Ridin' the dream

Ready for the off

If I was a grandmother, I would say to my grandchildren "This trip was a twinkle in your granny's eye when she first got her motorcycle licence way back in September 2019." And they would coo, and be happy they could tell their friends that they had such a cool grandma, then go back to whatever they were doing before I so rudely interrupted them. I don't have grandchildren, but I have done the trip. To Montréal, and back.

In 2019, when I was slowly weaving my way around imaginary cones in empty parking lots, because practice makes better, and daring myself to take rides that involved left-hand turns across traffic as well as right-hand turns, the inkling of an unimaginable idea began to take form. I would master the machine and ride, solo, to a land where they speak French, eat poutine and are not American, at all. And Montréal is but a four-hour hop, skip and a jump from Satan's Kingdom, if you go up the highway, and they do indeed speak French and eat poutine and are not in the least bit American. 

On the bike, which is a 2022 Triumph Bonneville T120, all vintage styling and modern accoutrements, like ABS and fuel injection, I don't do highways at all at all, if I can help it. So when I planned this outing, aiming for Bach's Mass in B Minor at the Maison Symphonique in Montréal, I built in two days out, two nights at the destination, and two days back. A five-day, four-night back road trip, with only my thoughts for company. So on Wednesday I set off, waved at by Steve, whose Indian Springfield was languishing with a blown-out and hard-to-replace rear tire, and who doesn't like Bach anyway.

The first destination was to be the Deer's Head Inn in Elizabethtown, NY. It was roughly half way on one of the possible non-highway routes, so I had to. My apprehension about the whole thing had been growing steadily over the days before my departure as the weather forecast for the first leg changed from 'sunny, 76°', to 'showery, 65°' to 'thunderstorms, some heavy, 50°', but when I set off in the morning the day was bright and warm, my new dry-bag luggage fitted snugly behind me on the bike, I remembered my rain gear, and me and the bike hummed along the familiar road to Brattleboro VT. Coming out of Brattleboro on Route 30 I hit the first problem, and had I known about it in advance I would have changed my route. First came the ominous orange sign "Motorcycles Use Caution", then the heart-sinking next one "Road Works for 10 miles", then the traffic stopped and we waited for HOURS for the man holding a Stop sign to turn it around so it read "Slow" instead. Slowly indeed we proceeded onto 10 combined miles of the most motorcycle-unfriendly surfaces known to woman. There was gravel, to be sure, but not just gravel - there was rutted gravel, ridged gravel, potholed gravel, wet potholed rutted ridged gravel, gravel studded with sharp stones, and just for light relief, the deeply ridged hard road surface that comes before they lay down the nice smooth asphalt. The ridging process is rightly called scarification. It grabs the tires of a motorcycle and decides where the bike is going to go. All the rider can do is follow. It was ten miles of not fun at all, and given the number of bikers who come to Vermont in the spring and spend money there I hate the highways people who do it this way when it could be done other ways. They could do half the roadway at a time, or in sections, and they could warn motorcyclists adequately. "Motorcycles Use Caution" is used to signal a short stretch of loose surface, or a bump or two, but ten miles of riding hell is something else. I survived, more through luck than judgement, and so did the bike, but it was not a great start.

 

Somewhere without roadworks in Vermont

The relief when I finally hit asphalt, preceded by another warning sign "Bump", and the blessed orange "End Road Work", was visceral. The Triumph and I then wove along the swoopy dreamy roads of central and western Vermont, stopping for a pee and a coffee, making good time, a few fluffy clouds on the horizon, nothing to worry about. We sailed into New York State, which is somehow different to Vermont, more rural, more backwoods, less inviting, big brown granite cliffs looming, barely a vehicle on the road. By this time the clouds were less fluffy and more sullen grey, and I was thinking that maybe I should put a scarf around my neck, but there were plenty of light patches and when I rolled into Whitehall NY and decided to stop for lunch I was starting to believe that I might have got lucky.

I had not. While I was eating something that was described as a cheeseburger and not catching up with my emails because there wasn't a cell phone signal in Whitehall, I heard a lady said "Oh look! It's pouring!", which it was. Lashings of wind-whipped horizontal rain aiming for my bike, where I had left my helmet, my gloves and the bag containing my rain gear. I waited for a let-up, and when I realised that it wasn't coming, raced out to grab those items as quickly as I could and haul them, dripping, into the truck stop. I waited some more, until the rain was coming down more vertically and less blindingly, disappeared into the toilet to pull on the rain gear, which is a complicated operation, sealed everything vulnerable inside ziplock bags, and made to set off anyway. "What the hell," I thought "I've ridden in rain before. It can't be that bad."

Wet, and about to get much wetter.

The first problem was that somehow, while trying in vain to get a cell phone signal, I had exited the Maps app which I could not get back onto because there was no cell phone signal. So I didn't know where I was going. Two nice ladies with a pitbull in a pickup truck sorted me out. "Oh no," they said, "you won't get a signal here. Where are you trying to get to?" "Elizabethtown", I said, and they stared at me blankly. "Ticonderoga" I then said, because it was on the way. "Ticonderoga? You'll get a signal there. It's easy. Just go down to the lights, turn right, then go straight. There's twenty-seven miles to Ticonderoga, and no traffic lights." There were no traffic lights, because there was no traffic, except for me and the Triumph, battling our way up and down and around, past decrepit farms and semi-collapsed barns, dimly perceived through the pouring rain.  I prayed, well, I prayed all sorts of things, but most of all I prayed that nothing went wrong because I absolutely did not want to trudge up one of those driveways and bang on one of those doors.

Outside Ticonderoga I pulled up by the side of the road, still in driving rain, because there wasn't anywhere else to pull up, and was heartened to be able to put my destination into Maps. I was worried about my phone being wet, in spite of the plastic bag, and about my bluetooth earbud being wet, because my helmet was certainly damp, but at least technology did not fail me. I hadn't really clocked that there were mountains between me and warmth, but there were of course, since Elizabethtown is one of many Gateways to the Adirondacks. So another hour and half, because I couldn't go fast, because it was raining, and because there were curvy roads, then more curvy roads, then roads with signs saying "curves ahead", and signs at the top of hills saying "Steep slope. Use engine braking" and me getting colder and wetter by the second, and watching the Distance To Empty on the bike drop past thirty, then twenty until we rolled into Elizabethtown and into a gas station by which time it had hit fifteen. Luckily, the Deers Head Inn was just across the road.

The Deers Head Inn. That was quite a place. The owner had texted me a code to get into the building, and another code to get into my room, and I understood why when I saw it was basically a restaurant with a few rooms over the top and nobody was going to be there until opening time. So I let myself in, squelched upstairs with my dripping gear, plugged in the radiator in my room, distributed sopping clothing and footwear around, and drew myself a hot bath. I am normally a shower woman, not a bath woman, but all I wanted right then was to immerse myself in steaming hot water. I would like to say that the tension drained away, and some of it did, but there was a lot of tension to drain. I lay comatose for an hour or so, under the blankets, then roused myself sufficiently to book a table at the restaurant downstairs, call Steve and get dressed.

Elizabeth in Elizabethtown

 

By the time I went down to eat, the restaurant was humming, probably since it was the only one in Elizabethtown, and I was starving. I ordered a very nice glass of Rioja, and waited for my catch of the day with Israeli herbed couscous. First of all I had to send the fish back because while it was nicely seared on the outside, the inside was barely unfrozen and had a repellent pink & grey jelly texture. Zack, the waiter, sympathised, and came back with another plate. The fish was slightly better cooked, but still reminiscent of the first, so I tackled the couscous, which wasn't couscous at all but appeared to be pearl barley, and was so swimming in olive oil as to be inedible. I love olive oil, I can almost drink the stuff, I use lashings of it when cooking, but I don't like warm olive oil soup with pearl barley and nameless bits of dark green topped with half raw mahi-mahi. I did something I have never done in my life before, and sent the dish back, for good. Zack gave me half a bowl of green sticky spaghetti that was supposed to involve peas, and I ate that because it was possible, and I was very hungry, but it was a lesson in how you should have someone in a professional kitchen who knows what food is. 

Then I went to sleep, surrounded by steaming clothes and boots. The next morning, after a restless night on a bed whose mattress topper was a full six inches smaller than the mattress, I stretched this way and that, packed up the mostly dry clothes, put on the slightly damp ones I had to put on and texted the hotel owner to ask where he recommended for breakfast. "Nowhere in Elizabethtown," he said. "Your best bet is Plattsburgh." Plattsburgh was 47 minutes away, so I bundled up as warm as I could, grabbed a coffee at the gas station where a young woman asked me what hair dye I used, and set off under chilly blue skies towards breakfast. It turned out that Elizabethtown was indeed surrounded by mountains, now visible, so I waved at them as I rode north along NY22, as barren and traffic-less as the southern part had been the previous day, and thought about what I would eat when I reached the Hungry Bear in Plattsburgh. The Hungry Bear was splendid, the veggie omelette stuffed with real vegetables that someone had cut, the bacon copious and just the right side of crispy, and the toast was made with real bread. It did the trick, and off I went with an hour of woods and swamp and nothing between me and a very obscure border post into Canada. The nice Canadian border control monsieur and I spoke two very different sorts of French at each other, he agreed to take my photo, then allons-y, I said to the bike, and we hit Québec. 

Québec

First border crossing ever on a bike

There was less nothing on the road towards Montréal, and more impossibly neat little houses, tiny villages with stone buildings, and even a friendly shuttle car to escort traffic through some laughably tame roadworks ("Suivez-moi"). I stopped at a gas station to fill up the Triumph, and made friends with a pug, whose owner was a lady of my age and, judging from her appearance, my sensibility. She admired the bike and said "Tu vis ta vie, ma belle" - "you live your life, girl", before she got back in the car with the pug and her black shiny Doc Martens, and the lady who worked inside the shop came out for a smoke and to compare motorcycling stories. "Massachusetts? That's in the States.You haven't come all the way from Massachusetts, though" "Oh, but I have." I wish I could convey in print the charm of a Québecois accent, but I can't. However, having a conversation requires some guesswork and persistence on both sides. 

Rock & roll pug

 

It was plain sailing though increasingly urban areas as I approached Montréal, and I learnt that Québecois drivers are prudent, courteous and thoroughly disciplined by the endless, endless four-way stop signs. My Maps app apparently doesn't do Canada too well - I confirmed this the next day when it delivered me to the back side of the restaurant I was aiming for, with no way of getting round to the front side apart from climbing a wall - and it deposited me in a field by a lake and told me to park my car and walk from there. Luckily there was a Canadian dad with a beard and a baby and comprehensible-to-me French who set me right, so that fifteen minutes later I finally rolled into the car park at the luxurious but quirky Hôtel Château-Vaudreuil. The hotel was large, very comfortable and full of marble and chandeliers, and neatly sandwiched between the TransCanadian Highway and a lake with geese, beavers and a cute little muskrat. The Château-Vaudreuil was good to me.

One of many identical statues

A beaver, I do believe

What else but Canada geese?

After a day of rest and recuperation and eventually finding the Indian restaurant I had been trying to get to, where I ate an iridescent approximation of Indian food, I took an Uber into the centre of Montréal for the concert that was the ostensible reason for the trip. 

Alarming "Indian" food

My Uber driver was called Moulay and he was from France - "a town called Le Mans, maybe you've heard of it?" - and it was good to have no awkward misunderstandings and a stimulating conversation about reasons for leaving France, the Frenchness of Montréal - too French for Moulay, who was planning to move to Toronto - and good to hit the Place des Arts in Montréal which looks and feels quite different in May than it had when I was last there in December. Sadly, the concert was mediocre, so, just as I had sent back the inedible fish in Elizabethtown, I did something else I had never done before, and walked out during the interval. That was fine; by this stage I had realised that the trip was really about the trip, and not about the concert, and the following morning when I took off from Château-Vaudreuil and hit the road, I knew what I was doing. 

St Stan de K, please heal Annie's feet bones

South-western Québec is pretty flat, and pretty agricultural, and on US Memorial Day weekend pretty full of bikers, but the weather was sweet and me and the bike got along just fine. I detoured through a tiny village called St Stanislas de Kostka because I had found out the previous day that St Stan is the patron saint of broken bones and I had promised my friend Annie, who has broken bones in both feet, that I would put in a good word for her. I pulled into the same gas station where I had met the pug, because I wanted to, and because I needed gas, and watched a stream of motorcyclists come in, fill up, roar out again. 

Then I set off for another hour or so towards the US border. The smaller the roads became, the happier I was, especially when we left the plains with their silos and productive fields and rolled into gentle, hilly country, where the deer are apparently happy and tractors waiting to catch out the unwary motorist. I stopped once, to drink water, stretch and breathe in some last Québecois air, then all too soon I was at the border where I wrestled with my helmet - "I have to see your face ma'am" - my gloves, my passport and ended up dropping just about everything. The Border Control agent, who was not overworked on this obscure crossing, was kind enough to pick everything up for me and hand them to me in order, so I didn't have to dismount the bike.

Near Havelock, Québec

                                                                          Joyous Canadian deer

Mounting and dismounting the bike was a problem on this trip, due to age-related reduced mobility in my left hip, and age-related anxiety about not having everything I needed with me. I was unable to swing my leg over as I normally do, because most of the seat was taken up with my substantial dry duffel bag, which made it too high. So to get on, I had to manually lift my right leg over the saddle, then hop inelegantly towards it on my left leg until I could settle down in the small patch of seat left for me by the bag. Dismounting demanded the same manoeuvre in reverse. I had to throw all notions of looking cool to the wind, and make damn sure that I managed on and off without tipping the bike over. Therefore I was very grateful to that nameless Border Control agent, so I thanked him profusely and said 'sir' many times.

Then I was back in the ol' US of A, which looked pretty much as I had left it, except a lot warmer. There's a series of flat, neglected small towns at the northern extremity of Vermont, far from the scenic wonders of the rest of the state, and I rode through them feeling a little sad, but as I headed south the swoopy winding stuff picked up and it was exhilarating all the way to my next stop, the Stowe Village Inn, about an hour and a half south of the border. By that time I was having to stop more frequently, mainly to hydrate, since it was by now very hot (88°F) and I had forgotten to take the lining out of my jacket that Wednesday's cold wet snap had necessitated, and forgotten to swop my winter gloves for the summer ones and I was starting to experience severe bum ache. Of course once I noticed the ache, it got worse and worse, so that by the time I rolled into the parking lot at the inn, I couldn't wait to hop off that bike and stay hopped. The Stowe Village Inn was perfect; motel accommodations, so I could park the bike outside, super-friendly staff, a bar/ restaurant serving my favourite Schillings beer and an above average burger. I managed the beer, I managed the burger, then I collapsed into bed and slept dreamlessly.

About to hop on

The next morning, as advised by Heather on reception, I tottered downhill to the main part of the inn for coffee. The coffee was superb, and so were my fellow guests Rob and Denise, who had come from Saratoga to see Arlo Guthrie. Rob had spotted the bike, and away we went, comparing trips, the merits of his BMW over my Triumph (mine's better), the advantages of after-market custom-made seats, the fact that any rain gear, however fancy, is never waterproof and the question of why Harley riders are rarely friendly. Rob was kind enough to take a photo of me before I set off on the last leg of the trip. I rode past Michaels on the Hill, an excellent restaurant that once led Steve and me astray with a couple of single malts, resulting in us drunkenly getting lost in a garden centre at night. I stopped for a hippy breakfast at the Stowe Street Café in Waterbury. Then on down and around and up and through Vermont and New Hampshire and into Massachusetts, stopping only to massage my bum, drink water - it was even hotter that day -  and to have a good conversation with a lady on a Harley, who had ridden to Key West on her bike. As the road became more and more familiar, I was assailed by a swelling feeling of joy and gratitude that I had been able to do this at all, and that I regretted not one minute of it.

500 miles later

A warning from Canada to us all.