues officielles!!

Poor old Ontario, still getting used to its have-not status, I guess, could only send a roadmap, but that was all I really needed.

But la belle province? Rien!! At least, rien for free. They wanted to charge me $4.50 for a map and a travel guide that will be somewhat stale-dated by the time I venture along la fleuve St. Laurent. Guess they don’t want les maudits anglaises messing the place up with our fractured high-school French and Toronto Maple Leafs ball caps.

Well, my French isn’t so bad that I don’t know a few choice words I’d like to share with the bureaucratic pinhead who thought charging for something available gratis anywhere else was a good way to support tourism, one of the few healthy industries in that perennial economic basket-case. No wonder they tossed their premier out on her ear last month!

Well, tant pis, mes amis! I’m coming anyway and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.

All along, I’ve planned to do only the bare minimum of route planning, preferring to follow my front wheel where it takes me. Those old Rand-McNally Road Atlases always coloured the secondary highways in blue and this will definitely be a Blue Highway Tour. If I can avoid a four-lane, you can bet I will.

According to Fred Rau, author of the Motorcycle Touring Bible, one of the worst mistakes you can make is locking yourself into a schedule so rigidly that sticking to your plan becomes the primary focus of the tour – instead of actually enjoying the ride!

Or as my friend and fellow two-wheel tourer Darcy reminded me the other day, don’t look at this trip so much as a 16,000-kilometre tour, it’s just 100 or so one-day rides.

But, there’s no way I’m striking out on a such an adventure -- in whole or in part -- without at least a rough idea of where I plan to lay my head each night.

I simply went to the AMA – the Alberta Motor Association one of the partners in the Canadian Automobile Association (CAA) – where a very friendly young woman supplied me with a provincial road map and city guides for both Montreal and Quebec City! Gratuit!

 

I picked out 150 of the likeliest places I’ll visit including all 10 provincial capitals and as many restaurants featured on the Food Network’s You Gotta Eat Here program as I can manage.

AMA produced a detailed TripTik – a handy flip-up booklet that provides detailed driving directions, a heads-up on detours and road construction, and recommendations for approved CAA accommodations. How accommodating!

It’s a little bulky. Maybe I should have got them to chop into three or four manageable bits, but no matter. It’s already in my tank bag waiting only for my boot heels to be wanderin’!

So tomorrow, I’ll take Darcy’s advice. I’m just heading to Jasper. That’s a 363-kilometre one-day ride, the first of many.

Which reminds me of a particularly apt quote from Horace, the 1^st century Roman poet, who said “To have begun is the first step; be bold and be sensible.” Got it!