Day 11 - July 10 - we've reached "base camp"

Well, first - the big news - we've reached the shores of the rock: Port-Aux-Basque, NEWFOUNDLAND!

When I first set up this blog, the format required that I put in a one-liner about the purpose of the blog, and I said somehting about it chronicling our effort to reach the "summit", Newfoundland. I've thought of the trip that way, and partly had in mind the comments of a friend who recently was trecking in Nepal, and climbed an 18,000 ft peak. Her sister had to stop 200 meters before the summit for medical reasons. I thought not reaching Newfoundland would be kind of like that (a much less physically demanding task, but you'll perhaps at least see the analogy).

But I feel like we're at base camp in Port-Aux-Basques. We'll now spend 2 days riding the road from Port-Aux-Basques to St. Johns, which circles around the north of Newfoundland. By the time we reach St, John's, I think we can safely say we'ver reached the "summit" of the trip.

But back a step - Day 11 was as much about riding what some say may be the best motorcycle track in North America - the Cabot Trail.

My, oh my, oh my, what a beautiful ride, in terms of the riding itself - swooping up and down, turning and turning and turning, sometimes inb exquisite "esses" - and the breathtaking scenery - lush evergreen forests (not the barren Cape Breton I had expected), and the miles and miles of bending coastline that is just made for the Tourism folks to photograph.

Much of the Cabot Trail goes through a provicnial park. There, as in so many places we've been, we were warned in the strongest terms about the danger of moose on the road (7 ft moose vs motorcycle, the loser is obvious), but we didn't see any. Would have been nice just from the perspective of seing one, but given the danger of coming around a corner at a fairly high speed and confronting one in that way, we're better off moose-less.

The wind was blowing hard much of the time, which adds to the experience - makes it much harder to work always to be compensating for wind, particularly if it is inconsistent and gusty. Check out the phot of the little ferry we took across the a small bit of water, and look at the flags: they couldn't be straining any harder!

But overall the expreince was so great that my buddy Gordy will understand when I say this was almost as good as fresh powder, sunshine, and bumps in Sunripe Bowl.

We rode from Antigonish into Cape Breton and around the Trail from 7:00 a.m. to 3:30 p.m., with the only breaks being for gas, and to have lunch. What a great day of riding!

Then to Sydney to catch the ferry to Port-Aux-Basques. It is a 6 hour trip. I mistakenly said 13 hours the other day, but it is the trip from St.Johns back to Sydney that is 13 hours. The "busker" at the ferry terminal was a bagpiper - fitting. The bikes really had to be tied down this time - a strap from each of the four corners cinching the bike to the deck.

They had a well-intentioned guitarist on board, playing with the ubiquitous percussion and backup instruments machine. But he constantly - and I mean constantly - sang flat. Canadian Idon judges would have told him he was "pitchy". So it was a little like scraping fingernails over a blackboard for some hours. In fairness, it was all Atlantic folk in terms of content, and that was kind of fun. He began with "Farewell to Nova Scotia" which my friend, the Chief Judge of Nova Scotia Provincial Court, Pat Curran, always sings with such gusto.

Check out the photo of the North Atlantic - we couldn't help thinking of the poor folks on the Titanic, particularly after dark...

Anyway, late into Newfoundland (11:30 p.m.), but we did go to the Bar for a celebratory drink.

Tomorrow we move on from base camp...