Quebec and Labrador

WELL, GOOD RUN, good run. There’s no such thing as a bad day on a motorcycle. Not even when you misread the terrain and get a little ho-hum on throttle control and end up flopped over in the weeds in the middle of nowhere. Did that twice. Okay, three times.

It was a quick run, 17 days. I slept on the ground in fields, in woods, on crashing salt beaches, on lakes with the Milky Way mirrored in them, and once in a parking lot when the light had been gone for hours and the day had nothing left.

The little piglet and I rode five states and six Canadian provinces in just under 4,000 miles. We rode ferries across the Fjord-du-Saguenay, the Strait of Belle Isle, the Cabot Strait and the Northumberland Strait.

Our longest day on the road was 580 miles, a good stretch on half a motorcycle. Our shortest day, about 30 miles of road and 100 miles of water.

Look how happy my shirt is, jumping up & down and shouting Yay all the time.

 

I crossed the Seaway in Quebec City and rode east of there along the water, camped at La Malbaie just west of the fjord. At Baie-Comeau, I headed north along the Manicouagan River, camped for the night at Manic 2, one of five hydro dams on the Manicouagan. I met a couple of Beemer riders there, R1200GS guys, Duncan from Massachusetts and Bill from Ohio. I wish I had pictures of them for you but I had tossed my cameras overboard here at the humble manse. The piglet isn’t set up to carry any amount of cargo with this mushy OEM suspension. Essentials only.

I did bring my GoPro and shot blind with it now and again. It doesn’t have a viewfinder, and I don’t have the smartphone app that serves as one.

I left out of camp before Bill and Duncan, rode up past the big concrete monolith at Manic 5, up past the 50th Parallel of north latitude, then the 51st. They caught up to me at mid-day at Relais-Gabriel on the eastern edge of the Manicouagan Crater. We rode together the rest of the day, up past the 52nd Parallel and out of Quebec.

Here’s the guys outside an iron mine in northern Quebec.

 

The view from my tent that night, 40 kilometers east of Labrador City. I set up in the sand on the water’s edge, Duncan was in the grass behind me, Bill was on the other side of the camp road.

I saw the northern lights over the lake that night. Saw them faintly, and without color. They were dark curtains of ionized energy waving in a breeze that wasn’t there. They seemed to brush the surface of the water and flutter on up to the apex of the dome. Then clouds came in and the eye of the sky closed and mine closed with it.

 

The next day we rode together to Goose Bay and camped there on a lake outside of town. Day after that we rode 100 miles of gravel before I got interested in talking with one of the road builders we met. He was a young Newfoundlander who works 20 days in Labrador, goes home to his family for 10 days, 20 on, 10 off, 20 on, 10 off…

There’s an army of road builders at work all along the Trans-Labrador Highway. They live in work camps carved out of the taiga. They’re drilling down through the old road cuts in the Canadian Shield, making them superhighway-wide, crushing the rock and making road bed out of it. Roll it, pave it, drain it where it’s wet. What makes this place interesting, the difficulty of it all, will be gone one of these years soon. Labrador will be red lights and dollar stores, like everywhere else.

 

I so enjoy the simple daily tasks of life on the road: Ride the bike, get off the bike, make grub, lie down on the ground, get up off the ground, make grub, ride the bike…

 

 

Ride the big rocks and the little rocks…

 

On the OEM tires I was running, three inches of these marbles on top will turn 60mph gravel into 20mph gravel right NOW. Don’t get hurt getting pitched out of the saddle, Moe. No one’s coming along for a while.

We heard stories of a young woman on street tires who was medevaced out about a day ahead of us. And in Churchill Falls we ran into an Indian gal from Maine who had lost control of her BMW thumper, bashed it up so badly she didn’t think it was worth transporting home. She wasn’t hurt, and was happy not to be. Maybe that’s what made her so admirably philosophical about riding in her group’s support vehicle. A delightful young woman to talk with. I figured her for Passamaquoddy or Maliseet, though I can’t say I really know why.

 

Duncan and Bill were planning to hold up and pull over after another 100 miles of gravel. I wasn’t that far behind. I caught sight of them once or twice about 70 miles from their next stop, and I saw their dust after that from time to time. And when I’m almost there myself I see a BMW headlight coming at me. It’s Duncan going back to look for me. Going back 100 miles! Man, don’t do that. He would have burned so much gas he couldn’t have gotten to a pump in either direction.

Bill had gone on ahead because the black flies were driving him nuts. He figured we’re all motormen, big boys who take care of ourselves, ride on. But Duncan had a feeling I might have wrecked or had a mechanical failure, so he was riding back to have a look. You would have done the same for me. And I said, uh, bud, I might have just assumed you were okay.

Duncan and Bill had more motorcycle than I, twice the motorcycle, more aggressive tires, they could cover the worst of the gravel faster. I suggested that Duncan ought to get on the wick and go catch up to Bill, I’d catch up myself by day’s end, or not. Either way, it’s all good. Maybe I’d see them on the ferry from Blanc Sablon to St. Barbe, or in Newfoundland somewhere, or Nova Scotia. He agreed to go and said they’d aim to camp at L’anse-au-Loup for the night. As it turned out, I rode until near dark and called it a day 110 miles short of there.

When I gassed up in Port Hope Simpson I could see a big rain blowing in from the Labrador Sea between there and Greenland. I wasn’t planning to ride any stormy gravel that night.

MORE COMING when I can…

 

Tony DePaul, September 8, 2015, Cranston, Rhode Island, USA

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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About Tony

The occasional scribblings of Tony DePaul, 68, father, grandfather, husband, freelance writer in many forms, recovering journalist, long-distance motorcycle rider, blue routes wanderer, topo map bushwhacker, blah blah...
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10 Responses to Quebec and Labrador

  1. John Urban says:

    Going up to Manicougan, it looks like you turned East before getting to the enormous Manic 5 dam (the Daniel Johnson dam). It’s really one of the wonders of the world, 702′ high and very wide, with huge arches that could hold skyscrapers. An electrician neighbor accepted a contract and was flown in there to work on the Quebec-owned dam in the winter. It gets really cold there sometimes, minus 40 for several days, and they can’t shut off their vehicles, which they leave running all night. But even with motors running, they still can’t use their vehicles in such cold, as the steel frames on big trucks become so brittle that they will readily crack under normal use. They have to wait till it warms up enough. This brittlizing effect of extreme cold on steel was eventually picked up by bicycle thieves in cities. Now, the “unbreakable” Kryptonite bike lock can be readily broken by a bike thief equipped with aerosol cans of compressed air, which is extremely cold where it leaves the nozzle. After strategically applying sprayed deep-freeze, the thief hits the lock, and it shatters at that spot.

  2. Bill Warner says:

    Tony,

    Why don’t you come visit us in Norway, then ride paved roads to the North Cape? If you prefer to grovel on gravel and ford fjords, we’ve got them also.

    Uncle Bill

    • Tony says:

      Unk! Hey, lately I’ve been wondering what you’re up to these days. Well yeah, I’ll go motorcycling in Norway if you can quote me decent odds of sighting a caribou. Or, barring that, the Norwegian Bikini Team. On my last three motorcycle rides into caribou country I didn’t see a single one (caribou).

  3. Randy Pedersen says:

    Tony:
    I really wish we could have met when I was still able to ride on 2 wheels Toni, my wife, and I loved to ride but now that I ride these 4 wheels all day long it’s just to much to ask of her. That’s why I sub to this blog you almost make it feel as if I had been there.

    Be safe in your travels my friend, I await the next episode.
    Randy

  4. John Barfuss says:

    You crazy man. Love big sky. Ride safe.

  5. Mario & Lyne boisvert says:

    Glad you made it home safe and sound

  6. Chris Whitney says:

    Well, I’m sure you’ll tell us eventually, but I’d like to know if it was enough of a shakedown cruise to prepare for THE BIG RIDE (in the) SOUTH. And what mods you may be contemplating on the hardware. Carry on, sir.

  7. Duncan Cooper says:

    Glad you made it back. Some guy came looking for you at Blow Me Down Provincial Park, Newfoundland.

    • Tony says:

      Ha! That’s hilarious. I had no idea you guys were nearby, Duncan. I was camped in a place called Bottle Cove. Anywhere on that peninsula the wind will blow you down, I didn’t feel a need to see the park itself. I ran into that guy at the Wal-Mart in Corner Brook while I was doing a parking lot oil change. He was from York Harbour and highly recommended that road, said it rivaled the scenery at Gros Morne. I have to say it actually did.

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