Oh Canada!

[jimf]

I'm starting this thread to document a six-day tour up into Canada which I start on Thursday.
 
The itinerary:
 
Thursday: Boston to Tupper Lake, NY.  I'll be hot-footing it out of Boston by route 2 (a state highway) until I get near southern Vermont, just to escape eastern Massachusetts traffic light hell as quickly as I can.  Then turn north across the southern stretches of Vermont, across the Green Mountains via routes 101 and 30, and northwest through Lake Placid and Saranac Lake.  The GPS software shows it to be 305 miles, but I will probably go off-route to explore some Adirondack mountain roads along the way.
 
Friday: Tupper Lake to Saint-Alphonse-Rodriguez, QC.  I'll do some riding around in the Adirondacks, but mostly this looks like flat farmland for most of the ride.  280 miles or so, plus any morning Adirondack loop I might do.
 
Saturday: Some kind of day loop north of S-A-R, I think, but I'm going to see about tagging along with friends who will be there.
 
Sunday: S-A-R to Stowe Vermont.  I'll be riding eastward over the top of Lac-Saint-Pierre, crossing the Saint Laurent at Trois Rivieres and meandering southward through what I think is more farmland.  I'll go through Smuggler's Notch on the way to Stowe -- it's not the most direct route by any means, but I always liked VT108, and the border crossing is nice.  240 miles planned for the leg.
 
Monday: South from Stowe, crossing the Green Mountain range at VT17 (I love that road and it should be empty on a workday) and back across 73.  Down through Chester and Rockingham into Massachusetts, and eastbound on route 2 again in Erving to home.  275 miles planned.  This is the day I'm least likely to off-route, home will be calling.
 
I mentioned in a different thread that this will be my first tour with the Yamaha hard luggage and Comfort Seat, so I'll be posting more detailed reviews of those things as I get more experience with them, and pics of the bike of course.  I'll be taking advantage of the massive saddle time to play with the Ermax sport screen + Puig visor; I think I might be able to improve the buffeting level a bit more if the visor position is different.  We'll see!
 

[jimf]

Or five day tour. Apparently I have forgotten how to count. :-)

[wessie]

Or five day tour. Apparently I have forgotten how to count. :-)

Your sub-conscience is ahead of you, factoring in a recovery day    
Have a good trip 

[jimf]

Or five day tour. Apparently I have forgotten how to count. :-)

Your sub-conscience is ahead of you, factoring in a recovery day    

The way I look at it all five days of the trip are the recovery days. 
Today I washed the bike in preparation.  Not that I did a great detailing job or anything, but it does look nicer when not all covered with dirt and stuff, and you can see through the windscreen again :-).
 
I don't really know why I bothered to wash it since the weather liars are saying I'll be passing through thunderstorms sometime on Thursday.  But after it was all clean I took the opportunity to clean and lube the chain; it needed that.  I forgot how easy that is when you have a centerstand.

[fanowater]

Have a great trip! I just mounted the Puig clip on visor to my Parabellum flyscreen. It was a huge improvement. It quickly became apparent one position was best and all the rest were slightly less ideal.
I leave Friday for a 9 day ride from Northern Cal to western Colorado and back. Been planning this trip with my homies for almost a year and time to roll has almost arrived. Almost exactly a year ago we were sitting in Markleeville, Ca on another multi-day ride and decided we needed to go further a field. Bought the FJ just to make such trips possible.
 
Cheers

[brad27]

Hey i live in Trois-Rivieres just east of the Lac St-Pierre(Pointe-du-Lac exactly) and no more than 10 min. from the bridge that goes over the St-Laurent. Highway 40 is almost in my backyard. If you need something just give me a sign. I should be at home.
 
Be safe!
 
Btw: Trois-Rivieres to the border(Stanstead) takes 2 hours exactly.
 

[jimf]

Hopefully it will be smooth sailing, but thanks for the offer!
 
I'm not going anywhere near Stanstead if I can help it; I like the smaller roads and border crossings whenever I can and will be coming across at East Franklin. VT108 is a very nice road (scraped the sidestand for the first time in Smuggler's Notch last spring). Besides, going through the small towns is extra opportunity for poutine. :-)
 

[jimf]

Tonight I spent a happy few hours working out a packing scheme with the Yamaha hard bags. The first thing I discovered was that the expensive Yamaha bag liners really suck.
 
They're fine quality, actually, but they have heavy piping around the edges that you just can't get to stay out of the way of the clamshell seals when you're closing the lids, at least if they're anywhere near full. Plus the liners are bulky enough to have a real impact on how much you can stuff in there. Given that the hard bags aren't that big to begin with every little bit matters. (I'm already spoiled, the Yamaha bags are bigger than the Ortleib soft bags I've been using, although the soft bags were easier to pack tight.)
 
It might be different if it were a two or three day trip, I wouldn't have had so much stuff, but at maximum load those liners are a liability. I ended up going back to giant ziplock bags, which not only made it easier to pack them in and close the lid but made for easier organization in general.
 
The rack makes an excellent platform for lashing on a dry bag or, using the pillion seat as well, two dry bags. I love having bungee hooks to work with.
 
My wife laughed at me when, after an hour or so of figuring out what fit where, I got the bags all closed up tight and sat back and said, "All packed up. Except for these two things that didn't fit."
 
Those things were the riding suit liners, and they really didn't fit. Probably I won't need them in our current bout of unseasonably hot weather, but I never want to count on that when I'm going to be riding through the mountains. It would suck to be wrong.
 
It worked out well because I grabbed another dry bag from the basement and threw the liners in there, plus took the rain gear out of the luggage and put that in there too. It'll be more accessible when I get caught in the rain tomorrow anyway (which is a foregone conclusion); no opening up the side bags and having everything fall out.
 
I love it when a plan comes together. I'll snap a pic or three tomorrow and see if I can figure out a way to post them while on the road.

[frogwater]

Glad to hear you're puttin on the miles..I considered the yamaha side cases too but felt they were too small for the $$$. I went with the Shad and modified them to mount about 3" narrower almost bar width ..and am very happy since they do swallow a full face helmet and more!

[jimf]

Here she is, ready to go.
 

 
(Now we see if I guessed how to expose the pic correctly in Dropbox.)
 
Forecast is that I will run through a line of thunderstorms in a couple of hours, although it should at least be cooler riding on the other side.  It's been pretty gross around here for the last few days, with high temperatures and high humidity.  The schoolkids have been LOVING that.

[jimf]

Apparently I can't extract Dropbox sharing links from the iPad, oh well.  Pics will have to wait until I get home.
 
At the recommendation of deerSlayer I routed through Tracy And Hurricane Roads.  Great choices, especially Tracy.  I had so much fun I decided I to run it backwards and forwards again.  Whee!  On the backwards run I had not considered that the tight left turn in one direction would be a much tighter right turn going the other way.  I entered it at about the same speed, I think about 50mph.  I have no idea how I didn't drag anything, but it must have been very close.  Could be that the turn had a little camber to help me out.  I wasn't trying to ride at eight or nine tenths, I swear.
 
By the time I got to Hurricane I was pretty tired, almost nine hours on the road, so I wasn't pushing.  Rumors that there was a lot of sand were perhaps a bit exaggerated.  While there was plenty of dirt driveway debris there was only one corner with much in the way of sand and there were clear tracks through it.  I didn't have trouble seeing sand on the road.  Then again, I was only going moderately quickly, both from fatigue and because there are a lot of houses along that road.  Nice technical fun ... a good contrast with Tracy, which is fast and flowing.  I like Hurricane Mountain Road in Conway NH better, though; no houses, really technical, and whoops to take air off.
 
Along the way I ran across the oldest marble quarry in the US.  I'll post a pic of the historical sign later, but the thing I laughed at was the claim that the pieces of marble they extracted got bigger as tools and transportation improved.  No surprise there....
 
My route went right by Fort Ticonderoga so I thought I'd drop by and take a pic with the FJ.  Unfortunately you have to pay $20 to even get close to it.  Oh well.
 
Near the end of the day I stopped at a pull-off that happened to be the parking area for Ampersand Mountain.  I commented to a couple of hikers that that was a really cool name for a mountain.  They told me that one of the stories about the name is that it is a corruption of "Amber Sand", because there is a sand flow nearby.  I don't know if that's the true story, but I like it so I'm going with that one.
 
That's it for today.  Tomorrow I invade a neighboring country.

[jimf]

I forgot: After 350+ miles and 9 hours on the road I can say that I like the Yamaha Comfort Seat just fine. No hot spots. At mid day I thought the foam was just a hair too hard, but it felt good at the end of the day, so I'll take it.
 
I had the chance to expriment with every setting of the Puig visor on the Ermax Sport screen too. At 70-80mph one click above 90 degrees gave very good results. I was happy with the one click below 90 setting, but that turns out to be the worst of all three settings for me. For backroads speeds I like the 90 degree setting best because it's completely out of my line of sight but still provides good results, but all day with highway blasting? High position, thanks.
 

[jimf]

I am glad I packed the suit liners; it's 51F out there right now. No rain forecast for today, at least. I missed the thunderstorms that had been predicted yesterday, but did spend an hour or two riding through light rain.

[jimf]

Last Friday I rode from Tupper Lake, NY to Saint-Alphonse-Rodriguez, CA.  My route when rather northwest of the ultimate destination, going through Mont-Tremblant.
 
The trip out of NY was fairly boring, with a border crossing at Cornwall that was uneventful other than the embarrassment of dumping half the contents of my tank bag out on the ground while trying to pull out my passport.  The Canadian border guard was remarkably tolerant.
 
I ate lunch at some small town on 34 and, remarkably, caught sight of a friend of mine on the way out of whatever town I was in.  The trip up to Tremblant was largely boring through the flat southern stretch; some of the roads had so little traffic and were so straight that I entertained myself by setting the throttle lock, sitting back with hands off the bars, and leaning back and forth to keep the bike in lane.  Things got increasingly better as I approached Mont-Treblant, where I refueled.
 
I left Mont-Tremblant via Montee Ryan and hooked up with the most excellent Chemin Duplessis.  If you get up in that area, you should take that road.  It was very nice, and barely a car on it.
 
I got off of Chemin Duplesses onto Chemin du Nordet and followed that all the way up to Lac-Pimbina, far enough north that there aren't a lot of paved roads north of there, where I got onto 125 into Saint-Donat.  A quick break and I was back on 125 all the way down to Notre-Dame-de-Merci.  125 was straight and fast with almost no traffic.  I think only two cars, one that I passed and another in the other direction, for the whole half hour or so I was on it.  It was a hilly/mountainous area, though, so the scenery was fantastic.
 
AT Notre-Dame-de-Merci I turned onto 327 and rode into St. Come.  Up in Lac-Pimbina I had decided to throw on the rain jacket over my mesh gear because I was cold, but by the time I rode into St. Come the temperatures were in the mid-70s and I was borderline for heat exhaustion and feeling horrible.  I decided to strip the gear and have some dinner.
 
As my luck would have it the restaurant's dining room was about 85F, the worst possible thing for someone already suffering from heat, and my symptoms worsened substantially until someone convinced the restaurant staff to open a window.  I recovered fairly quickly, but not quickly enough to enjoy the poutine I had ordered.  Alas.
 
St-Come was only a few miles from our camp and I rolled in about 7pm just as it was starting to get dark.  Total route distance was about 310 miles for the day, I believe.  A very nice ride, especially in the Mont-Tremblant area.
 
Saturday was supposed to have been a ride up through Parc Nationale de la Mauricie but it was raining pretty hard and I didn't really want to do 5 hours on the bike in rain if I didn't have to.  So I spent the day talking with friends and going into town for poutine with sausage, which was yummy.
 
Sunday I was back on the road following a friend.  We rode out of the mountains through sporadic rain and then down to the ferry in Sorrell by all backroads.  That was much less boring than what I would have done, and avoided a lot of the town stoplight hell near the river.  My contribution to the route was a detour to Bedford, QC to a nice little breakfast/lunch joint called Cafe Rouge.  Their breakfast poutine is to die for -- home fries with bacon, sausage, and ham on top, with fried eggs on top of that, covered in cheese curds and hollandaise sauce.  Oh-my-God is that good.  The waitress says that no one has actually died of that before they left the place.  Recommended if you're ever in the area.  I also like the chocolate shop across the street.
 
We crossed back into the U.S. at VT108 and ran into a whole bunch of Quebecois bikers refueling in Enos Falls.  They had some nice bikes, including one Honday CBR1000 that looked like it came straight off the racetrack, albeit with lights.  Beautiful.  We wondered if perhaps it was one of those versions that isn't available in the US.
 
From there we proceeded up through Smuggler's Notch.  While the rain had stopped by then the Notch was completely enshrouded in clouds and the roads were wet and sometimes a bit slippery.  I overcooked the first steep downhill turn and had to straighten up to avoid hard braking in the next corner, which would likely have caused a crash if I'd been leaned over.  I pussyfooted through the rest of the tight corners.  That's the first time I've ever gone through Smuggler's in the southerly direction; next time I know that the first drop is a bit of a doozy, especially in the wet.
 
My friend and I parted ways in Stowe, where I spent the night at the Commodores Inn.  Nice place, clean, big rooms for not a lot of money (off season, anyway).  Thankfully they had a restaurant on premisis because I wasn't really feeling like suiting up again for more riding in the rain to a restaurant.  The food was more or less bar fare, although reasonably well prepared.  Good beer on tap made for a nice post-riding-day cool-down.
 
I woke up to more rain and decided that my original planned route, which crossed back and forth over the Green Mountains via VT17 and VT73, was both longer than I wanted to do in the rain and perhaps would be slippery in the passes again.  Instead I meandered on whatever roads struck my fancy in a southeasterly direction down into Lebanon, NH for lunch at Shyrlie's Diner, which appeared right in front of my face just when I started thinking about lunch.  Providence, I think.
 
The waitress asked if I wanted my sandwich on "normal" bread or homemade.  I wondered if that was a trick question; of course I got homemade, and it was very good.
 
By this time I was back on roads I have traveled on a bit and I continued to zig-zag down to eastern MA and back home.
 
I had originally planned to ride at least 1,500 miles, but losing Saturday and shorting Monday due to rain kept me down to a little under 1,100.  Still, not a bad five days, with some truly excellent roads in the Adirondacks and up around Mont-Tremblant.
 
When I have more time I'll post a few pictures.
 

[jimf]

Pictures!
 
On Thursday I stopped at Dot's Diner in Wilmington, Vermont.  It looked different than what I remembered last time.  The waitress told me that that's because it had been completely destroyed by Hurricane Irene:
 

 
The old one had a 50s kind of charm; now it's more of a New England-ish decor.  The food was still worth the stop: