Vancouver Fly Ride 2002
As Chapter Director of Geordie Chapter one of the most regular questions I am asked is ‘What do I get for my membership dollar?’ The stock answer I give is ‘Don’t ask what your Chapter can give you but what you can give your Chapter’. Now those of you who remember JFK will know where my inspiration comes from but on a more serious note I say, as in life, you get out of HOG what you put in and there are so many benefits on offer there are not enough days in the year to participate in them all.
Fly Ride is one of my favourite benefits, now I have done three. The first was in my HOG infancy and a two-day affair from Dick Farmers in Orlando, Florida. The second was three days from Las Vegas where I managed to get a few miles on Route 66 and the South Rim of the Grand Canyon (now that is a true wonder of the World that lives up to the billing). Vancouver has been the latest and best. I booked an Electra Glide Classic for a full seven days, buy six and get day seven free, picking the bike up on 25th June 2002 from Trev Deeley, 2375 Boundary Road, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Vancouver offers Fly Ride from May through to September; some offer fly rides from April through to October and a few all year round.
I booked into Accent Inn on Henning Drive after a long flight starting in Newcastle, then Schipol and getting a KLM flight direct to Vancouver. The hotel was right across the street from a fantastic looking dealer. It had three main buildings. Building one was the full H-D dealership, building two specialised in Buell and building three was the service department all based on a large complex.
Day 1 on the road in Canada and I was at the door waiting for them to open up, clear blue sky and chewing the fat with the staff as they had their first coffee and smoke out back of the store, I patiently waited for Traci, Rentals Representative, to turn up and get me knees in the breeze. The bike looked great, not as good as my own 95th Anniversary Ultra Classic Electra Glide you understand, but still the best bike to see the Wilderness of Canada on. As soon as the formalities were over I was back at the hotel to load up my matching H-D tailored made luggage, set up the Global Positioning System (GPS) on the bike and pick up Jennifer my wife of 29 happy years.
All loaded and working it was time to set the plan into operation.
I had booked onto the 12.30 British Columbia ferry from Horseshoe Bay to Departure Bay, Nanaimo on Vancouver Island. I had booked the ferry directly on the Internet and because I had booked the Port Hardy to Bella Coola ferry off the island I was given this 1.5-hour crossing as a freebie. We had about three hours to get from Trev Deeley’s to the ferry so took a sight seeing tour of Vancouver. It all looked very nice and I have since found out Vancouver shares the first place as the city posting most business people lust after. I had decided to stay off the motorway network so we worked our way across town, all very easy with the Garmin GPS ‘V’ pointing the way, to Stanley Park. We stopped and took our first Canadian photo of Kingston Bridge, highway 1A. You get a good view of the harbour and all the activity going on especially the floatplanes breezing in and out.
The Queen of Cowichan was the ferry for us and we boarded well on time with a few other bikers and the general mish mash of tourists, residence and the flotsam and jetsam you meet on a road trip. Arriving on Vancouver Island we headed North on the coastal Route 19A when it was available. This is the old coastal route and has been relegated to second place by the newer Route 1. I had no accommodation booked for our first night on the road and decided to stop at Campbell River. About 10km South of Campbell River we stopped at a little roadside ice cream parlour and devoured the local made ice cream when I noticed a big bird flying overhead. I thought it was an American Bald Eagle but could not be sure. Axel Kolzig (not a made up name!) advised me it was a Bald Eagle and pointed out a pair about 100m away roosting in a tree. Wow! On my bike trip-packing list I put binoculars down as a luxury but observing this pair of Eagles means I shall upgrade the binoculars to ‘N’ for necessity! Axel wrote on our Chapter message board on www.geordiehog.com, that he had met me and I was having a blinding time watching the graceful Eagles soaring around the local ice cream parlour.
The accommodation in Campbell River was a typical American style family motel.
Day 2 on the road and misery! It was raining but much worse silly me had left the GPS ‘V’ on the handle bar mount and it had gone. The RCMP was quick and efficient and armed with my crime number ‘2002-8088’ I left town dejected. £500 navigation equipment lost. Jennifer did her best to cheer me up with gems such as ‘Look at the scenery no thieving b****td can take that away’; ‘look on the bright side they could have taken the bike’; ‘think of that poor girl killed in Australia all for a mobile phone’ etc. None of which worked, I was miserable and jolly well intended to stay miserable. The scenery was of course magnificent, but the grey clouds reflected my grey mood.
When I first started to plan this trip my fear was meeting up with bears. I had seen a Nick Sanders interview where he was talking to a local character whilst on the Alaskan Highway about how to deal with malevolent bears. The old timer explained all the tricks of how to avoid becoming a bear snack and how the various breeds had various survival strategies. Nick then asked about the Grizzly, the old timer sucked on his corn pipe and announced that coming across a Grizzly in open country you were basically fucked! No strategy could out wit an angry Grizzly, even guns were not a sure way of stopping one. This in mind I was worried. But local people often have words of wisdom for the traveller interested enough to ask, the words of wisdom I received concerning bears was ‘ you don’t need to worry about bears killing you it’s the logging trucks you need to worry about! Well I soon found out what they meant because a fully loaded 18-wheeler tanking down the highway, in drizzle was a sight to scare the shit outa you! They do not have any mud flaps let alone clear view moisture absorbers, its just 18 open wheels spewing out a maelstrom of precipitation to soak through anything. After succumbing to a few soakings I decided to put the FXRG over trousers on. I stopped at the side of the road, used the nearest fir tree as a comfort station and unpacked the leggings. To my surprise and relief the Garmin GPS ‘V’ was tucked up safe and sound inside the pannier where I had secreted it automatically the previous evening; boy did I feel dumb! So dumb in fact that I did not have the bottle to advise the RCMP of the error of my ways so please next time you read theft crime figures for Canada take 1 off!
Further up the coast we took a detour to Telegraph Cove. My first experience of Canadian dirt roads. Telegraph Cove was established in 1912 as a one-man telegraph station, it is now a tourist resort with viewing wildlife at its centre. Killer Whale watching and game fishing are the two main attractions but for me the old wooden houses were charming.
Onto Port Hardy and our next overnight at the Eagle’s Nest B&B, hosts Louise and Dennis Dugas. Their home was wonderful and our part of it was a self contained flat. It was in Eagle Crescent which is where I thought the name came from, but at breakfast Dennis showed me his high-powered telescope, which was trained on an Eagle Nest about 200m away. Home to a breeding pair of American Bald Eagles with a young chick. Both parents were busy fetching breakfast for their young charge and our magnificent healthy eating breakfast was loaded onto the kitchen table ready for us.
Day 3 and a long ferry crossing was to leave Port Hardy at 09.30hrs heading on the inside passage to Bella Coola. Part way across the ferry stopped opened its stern doors and set away two intrepid adventurers in their double canoe who were scheduled to stay on a nearby uninhabited island for the ferry to pick them up on a return leg in 10 days. Real backs woods people. Just as the ferry was preparing to get back underway a pod of Killer Whales swam past (you can see how interested Jen was!), I only caught the tail flute of one on the digital camera but that was enough to make it a very special moment. We arrived on schedule at 9.30 pm, a full 12 hour crossing and set off to town.
B&B number two was again booked on the net and called Wilderness Elegance. I expected to find a frontier town and therefore everyone would know where the B&B was. The town was deserted, just like one of those towns in Northern Exposure. I knocked at the Mounties Post, which was closed but just as I was about to give up a Mounty appeared. He was very respectful and helpful and arranged for our host, Terry Carbould to take his 4 wheel (everyone has a 4x4 in the Wilderness) to the bottom of their drive so as we rode 10km from town we would not ride past. Once again a superb B&B.
The road was quite busy, we saw about 10 vehicles towing horse boxes in the 100km, and found out the Williams Lake was holding a rodeo which is the precursor to the Calgary Stampede. We found our billet, Rowats Waterside B&B, which was a family run operation and everybody was heading out to the Stampede, we were invited to join in but needed some quiet time to reflect on our achievement. I dread to think what the gravel road would be like in the wet; some sections were damp, but real rain I think could make it impassable on a glide – unless Dunlop do knobblies!
Day 5 and we joined a buzzing group of folks for breakfast. Rowats Waterside breakfast demonstrated why we were enjoying B&B’s so much. There was a dichotomy of characters all contributing to the gay badinage. I traded a Geordie Chapter shirt to Terry Gordon who was going to the wilderness for a wedding. I told him when we were on the Port Hardy to Bella Coola ferry we had met an English couple who were attending their daughters wedding in the Wilderness (officiated by a cowboy minister!) and guess what these people were going to the same wedding. I subsequently got emails describing how they had talked about the English couple on a Glide riding the HILL! A big country but a small World.
We set off on our route to Lillooet via Kamloops. Due South on route 97 and we started to see towns called 150 Mile or 100 Mile and numbers in between, we found out we were on the original Gold Rush Road of 1849. Some imagination to call towns by their milepost numbers, but empire building was not their goal; their goal was gold and survival. At 70 Mile we stopped at a small restaurant and ordered coffee and waffles. With the Glide parked out front two BMW’s and two Harleys soon joined us. We wanted to talk to all bikers but the H-D and BMW people appeared to totally ignore each other, strange but true.
The BMW men were wearing Aerostich one piece suites, which are brilliant; ordinary clothes underneath and in 10 seconds you can have a full weatherproof, abrasion proof suite; check out their web site it’s a blinding site. The Harley riders were a him and her couple. She road a well-sorted shovel. They invited us to ride with them to Kamloops – we had asked for directions to the dealer.
The dealer in Kamloops was a family run affair and extremely welcoming. In our Chapter we have a poodle called Bonny who wears a Chapter t-shirt at meetings and this H-D dealer sold licensed denim doggy caps – Bonny had to have one. I thought I had seen everything when I bought my toilet seat with the Motor Company logo, or when I saw H-D Christmas tree baubles or the H-D train set, but a doggy hat (available in three sizes) has to take the biscuit! We said goodbye to our riding buddies and headed for Hat Creek Ranch.
I had planned the visit here on the recommendation of a Colin Alexander who responded to an email I sent to Chapters on the route I had planned asking for inside information. Colin did not tell us anything about Hat Creek Ranch, only that we had to go. On turning off the highway into the ranch I managed to drop the glide! Slow manoeuvring I usually control forward motion by dragging the back brake, what tripped me this time was the fact that 2002 Harleys have 4 piston effective brakes and I locked the back wheel, something I could not have done on my 95th Anniversary Glide. As we lay in the road I looked into the face of an oncoming massive truck; the driver had observed my dilemma and stopped to allow us to regain our vertical position with the rubber side down; but the bike would not start something to do with a tilt switch cut out I think, so embarrassingly I paddled us into Hat Creek Ranch.
Hat Creek ranch is situated at the junction of route 99 and 97 just North of Cache Creek, it was established in 1860 as a roadhouse on the Gold Trail. It fed and watered the passengers and horses of the wagons plying this important highway and now it is being restored and run as a living museum. You can even stay overnight in a miners settlement style tent, Jennifer was not up for that as after a day in the saddle she likes her creature comforts so it was off to Lillooet for an overnight.
Day 6 and once again the HOG family came to the Fore. At the Lido de Jeselo rally I met a Canadian couple, Joan Thomas & Erik Gillet, who had sold up everything and decided to take a year riding their Harley around Europe. I had spotted their back patch and introduced myself leaving my email address; they did email and recommended a road to take North of Lillooet to Seton Portage, Birken and back on the main highway 97 at Pemberton. Erik told me the road was challenging but do-able on a Glide, as he had done it twice. We did about 10km and I decided to turn back as I was not enjoying the experience because a few days before we arrived the road had been graded, about 100mm deep of gravel that was like riding on marbles and I was focusing on keeping the bike upright and got to the stage of thinking when the bike would fall not if.
We rode back through Lillooet as the shops were opening and we could secure purchases I thought I had escaped from our previous nights window-shopping. Route 97 was breathtakingly beautiful and a wonderful ride, so I wonder how much better the gravel road that Erik and Joan recommended would have been. About 60km into it the rain started and it got a bit cold and wet and it is at this point I was glad to have made the decision to not ride the dirt road.
We arrived back into the 21st century at Whistler. This modern complex was host to the winter Olympics and is everything the Wilderness isn’t! We checked into to our most expensive night at the Holiday Inn at $148.10, however the room did sport all modern conveniences including a whirlpool bath. It was my birthday so we pushed the boat out and called in Resort Room Service to get booze and made a delicious meal for two in the en-suite kitchen.
Day 7 and the run along the Sea to Sky highway and back to Vancouver. Just South of Whistler we stopped at Brandywine Falls. A natural fault in the rocks gives a spectacular 100m high waterfall. The Sea to Sky highway is tremendous and anybody visiting British Columbia would be impressed; but we had gone the extra and done the HILL from Bella Coola to Williams Lake and all trips would now be judged by that datum. Fairly or unfairly it’s the way it is. Back to the Accent Inn on Henning Drive ready to return the Glide the following morning.
Day 8 and I had the bike ‘till noon. Jennifer wanted to sort out some laundry and retrieve the balance of our stored luggage for part two and three of our trip. I took advantage and visited Trev Deeley’s museum. It is brilliant, mainly Harleys but many marquees are well represented and many fine examples with loads of memorabilia. I had two favourites a 1953 Vincent Rapide and a 1952 Duo Glide that had been meticulously restored and customised so not a true replica but a 1952 bike given a custom paint job and some chrome but staying a 1952 bike, truly wonderful.
Now it was time to take the bike back, doh!
To cushion the blow of returning the bike I bought a few items in the magnificent store but prices were similar to the UK so I did not go mad!
We still had the Rocky mountaineer and a week in an Recreational Vehicle to look forward too but I knew the best part of the holiday was behind us. In fact I am so into using up my HOG benefits I have the next Fly Ride booked for January 15th 2003 from Las Vegas touring Southern California, planning the trip to stay below 2000ft because last time we did Vegas in January and rode to Flagstaff at 8,000 feet we got snow!
Go on get involved use up those HOG benefits and book a Fly Ride it’s so easy and a fantastic way to holiday.
www.nicksanders.com