Across Canada on a '71 R50/5

On Vancouver Island just now.

Camping on Long Beach was perfect.

6,500 kms into it and the bike's running great.

Canada's a jewel of a country.



ciao fer now,
Lornce

popcorn mode

About time you posted something!!!

If you are coming through my way, I'm gone September 3rd, and not back until Sept 24th.

Now that sounds like a fun ride... always liked the airheads...

I'll post pics when I get home.

WHAT??

You're actually returning home??

Glad to hear you're having an AWESOME ride and enjoying yourself.
Can't wait to see your pics.

All My Best,
Carol

In the beginning the Lord created Canada and R50/5's. And he saw that they were good.

Now that's a start to a thread I want to read. Come on Lornce get it going.

Glad you're home safe and sound and all went well.

Cheers

Fin

Waiting for the goods....

Back in Aug I packed up the '71 R50/5 bought over the internet three days earlier and headed off for a month on the road.

Backing up a bit, buying it over the phone after seeing a few low rez pics went something like this:
Me: "Does it hold oil pressure and shift okay?"
Seller: "Sure, it holds oil pressure jes fine and it'll shift through all 4 gears."
Me: "Good. I'll take it. How does my buddy find your place?"

So began my first Cross Canada ride since '81 when I traversed the Dominion on my old '72 Moto-Guzzi 850 Eldorado. Hmmmn?

I nearly decided to take the S2 Buell when my insurance company informed me they wouldn't transfer the policy from my GS/PD because the R50 was too old. Arrgh, another insurance policy! Alas, I wanted to make this trip liesurely on a calm, quiet "polite" bike, not the bellicose snarling red Buell. I ponied up. It was the right choice. If I'd taken the Buell I'd probably be sitting in a jail cell awaiting trial in a lovely little B.C. town near some awesome mountain road.

Keep it coming. Looks great. Did you come thru the Kootenays in SouthEast BC?

First stop was near Owen Sound to meet Moosehead at Casa Roberto and head off to a little BMW rally in Trenton Ontario. I hadn't been to a BMW rally since the MOA National was held in Trenton in '02 where we organised the Airhead Central Rally Tent.



Did I pass throught the Kootenays? Did I pass through the Kootenays?!?

I'm currently plotting to sell everything I own and MOVE to the Kootenays!


I'm of two minds about this thread. You see, I'm more of a photographer than a writer so I'm tempted to just post pics and let them do the talking. But being of two minds I'm prolly gonna add little bits here and there to inform the pics with some thoughts and ideas from the road. Some of my friends say I'm only of half a mind. They're just jealous.

Like this field of bailed straw near Collingwood. Sometimes I think I ride motorcycles just so I can go see and smell stuff like this.

Awesome...

Took a ride with Moosehead and Carol from the rally site down into Prince Edward County. Dropped in to see Errol Weaver at Bench Mark Works (Canada) in Milford to get new cables for the Little Beemer That Thought it Could. Clutch, front brake and throttle cables were all in stock and I left a happy guy. Errol even gave me a complimentary Bench Mark Works coffee mug featuring a cool visual of a T-Rex riding a /2 BMW. Nice.

While at Bench Mark Works everyone had to try a WWII era side car rig that was in the shop for some repair work. Carol pilots while Bob hangs onto pillion and Errol holds down the chair.

Unfortunate historical baggage aside, that's a neat piece of gear. There was a lever on the tank that shifted a two speed axle into "Gelande" or low gear for "Overland" or off-road use. Or "Strasse" for high gear or "Street" use. How many of you knew BMW's heritage of G/S's (Gelande/Strasse) dated back to the Second World War? I sure didn't.


Heading back to Trenton the "scenic way" took us across the Bay of Quinte on a ferry from Glenora. It was to be the first of many ferry crossings on this trip.



Back at the rally I met this fascinating fellow who'd built himself an ultralite aircraft powered by an R100 mill. The reduction drive was of his own design, too. This was a really nice piece of engineering. Had two wings he used depending on his flying opps. High and low speed. Very nicely sorted from what I saw. He offered me a ride if I looked him up in the fall. If I can get in touch with him I'm going to take him up on it! Anyone know who he is? I forgot to get his contact info!



Leaving Trenton I enjoyed a pleasant ride north and west on the smallest roads I could find, including a wildly rugged trail that crossed a creek bed before dumping me onto the next concession road north. Enjoying the "make it up as you go along" route I was reminded again of my preference for solitary travel or with a very few like minded fellows.

You ADV guys living in the area north of Trenton and Bellville have an awesome network of roads and trails to ride your dual sport bikes. I'm envious. The whole area was beautiful and quite unspoiled.

Here's a view from the Ravenscliffe Road near Huntsville, Ontario. Talk about comedy noir.



The wildlife can be varried and unpredictable.

Heading north form Burkes Falls I followed Hwy11 to New Liskeard before heading west on 65 to Elk Lake and 560 west through Gowganda, Shining Tree and Westree. 560 ends at 144 (which runs north and south between Sudbury and Timmins) where the Sultan Road, a gravel logging road, begins and heads west to the town of Sultan, where you rejoin pavement towards Chapleau.


The Sultan road is plenty wide, but be careful on a street bike: The gravel appears to be continually graded which keeps the surface soft and deep. Had a few tense moments in some of the deeper gravel curves, but made it through without incident. It'd probably be pretty exciting on a street bike in the rain! The views were limited to clear cuts and the occasional river but it was an interesting diversion from pavement travel for an hour or so and it shaves over an hour off the route to Wawa via Sault Ste. Marie.





Never pass up a chance to take a gratuitous picture of your motorcycle.
Sultan, Ontario.




Was a little surprised to see this sign not far from Chapleau. I thought it might have been a little further north. Interestingly, it's only 150kms or so from Lake Superior at this point.





You know you're not in Kansas anymore...

Near the now closed Hemlo gold mine just a few miles inland from Lake Superior's stunning northern shore.



A loaded logging truck strains to climb one of the many steep grades that head to higher ground from Superior's spectacular northern shoreline.






Forestry products are an important part of northern Ontario's economic survival. Lumber mills and pulp and paper mills often provide the primary livelihood in northern communities.


This mill storage yard is in Fort Francis Ontario just accross from the Minnesota border.



It was 8C heading north from Sioux Narrows along the shoreline of Lake of the Woods. Man, I was missing the GSPD's hand guards and heated grips that morning.









Route wise, I planned to stay on minor roads, eschewing the Trans Canada wherever possible. So far I'd only followed the TCH from Wawa to Thunder Bay and again from Kenora to just across the Manitoba border. You really don't have a lot of choice between those two points.

Once into Manitoba I headed south and west zig zagging across the lower part of the province following the most minor roads I could see on the map, many of them gravel. I ain't got no gps and I don't listen to no i-pod. Actually, I've owned an older gps for years and only ever found it useful as a speedometer and altimeter. I like maps. And I like to sing in my helmet. One of the things I do when traveling on my bike is allow signs and place names to trigger songs and tunes in my head. Stop and think about it and it's amazing how many popular tunes have place name references in them.

Not this one, though. This is just a gravel road, a wheat field and the big prairie sky somewhere near Morris, Manitoba.



I was really digging the prairies with their big skies and seas of grain in every direction.

Excellent.

I was encouraged to see the skies being harvested, too. Judging by the amount of wind I experienced on the prairies, in the mountains and near lake shores all across this country I'm hopeful we'll see more and more of these clean energy producers in the future.

You really notice the wind when you ride an R50/5. I was into day 5 of stiff headwinds since leaving Trenton and my "performance" was really suffering.



Can you tell how hard the wind is blowing in this gratuitous view of my motorcycle against the big blue prairie sky?



Some more views of those wonderful wind turbines.



Good on you, Manitoba. One of the answers IS blowing in the wind.



Can't remember the name of this sleepy little burb, but I thought it representative of the type in southern Manitoba with it's storefront lined main street and breezey open feel.


And a few words of warning: The biggest combines you've ever seen roll right through the middle of town in August.


Combines like this beauty, here.


This is a cool story....

I'm minding my own business standing on the side of the road taking pictures of this impressive machine when the guy stops, climbs down out of the behemoth and strolls over...


"Ever ridden in a combine before?" he asked. "No. I've never ridden in a combine." I said. "Come on, I'll show you what's it's like."



I gotta start writing stuff down, I forget the gentlemen's name but his family's been farming this land since his father settled here in 1946 when he was just 2 years old. Now he's a few years from retirement and his two sons are working the same land.

Says these new machines are pretty slick and take most of the hard work out of farming. That's a joy stick in his right hand to control things like height and speed of the impliment, engine speed, wheel speed and etc.

There wasn't any grain or straw dust in the cab either, unlike the air outside which was choking with a cloud of it.


Pretty slick rig.


This thing chews through rows of wheat at an amazing rate. I think our speed was 3.5mph. That's pretty quick when you realise it's conveying all that wheat and straw (for you city slickers, the stem of the wheat is the straw and has no nutritional value and must be seperated from the kernels) into a drum where it's threshed and seperated with the kernels being moved to the storage hopper and all the straw blown out the back onto the field and into the air to create huge dust clouds that can be seen for miles.


The grain is then transfered to a semi trailer in the field. This can be done while the combine is still moving through the rows of mown wheat so as not to interupt production. 55 bushels/acre is what they expect to see off thier fields this summer.


I really gotta start writing stuff down, but I think this was around Belmount or St. Alphonse in southern Manitoba. If anyone sees this and knows the area or can identify the farmer, I'd sure appreciate it if you could let him know he made a Hamilton guy's day with his hospitality and good will.



I was singing an old Murray Maglauchlan tune for a while after that encounter.



Just north of that orange blob on the map is where I met the gent in the combine. Anyone know him?



Crops are pretty diversified across the prairies. In fact I read some numbers in Saskatchewan that suggested wheat only accounted for $1.9B out of a total $20B of all farm produce direct income in the province.

I found that number pretty surprising. I thought wheat was king.


Agricultural activity makes for an amazing array of beautiful sights as you cross the country.


While in Southern Ontario we bury some of the land's finest top soil under more and more housing subdivisions.



Somewhere in southern Saskatchewan I caught my first sight of an oil well.






After camping in provincial parks most of the way across the country I was now faced with their complete absense across Southern Saskatchewan. Earlier in the evening I'd stopped and ridden a ways off the road and thought to sleep near what appeared to be a non-functioning oil well. Not two minutes after I'd set up my tent the electric motor that drove the pump whirred to life and the pump started pumping, making an aweful racket as it did so. I packed everything away, reloaded the bike and continued on my way in search of a quieter spot.

Quite late into the evening and frustrated by the lack of parks, campsites, crown land or even forest cover, I stopped in the small town of Lake Alma, Saskatchewan and eyed a grassy area beside the town's public ice rink, which was a large metal quanset-type building. I stopped beside the building in an effort to get out of the incesant wind. I pulled out my sleeping bag after not seeing a soul stir anywhere in town, when a curious local fellow and a local farmer's wife (who operated the cafe in the rink facility) pulled up in a pickup truck to stock the cafe and see what I was up to. After introductions and an explanation of my situation I assured them I'd be gone in the morning before thier breakfast customers arrived. Curiosities satisfied, they said I was welcome to sleep in the grass beside the building.

It was a great night with the skies mostly clear so I didn't even bother with the tent. At one point I was awakened by a curious skunk sniffing my face. Both startled, we looked at each other for a moment before he waddled off into the night along the building's edge. I'd never seen a skunk close up like that before.

It clouded up over night and the wind shifted direction. A couple of views during the first pink light of dawn.

:slurp



DW

Let me put on my fuzzy socks, grab another coffee and wait for the next installment. Tops!