It takes a while to “get into” a trip like this. First you’ve got to adjust to the sensations of riding on the motorcycle for long distances. On a motorcycle you aren’t just passing through the countryside—you feel and smell everything in a way that is impossible in a car. If it’s cold, you stop to put on a layer. When there are bugs, they smack on the visor right in your field of view. If there’s a skunk, you can’t hit “recirc” on the climate control to avoid it. If the road is potholed, you count on the agility of the bike to swerve around the holes, or take your lumps.
Fortunately, we smelled more lilacs blooming than skunks or manure, and the roads were fine, and the weather was sunny.
The other adjustment is more mental. We had two weeks blocked out, and no fixed agenda. We had to shift our own minds to the mode of exploration without deadlines or major expectations. Undoubtedly in the coming days we would have mechanical problems, bad weather, changes of heart, uncomfortable situations, language barriers, etc. But also we’d find adventures of unexpected kinds, and there would be no rush at any time, so the important thing was to just mentally slow down and (literally) smell the lilacs.
Our first day was one of our longest, at nearly 300 miles from Shelburne, VT to Beaupre, QC (Canada). Steve led us on long and winding detours through backroads of Vermont that I’ve never seen before (and I grew up here). That is part of the point of motorcycling the countryside, of course, so we didn’t mind but we did decide that future days should be shorter. It took us three hours just to reach the tiny border crossing at Richford, VT, which I suppose we could have done in half the time if we had tried a more direct route. The border crossing was uneventful, and there wasn’t much going on in the countryside south of Quebec City (an area referred to as the Eastern Townships) so we planned to move through with few stops. We just wanted to get past Quebec City in the first day, because until then it wasn’t going to feel like a trip to us.
One key piece of technology we used was a headset intercom on each helmet. These used Bluetooth wireless to connect to each other, and to our cell phones, and (in Steve’s case) a motorcycle GPS. Just by tapping on a button on the side of my helmet I could call up either Steve or Eric and have a conversation while riding. This proved to be very useful, although the headsets weren’t entirely reliable.
The really neat bit about this was that the headset connected to my iPhone, so I could listen to music as we rode, take phone calls, or even send and receive text messages. I was able to hear the announcement chime when I had a text message, and say “Siri, read my messages”. Listening to the phone reading my text messages to me while riding through the northern Vermont countryside, it felt like the future that I had always expected as a kid had finally arrived. All that was missing was some way to make the motorcycle fly.
When we planned the trip, staying in touch with the outside world was not a high priority for us. I went to considerable lengths to get everyone I work with to understand that I would NOT be reachable, and fully expected that somewhere in northern Quebec I would enter massive dead zones of phone coverage. This turned out not to be true, as Bell Mobility has excellent coverage all the way around the Gaspé peninsula, better in fact than I got in Maine and New Hampshire.
For this possibility I had purchased a Canadian calling plan from Verizon Wireless ($15 for 1,000 minutes & unlimited texting, plus $25 per 100 megabytes of data), and it turned out to be extraordinarily useful. We used my phone daily to check weather, share pictures with family, and book hotels. Steve and Eric didn’t buy a Canadian phone plan, so they only used their phones on free wifi at hotels and restaurants, which also worked well because wifi was available just about everywhere.
Toward the end of the first day we made a brief stop in Quebec City’s old town. Our trip plan called for cruising along the north side of the St Lawrence River, and Quebec City was the obvious place to cross. After that (going northeast), there are no bridges crossing the river. We parked on the street in town and grabbed a couple of cold smoothies at a sidewalk cafe. I got stuck with paying for them and was shocked to find they were $7 apiece with tax. OK, never again. This was to be our only stop in a large city for the entire trip, and we were fine with that. We took a quick cruise through the historic Chateau Frontenac for Eric’s benefit, and headed out of town to Beaupre.
Steve’s wife, Carolyn, is from Quebec City, so she did some quick scouting online and booked our first night’s hotel: a ski condo that “sleeps 4” for only $85. Seemed like a bargain until we found out that the only way it could sleep four would be if two people would share a double bed and the other two would share a small pull-out couch, AND that Carolyn booked it for the wrong weekend. Fortunately nobody was renting ski condos in June, so we had no problem re-booking for the same unit on the correct night.
That night we worked out a routine. We’d take turns breaking out a sleeping pad and bag, and sleep on the floor for the night. Steve was the first “floor man.” We also brought earplugs because snoring was definitely going to be a problem. (The photo above is from the nicest motel we booked on the entire trip, the Baie Bleu in Carleton-sur-Mer. Most places weren’t so pleasant. That’s me on the floor, reading a book on Kindle using my iPhone.)
Everything came off the bikes and got carted into the condo, then we started re-charging stuff (helmet intercoms, phones, iPad). Since we had to unpack almost everything every night, the room quickly filled up with our stuff, and we just got used to it. Each one of us would stake out a little sector and spread the stuff out. Then we’d think about where to get dinner, do any bike maintenance (Steve adjusted and lubed his chain almost daily), wash the bugs off the helmet visors, shower, do a little laundry in the sink if we had a motel room, plan the next day, and I’d type up notes on the iPad.
There wasn’t really a lot of spare time with all this going on, so our evenings were generally quiet and we didn’t have time for campfires or nighttime explorations. This evening, for example, we just walked to a nearby restaurant and ordered whatever they had, using our anemic French. After that, it was time to collapse into bed and try to get rested for whatever lay ahead. The trip was finally happening.