Motorcycle diary
Touring
SOLO
For the past decade I’ve gone on tour By CRAIG JACKMAN
with the same group of guys, and we always have a great time together on the road. This year was going to be different. Dan is planning a move to BC, he wanted to show his wife the great scenery of the Rocky Mountains, making this tour a couples trip. My wife doesn’t ride with me, so that would make me coming along awkward. What to do? I still had the time blocked off, and we never did do the “old farts go east”, so it was easy to come up with The Cabot Trail for a destination. The last thing I want to do on a tour is
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sit on a 4-lane highway, so going through the Canadian side was out. Why drone along the 20 through Quebec when I can go through the mountains of Vermont? The more I thought about it, the more it came together. As I’m of that certain age, I have no interest in sleeping on the ground. Camping was out, so hotels needed to be booked, and I found a great way to save a little cash. Colleges and Universities are deserted over the summer, but they have hundreds of Residence rooms sitting empty and they rent them out for less than $50 a night! They’re a little like
minimum security prison in that there’s no TV, frequently have shared bathrooms, and there is nothing fancy, but they are clean, quiet, and cheap. I left Ottawa early on a Friday morning.
The route took me down to Lake Placid for an early lunch, and a ride on the best road in the Northeast, Tracey Road into Port Henry, NY, where I took the bridge over Lake Champlain. I knew it was summer vacation time as I got caught behind RV’s on most of the twisty roads through Vermont, and on the 125 through the Green Mountains. On every tour I try to map it out without using Interstates, but inevitably there has to be some. I made up some time on I-89 through Vermont and New Hampshire, but this was almost fun. This section of Interstate was loaded with sweepers! I wasn’t laughing in my helmet the way the I-5 in northern California made me do the year before, but I was smiling. Off I-89 and back to the secondary roads, I found a beautiful double rainbow just as I crossed into Maine. What I didn’t remember was that a rainbow happens with rain, and I had to dodge wet
continued on page 54
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