My mood had been as foul as the recent weather, but when I stuck my head out of the tent and saw the sun brilliantly ablaze in a cloudless blue sky, my spirits brightened considerably.
Thanks to the faulty dryer in the laundry room at Blow Me Down Provincial Park – and the in-denial park manager’s insistence that drying clothes is somehow optional in Canada – I’d slept in wet gear the night before, hoping my body heat would burn off some of the dampness. While that hadn’t worked, the bluebird sky and warm temps had me looking forward to getting back on the road, soggy clothes and all.
Today I’d ride up the west coast of Newfoundland to Saint Barbe, where I’d catch the ferry to Blanc-Sablon, Quebec; once there, it was a short hop to the border of Labrador. It had taken 8 weeks and more than 14,000 miles to get here, but the finish line was finally in sight: I was only a day away from completing my tour of every Canadian province! I was excited, optimistic and happy.
Oh, how that would all change in the next few hours! But I’m getting ahead of myself… With no idea what the day had in store, I loaded up my 1995 Honda Shadow VT1100 motorcycle and set off for coastal Route 430.
I’d been on the road for less than an hour when the sun gave way to rain. Kind of a bummer, but it really wasn’t an issue since from the beginning of my trip rain fell about every other day on average. I had quality riding gear which had kept me cozy for the last two months, so I pushed ahead. After all, this being remote Canada, roads didn’t have shoulders to speak of and there were no bridge underpasses to sit out storms in, so what was another day of riding in the rain?
This was no ordinary precipitation, however. As I continued north, the rain transformed from normal annoyance to otherworldly storm. Imagine the fury of 1,000 firehoses pointed at you from every direction, going full blast for hours on end, only somehow worse. Turns out, the morning’s sunshine was the result of being in the eye of a hurricane and now I was getting a taste of its brute force. And I still had four hours of riding before I’d reach Saint Barbe. This should be fun.
Visibility was hampered by the torrent, although the storm clouds had a silver lining as well: my electronic speedometer – which had stopped working 46.2 miles south of Alaska – suddenly flickered back to life! My mind sprang to the scene in “A Nightmare on Elm Street” where an unplugged phone starts ringing. Great, I thought, this is just what I need. Not only am I stuck in a hurricane in a reverse wetsuit, but now my bike’s haunted…
Because the transition to waterlogged rider was gradual and there weren’t many distractions, I could actually feel the moisture creeping from my extremities toward my core. By the time I started to get concerned about losing body heat, a mileage sign appeared indicating I was only an hour away from salvation.
Earlier on this trip, I’d put in long days on terrible roads that no one I knew would have wanted to ride, but this was something altogether different, and I reached an epiphany that caused me to laugh out loud in my helmet: No sane person would continue riding in this weather! So why was I? I had to logic my way through it… I was already a mobile aquarium, so stopping on the side of the road to sit out the storm and not make the ferry would have been pointless, and I was going to continue getting soaked whether or not I kept riding, so I might was well continue eating up miles.
Eventually, it stopped raining and as luck would have it, I arrived at the ferry terminal shortly thereafter. As I dismounted my bike, I could hear the squish of my feet compressing wet socks, and I left a trail of footprint-shaped puddles in my wake. I bought a ticket and was tempted by the idea of eating a decent hot meal in the adjacent heated restaurant, but couldn’t bear the thought of leaking all over the room while doing so. Up to this point, most ferries had galleys, so I crossed my fingers – creating another rivulet – and hoped for food in my near-term future. I scanned the advertised B+Bs available in Labrador and zeroed in on one that offered laundry service. Dry clothes had suddenly become my top priority.
Outside, while filling up my tank, I was astounded to see Glen, a Canadian with whom I shared a table at breakfast in British Columbia more than a month and several thousand miles ago. “I saw that bike when I was riding through town and thought it was yours,” he said. “As if anyone else would ride this junker,” I joked.
We chatted briefly and caught each other up on our doings; Glen was back home on his month-long break from the oil fields. It was great to see a familiar face, and I couldn’t believe my good fortune… Talk about a small world!
