Flying below the radar we made it all the way from Arnprior Ontario to Marquette Michigan today (over 600 miles), looks like we’ll be re-tracing our route on the way home. We looked at other options last night, but nothing could get us home within our time frame without taking some serious chances.
I love Canada, I really do, but there’s something very comforting about speed signs in miles instead of kilometers, and gas at under $3 a gallon.
Today’s ride was uneventful (thank gawd!), cool morning warming to bright, sunny and warm by noon. Riding into the setting sun for the last hour of the day wasn’t fun, but the road is good.
Oh, and there was that little cliffhanger yesterday…
….so when we left our story we were happily riding away from St. John’s headed towards Port au Basques and the ferry to the mainland. Everything was going great, the bikes were running smooth, no leaks from the fix on the Kawie, all was well with the world. Unfortunately, we must not have shaken all the bike gremlins yet, because when we stopped for gas in Corner Brook (about two-thirds of the way across the island), Mike looked at his tire and said, “I think we have a problem”. I looked at the tire and there was a big staple sticking out. It had punctured the tire in two spots, and both pieces were still in the tire. Mike pulled out one, and of course air started whistling out. That was quite the sinking feeling! Mike went into the store and started checking the phone book, he found two shops nearby, called the Kawie shop, but they didn’t have a wheel balancer. Next he called Scott’s Motorsport and begged them to wait a few minutes after close for us to get there. He aired up the tire and we took off. I nervously followed him the 20 minutes and the tire held enough air to get us there. The guys were waiting, even though the shop was already closed. First they tried to patch the mess, but it wouldn’t hold air. They did have a tire that fit, but the price was way out of our range. The owner was able to discount it a huge amount (probably near cost), the guys worked major overtime to get us back on the road fast enough to make the ferry. Thanks again to Wallace and the rest of the gang at Scott’s Motorsport in Corner Brook, those guys went absolutely above and beyond the call of duty to make stuff happen for a couple of strangers in a strange land.
We raced out of Corner Brook and headed through “moose-thirty” and into dark. The road was nearly deserted, which made it even worse. We didn’t see any animals, but I don’t know if it was because they weren’t there, or we just were too dumb to look in the right spots.
Lucky for us, the bike gremlins hate midnight rides, so we scared the last few off the back of the bikes, and got to the ferry about ½ hour before boarding. Lucky, there was room for us. We loaded up and found a spot to try and sleep uncomfortably for 6 hours until we docked at Sydney.
Landing before daybreak, we rode out into the rain. I stayed awake until Frederickton, but couldn’t keep going any further. We found a nice room at the Red Robin Inn, a perfect spot with a superb free continental breakfast. After a nice long nights sleep, we power rode more than 600 miles and landed back in Arnprior Ontario.
Ready for more miles tomorrow, getting us closer to home and our lonely cats (actually, they probably don’t miss us at all, we just think they do!).
mikefalcioni.com 
Glad that you guys are back on the road. I’ll give the kitties some extra pettings from you tonight. If you are on the cat cam after 5:30, I’ll be sure they each give you a close-up shot. Ride safe…and I’ll see you soon!