Sparky
09-25-2005, 11:43 AM
Part I
The past week has not been pleasant. Work has been backed up, and on Wednesday I received an unpleasant telephone call from my mother. My missing cousin turned up...when her weirdo next-door neighbour confessed to killing her. Reading the words "dismemberment" about a family relation--even if she wasn't close--is always a shock. So I was feeling rather like a cabin boy's backside after a long voyage in the age of sail by the time Friday rolled around.
Luckily, the sunny weather held for one more day. I'd been planning a ride into Vermont for that Saturday anyway. With the bad news, I needed a serious distraction. Lovely scenery and avoiding become part of it sounded like a dandy cure for the blues. On the evenings after the phone call, I'd spread out my map of New England to trace a route through the back roads of Vermont. I decided to do a couple of roads I'd missed while passing through on trips last year. I'd heard about Route 108 through Smuggler's Notch and the Appalachian Gap on Route 17 between Irasville and Bristol. These have a reputation for being twisty indeed. They also lie in some of the prettiest countryside in New England. I traced a mix of expressway and backroads to get me down to the border in the quickest time I could.
Saturday morning dawned cold and sunny. I spent a little more time than usual prepping the bike. Usually I just check lights and tire pressure, given that my building's driveway is an incline. I rolled her into the garage onto level ground to check coolant and oil. My usual nervousness before any trip manifested in a tell-tale tantrum about being unable to top up the pressure in my front tire. I groused until I noticed the valve-adapter of my handheld pump had loosened. A bit of tightening and everything was copacetic. The bike revved rather higher than usual in the cold, dry air of the driveway. I saw the tach flicker at 4000rpm at times! I geared up until Wow settled down in my full outfit. I wasn't going to make the same mistake as I did in May, when I headed for a ride in the mountains of Vermont without putting in the liner of my armoured jacket. No jeans either--at highway speeds, I wear my polyester overpants over jeans for what abrasion protection I can get. Next year I have to look into leather or proper cordura overpants, for sure. In went the earplugs before the helmet went on to avoid getting zonked from the wind noise at highway speeds. By the time gloves were on, boots tied, and goggles in place my scooter was at a warm idle.
For the first time, I used the major urban autoroutes to get out instead of surface streets and the Victoria Bridge. It made a considerable difference. Usually I have to crawl through suburban sprawl on the South Shore. Now I was hustling across the Champlain Bridge with the roar of the intake dimly heard over the wind. Faster, but less scenic than the Pont Victoria. I missed glancing to the side every so often for views of the St. Lawrence. Doing that on the Champlain Bridge at it's expressway speeds and traffic would have been suicide. I arched along the 10 and 35 down to Iberville where the 133 starts. 133 is the slower provincial route leading to I-89 in Vermont. It's not particularly scenic--mostly just flat farmland and the odd village. It was nice seeing certain familiar landmarks pass by, particularly the strip joint just outside of Iberville.... Erm, not that I've ever been inside. *ahem* I arched away from 133 on the 202, a side route paralleling the border. Just short of Dunham I turned onto 237, leading to the border control point south of Freilighsburgh. They were doing repaving on the section I was on. A considerable relief from Quebec's usual washboard pavement. Although for some reason the area south of Freiglighsburgs was the nastiest stretch on the route. Anti-invasion measures left over from 1812?
My kidneys were shake-rattled-and-rolled when I got to the border point. I had my passport out and helmet off to speed up the entire "are you an Al-Quaeda infiltrator?" interview. Getting to the bathroom became a priority! After *cough* emptying the coolant tank, I swerved onto Route 108 for the ride to the Notch. 108 goes straight south from the Canadian line, passing by Lake Carrimi and through the uplands of the Vermont mountains. This is dairy country--small villages, upland meadows and fields, herds of horses and cows munching on the last green grass of autumn. The roads wind about the valleys, meandering up rolling hills and dales under the clear blue sky. It's a gentle, swooping ride where you just keep the speedo at 50mph and get into the spirit of the road. There's no point in wicking up the engine. The curves aren't sharp enough to call for peg scraping, and there's just enough straights to allow for glances off to the side to drink in the beauty of the land. The idling through villages like Enosburg Falls lets you see the distinctive Federal style homes typical of Vermont small-town architecture.
Then I hit the Notch. One may notice a certain ominous tone to that phrasing. I consider myself decent in curves. I try to late-apex and hit my lines. I practise every so often on Rememberence Drive running over Mount Royal, which requires one to do some leaning. I was not at all prepared for Route 108 running through Smuggler's Notch. The Notch is a stretch running north from Stowe through a tight, twisting pass of looming granite cliffs. I saw said cliffs very briefly before my backside--to continue the cabin boy metaphor--clenched from 20 gauge to .410 in seconds. My confidence shrank very, very fast. The Notch has the hallmarks of a bike-eater. The road narrows to one lane with no centerline, woods on either side, steep cambers, and the road S-curves like a snake on crack. I tried remembering everything I knew about slow-look-lean-roll and the vanishing point. Didn't work. I kept the bike upright, but rolled onto the narrow shoulder in one curve. Later at a stop I saw a small scuff on the rear corner of the CVT casing where I'd grounded it out. By the end I'd been taught some serious lessons about over-confidence. Though, to my credit, I never dumped the bike.
The past week has not been pleasant. Work has been backed up, and on Wednesday I received an unpleasant telephone call from my mother. My missing cousin turned up...when her weirdo next-door neighbour confessed to killing her. Reading the words "dismemberment" about a family relation--even if she wasn't close--is always a shock. So I was feeling rather like a cabin boy's backside after a long voyage in the age of sail by the time Friday rolled around.
Luckily, the sunny weather held for one more day. I'd been planning a ride into Vermont for that Saturday anyway. With the bad news, I needed a serious distraction. Lovely scenery and avoiding become part of it sounded like a dandy cure for the blues. On the evenings after the phone call, I'd spread out my map of New England to trace a route through the back roads of Vermont. I decided to do a couple of roads I'd missed while passing through on trips last year. I'd heard about Route 108 through Smuggler's Notch and the Appalachian Gap on Route 17 between Irasville and Bristol. These have a reputation for being twisty indeed. They also lie in some of the prettiest countryside in New England. I traced a mix of expressway and backroads to get me down to the border in the quickest time I could.
Saturday morning dawned cold and sunny. I spent a little more time than usual prepping the bike. Usually I just check lights and tire pressure, given that my building's driveway is an incline. I rolled her into the garage onto level ground to check coolant and oil. My usual nervousness before any trip manifested in a tell-tale tantrum about being unable to top up the pressure in my front tire. I groused until I noticed the valve-adapter of my handheld pump had loosened. A bit of tightening and everything was copacetic. The bike revved rather higher than usual in the cold, dry air of the driveway. I saw the tach flicker at 4000rpm at times! I geared up until Wow settled down in my full outfit. I wasn't going to make the same mistake as I did in May, when I headed for a ride in the mountains of Vermont without putting in the liner of my armoured jacket. No jeans either--at highway speeds, I wear my polyester overpants over jeans for what abrasion protection I can get. Next year I have to look into leather or proper cordura overpants, for sure. In went the earplugs before the helmet went on to avoid getting zonked from the wind noise at highway speeds. By the time gloves were on, boots tied, and goggles in place my scooter was at a warm idle.
For the first time, I used the major urban autoroutes to get out instead of surface streets and the Victoria Bridge. It made a considerable difference. Usually I have to crawl through suburban sprawl on the South Shore. Now I was hustling across the Champlain Bridge with the roar of the intake dimly heard over the wind. Faster, but less scenic than the Pont Victoria. I missed glancing to the side every so often for views of the St. Lawrence. Doing that on the Champlain Bridge at it's expressway speeds and traffic would have been suicide. I arched along the 10 and 35 down to Iberville where the 133 starts. 133 is the slower provincial route leading to I-89 in Vermont. It's not particularly scenic--mostly just flat farmland and the odd village. It was nice seeing certain familiar landmarks pass by, particularly the strip joint just outside of Iberville.... Erm, not that I've ever been inside. *ahem* I arched away from 133 on the 202, a side route paralleling the border. Just short of Dunham I turned onto 237, leading to the border control point south of Freilighsburgh. They were doing repaving on the section I was on. A considerable relief from Quebec's usual washboard pavement. Although for some reason the area south of Freiglighsburgs was the nastiest stretch on the route. Anti-invasion measures left over from 1812?
My kidneys were shake-rattled-and-rolled when I got to the border point. I had my passport out and helmet off to speed up the entire "are you an Al-Quaeda infiltrator?" interview. Getting to the bathroom became a priority! After *cough* emptying the coolant tank, I swerved onto Route 108 for the ride to the Notch. 108 goes straight south from the Canadian line, passing by Lake Carrimi and through the uplands of the Vermont mountains. This is dairy country--small villages, upland meadows and fields, herds of horses and cows munching on the last green grass of autumn. The roads wind about the valleys, meandering up rolling hills and dales under the clear blue sky. It's a gentle, swooping ride where you just keep the speedo at 50mph and get into the spirit of the road. There's no point in wicking up the engine. The curves aren't sharp enough to call for peg scraping, and there's just enough straights to allow for glances off to the side to drink in the beauty of the land. The idling through villages like Enosburg Falls lets you see the distinctive Federal style homes typical of Vermont small-town architecture.
Then I hit the Notch. One may notice a certain ominous tone to that phrasing. I consider myself decent in curves. I try to late-apex and hit my lines. I practise every so often on Rememberence Drive running over Mount Royal, which requires one to do some leaning. I was not at all prepared for Route 108 running through Smuggler's Notch. The Notch is a stretch running north from Stowe through a tight, twisting pass of looming granite cliffs. I saw said cliffs very briefly before my backside--to continue the cabin boy metaphor--clenched from 20 gauge to .410 in seconds. My confidence shrank very, very fast. The Notch has the hallmarks of a bike-eater. The road narrows to one lane with no centerline, woods on either side, steep cambers, and the road S-curves like a snake on crack. I tried remembering everything I knew about slow-look-lean-roll and the vanishing point. Didn't work. I kept the bike upright, but rolled onto the narrow shoulder in one curve. Later at a stop I saw a small scuff on the rear corner of the CVT casing where I'd grounded it out. By the end I'd been taught some serious lessons about over-confidence. Though, to my credit, I never dumped the bike.