CRABS - Chesapeake Riding and Beverage Society2008-11-21T00:22:48ZMark ByersCopyright 2008, Mark ByersSPHPBLOGMORE FROM MORTON'S OPEN HOUSE Danny Bishop scored a new (to him) Ducati Sport 1000 as an anniversary present from Audra (she's a KEEPER - Audra, not the bike...well, actually, they BOTH are). Angus the Westie put life in perspective by showing that what is a very expensive Italian motorcycle to us is simply shade to him.]]>http://www.thecrabs.org/index.php?entry=entry081115-0855022008-11-15T00:00:00Z2008-11-15T00:00:00ZMORTON'S OPEN HOUSE RIDE After a hearty breakfast at Abell's Diner, it was off to Morton's. Dave Cole brings up the rear on the Silver RT, while Tim Pugh is next on the GS. Red Sciarra's blue hack is next. Also aboard were Harold Sciarra Jr. and son, Cheryl Trossbach, Timmy Marum, Audra Bishop, and Danny Bishop. Frank Dawson and Mr. and Mrs. Crab were on four wheels, the latter because of the West Highland White Terror, Angus. More on him later.]]>http://www.thecrabs.org/index.php?entry=entry081115-0850072008-11-15T00:00:00Z2008-11-15T00:00:00ZAudra Bishop, Stylin' on the Kwacker Audra Bishop on the way to the Morton's Open House in October, riding the Kwacker W650 and looking gooooooooood!]]>http://www.thecrabs.org/index.php?entry=entry081115-0837572008-11-15T00:00:00Z2008-11-15T00:00:00ZHottie of the Week ]]>http://www.thecrabs.org/index.php?entry=entry081112-2035332008-11-13T00:00:00Z2008-11-13T00:00:00ZST. COLUMBANUS' DAY "The Vatican has officially endorsed an early Irish saint, Columbanus of Bobbio, as the patron saint of motorcyclists. He was born on the Carlow/Wicklow border in the year 543 ad, and died at the monastery he founded in Bobbio, in what is now Northern Italy in 615 AD, after many years of traveling around Europe. His bones still lie interred in his church there.
A handsome rugged kind of chap, he left Ireland to escape the clutches of lascivious women who were irresistibly attracted to him. According to the biography of his life written by Jonas, one of the many miracles attributed to him involved the multiplication of bread and beer, as follows:
"A while after, Columban went to the monastery of Fontaines and found sixty brethren hoeing the ground and preparing the fields for the future crop. When he saw them breaking up the clods with great labor, he said, "May the Lord prepare for you a feast, my brethren." Hearing this the attendant said, "Father, believe me, we have only two loaves and a very little beer." Columban answered, "Go and bring those." The attendant went quickly and brought the two loaves and a little beer. Columban, raising his eyes to heaven, said, "Christ Jesus, only hope of the world, do Thou, who from five loaves satisfied five thousand men in the wilderness, multiply these loaves and this drink." Wonderful faith! All were satisfied and each one drank as much as he wished. The servant carried back twice as much in fragments and twice the amount of drink. And so he knew that faith is more deserving of the divine gifts than despair, which is wont to diminish even what one has."
His Feast day is the 23rd November. ]]>http://www.thecrabs.org/index.php?entry=entry081109-2041042008-11-10T00:00:00Z2008-11-10T00:00:00ZA New Record and HomeMark and Betsy]]>http://www.thecrabs.org/index.php?entry=entry080713-1941382008-07-14T00:00:00Z2008-07-14T00:00:00ZA New Record, 16 Days Out, and One To Go We survived St. John, Armpit of Fundy. We crossed back into the US without incident at Calais, ME. The guy took our passports, looked at our bike, said "You can't have much to declare in there" and sent us on our way. We went to the Easternmost point of the United States, the lighthouse at Quoddy Head, Maine. It was fogged in and the marine layer that obscured the lighthouse was so cool that Betsy needed a jacket. Temperature swings have been dramatic: as much as 30 degrees in 20 miles or so.
From Quoddy Head, we went to Skowhegan, ME for the night at a family-owned motel suggested by Kim, the supernaturally clairvoyant guy at the Maine Rest Stop and Tourist Info Center. We went through New Hampshire past the Mount Washington Auto Road, but didn't make a return visit since the wind was bad enough down at the bottom to blow us around and there were clouds around the top of the mountain. No way I want to handle that dirt road in the fog and wind with vanloads of Japanese tourists coming the other way.
We stopped at Whitehorse Press in East Conway, NH to see Jeff Adams, a friend from our previous trip. Jeff was great, as was his dog Riley and the other office dog, Hudson, a cross between a Newfoundland and a standard poodle that the owner called a "Noodle." Animals and people at Whitehorse Press, a firm specializing in motorcycle books and apparrel, were all just as wonderful as we remembered.
Then it was off to the Kancamagus highway (NH Route 112) to Vermont and our old haunt of Brandon. It's said you can't go home again, and Brandon was a little like that: some of the places we knew were closed and some of the ones that were open were less nice than we remembered. Some of it was the group of rednecks on the deck at Sully's restaurant who didn't know how to behave in public. Anyway, it was still as scenic as we remembered and the hot tub at the motor lodge still overlooked a valley farm and the Green Mountains, so it was all good. It killed us not to go back to the Gray Ghost, but that would have been an extremely long day.
Brian and Shira, the fantastic folks from Backroads, told us a neat place to stay on the Delaware River in New York: the Carriage House Inn and Restaurant in the little town of Barryville. The Inn was old, but the tonic was cold and the room was perfectly fine. We met Alan, the groundskeeper with the Samurai Mohawk Topknot haircut, and Muntzy the German Shepherd dog who lives there. Both were very friendly and Alan gave us some postcards of the place in its heyday, which was a couple decades ago, but they have big plans if the Delaware River will stop flooding the place.
I have a picture of Betsy giving the Peace Sign at the monument on Yasgur's Farm in Bethel, NY where they held the Woodstock festival in 1969! The only problem is that they've turned the place into "Bethel Woods" a big concert facility complete with big white tents and fancy schmantzy parking areas and shuttle busses, solar lighting, et al. Backroads Brian says it's a fantastic place to see and hear a concert and that he saw Chicago and The Doobies there, but I still think a little amphitheatre on the hillside would be better. It is no longer, as Billy Crystal once said, the place "where 100,000 people got together and created a strain of VD that would kill penicillin." According to a guy we met in Prince Edward Island who was a rock band drummer in the 70's, Woodstock doesn't even surpass the current Canada Day celebration in Old Quebec City for sheer drunkenness, debauchery, and drug use.
We had a great visit with the Backroads folks at Backroads Central. They were doing the next issue in anticipation of going to Norway (NOT Norway, Maine - the real thing). They graciously gave us some of their time. On the way there, we saw a female wild turkey and her six offspring. Last time we went down Jersy 521 we saw a black bear: so why is it that we see the best wild game in New Jersey?
We didn't get far before I checked in at the Velodrome to find racing going on. That pretty much snuffed the day right there. So here we are, in a...chain motel...in Trexlertown, PA blogging you up on the penultimate day of the trip. We're to have a nice dinner at a fantastic Italian place called Paese Mio (My Neighborhood) tonight with my track racing teacher, then home tomorrow via PA backroads and the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Hopefully we'll arrive in time to collect our dog, whom we miss a lot...er...I mean whom MRS. BYERS misses a lot.
Mark and Betsy]]>http://www.thecrabs.org/index.php?entry=entry080712-1348212008-07-12T00:00:00Z2008-07-12T00:00:00ZAnn of Green Gables Beats the Hell Out of St. John: Film at 11 Over the Confederation Bridge, which, despite its size, was underwhelming in that the view is pretty much just water and the bridge is just a road between two jersey walls...for 8 miles. Not impressive for the $16.50 toll.
Canada is really expensive: between all the National Park fees and up to 15 percent sales taxes we've paid, I figure I funded a gall bladder operation for a guy in Quebec and a quarter mile or so of the Cabot Trail. I know I paid for some green paint on that house in Cavendish.
We continue to see "McLobster is Back!" signs on McDonalds and we see that Wal-Mart has invaded the North Country. If Dunkin' Donuts is the franchise that ate Maine, Tim Horton's is the franchise that ate Canada. Picture a cross between Dunkin' Donuts, Starbucks, and McDonalds. All the Harley dudes like them, though, and a woman told us "Timmies" is where you go to get directions.
We probably should have heeded the latter instruction. We came down through the Bay of Fundy park, stopping to get wet at Hopewell Rocks, where the tide changes by 48 feet from low to high. Betsy enjoyed toying with her camera while the water broke over the rock next to me, soaking me. I know it was on purpose.
Our destination for the evening was to be St. John. Not St. John's up in Newfoundland, but a more modest one on the Bay of Fundy. They have a thing here called the "Reversing Falls" which is a waterfall that ends up going either direction because of the difference in the tides. The trouble is, St. John is basically the armpit of the Bay of Fundy. We drove for at least an hour in the darkening fog looking for one that didn't cater to longshoremen, truckers, or professional service workers of the former two. We finally had to retrace our steps out past the airport and found an "Amsterdam Inn." It's a big box with rooms, but at 9:30PM in a pea soup fog with darkening skies and a cold wife, all those high-falutin' airs about "no chain motels" go right down the sh***er like that slow duck on opening day.
Anyway, it's 1020 PM and we have a room and are waiting on our pizza so we can go to bed. Tomorrow we hope to make landfall back in Maine if customs will let us through with an empty Raspberry Cordial bottle from Cavendish. Quoddy Head light is a goal, although if the fog that's here now is prevalent down there, we may have to go further inland (Buffalo, for example). Tomorrow leaves us only five days to get home. We're almost 2,300 miles into the trip. 331 today, second longest and about 40 of that looking for a room that didn't charge by the hour. Ciao from the bay of "Fun"-dy.
Mark and Betsy]]>http://www.thecrabs.org/index.php?entry=entry080708-1807572008-07-09T00:00:00Z2008-07-09T00:00:00ZOur Feet Up in Charlottetown, PEI Unlike Baaaaah Haaaaahhhbaaaahh, we had a nice Post Office experience where the guy taped our package for us (we were ready, though, thanks to Baaaaahhhhbara the Baaaaahhh Haaaaahhhbaah Post Office Nazi). The guy at Post Canada taped our packages and even suggested a way to save some money on postage. We got some more Audrey Hepburn postcard stamps and sent our stuff on its way. Hope you are getting the cards...
Off to do some more official farting around before dinner, then back to semi-plan tomorrow, our Anne of Green Gables visit to Cavendish, and our trip across the 8-mile long Confederation Bridge to New Brunswick and the road home. There's a beemer dealer in Moncton: maybe we'll get a T-shirt. They should put up a sign over the entrance to Canada: "Canada, it's not cheap." If you bitch about taxes back home, try a 13% sales tax in Nova Scotia and a 15% tax here in PEI.
A word about the money: they take American. It's a pity our border states don't do the same for Canadians. They don't have dollar bills in Canada, just a coin with a loon on it they call a "loony." They have a two-dollar coin that's really attractive they call a "toonie." Loonies and Toonies. I just wish it didn't take so many of them to do anything here. Blog you later, loonies and toonies.
Mark and Betsy]]>http://www.thecrabs.org/index.php?entry=entry080707-1406202008-07-07T00:00:00Z2008-07-07T00:00:00ZCape Breton, the Cabot Trail, The Harbor at the End, and the Indians Who Say "Eh!" The rest of the day was perfect. Perfect temperatures, perfect blue sky, perfect road, perfect bike, perfect woman, all of it. We crossed the Canso Causeway and headed up the Ceilidh (kaylee in Gaelic I'm told) trail to the Cabot Trail around the Highlands of Cape Breton. First stop was in Margaree Harbor, a place about as charming as it gets. Then the cathedral in Cheticamp (where it inexplicably goes from Scottish to French...). Then...the Cabot Trail.
If you are looking for the place where the Creator spilled the beauty bucket, this is it. A twisty, rising and falling road hugs the coastline of this rugged place. You're not prepared for the beauty: it's just that incredible. Green as anything on the land and blue as anything in the sea and the mountains just erupt from the water and head upward to dizzying heights and a road clings to them. It beats Montana and we LOVED Montana. Of course, Montana was on fire when we were there.
We took a side trip to the Northernmost point of Nova Scotia. Bay St. Lawrence is at the tip and we went there. We didn't take the rougher road to Meat Cove, but we got close enough to the 48th parallel to call it enough. Stunning.
Down the other side of the trail and we ran into a group at an overlook who wanted their photos taken. Turns out they were local Micmac Indians (here's a clue politically-correct readers: they don't MIND being called "Indians"). I asked them what they could tell me about their culture and their spokesman, an electrical contractor on a Harley, said with a big grin "We're friendly: no more scalping, eh?!!" He said "Eh!" a lot, so for all eternity the Micmacs will be the Indians who say "Eh!" One was a school bus driver, so he commiserated with Betsy and one worked in a school as a records person, so it was old home week. We took their photos in front of the view and they ours, then they rode off (without scaps, eh!).
We found a great motel in St. Ann's (hi to all the Ann(e)s in Betsy's family). The place advertised itself on the card as "A View with a Room." We had a 50-mile view up St. Ann's Bay toward the trail we just left. The Lobster place next door was open late, so that was a bonus too (but we had salmon). We slept with the windows open and were awakened to the view up the bay. Ahhhhhhh. 60-70 deg in July.
On the road, stopping in Baddeck to check out Alexander Graham Bell's museum there. He had a summer place called Beinn Breagh (Gaelic for beautiful mountain). He actually pioneered aviation in Canada. Great guy who also made hydrofoil boats and other cool stuff. Good friend of aviation pioneer Glenn Curtis. The telephone wasn't the half of it.
Down the road to Caribou and onto...cue evil music...the FERRY. Ah, but this one was great and a smooth one-hour crossing saw us into Prince Edward Island. A B&B, a nice dinner overlooking the harbor, and now we're back with you, friends and family, courtesy of an internet cafe.
We're just over 2,000 miles into our trip, have just over 4,000 on the new bike, and have 7 days left. Dragging our feet and staying two nights because we're on the back side now. Blog you later. ]]>http://www.thecrabs.org/index.php?entry=entry080706-1750282008-07-07T00:00:00Z2008-07-07T00:00:00Z
