Old Man on a Bike

By Simon Gandolfi.
“Why would a reasonably sane man in his seventies ride the length of Hispanic America on a small motorcycle – a man who is overweight, suffered two minor heart attacks and has a bad back? Stupidity comes to mind…”.  Thus begins Old Man on a Bike, the story of Simon Gandolfi’s epic solo motorcycle trip from Mexico to the tip of South America. 
Gandolfi buys a small 125 cc Honda (a pizza delivery bike) in Veracruz Mexico, and sets out on his 6-month journey, crossing 13 countries and 22,000 kilometres. He has not ridden a motorcycle in a great many years. He is alone. He has a bad heart. But he has a goal – Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego.
Old Man on a Bike is first and foremost a travelogue; the motorcycle simply a means of transportation, a source of periodic humour, and a cause of crises of varying degrees. Gandolfi covers the trip on a day-by-day basis, recounting his experiences as a series of vignettes as he discovers new towns and villages, meets new people of many cultures and stations in life (he speaks fluent Spanish which makes this easier than it would be otherwise), and deals with all the trials and tribulations of a long road trip – including breaking his false teeth on more than one occasion and running out of heart medication.
While the diary format is appropriate, I found Gandolfi’s writing style to be such that I got the sense I was experiencing the trip whilst looking through a soda straw – getting but a very narrow perspective frequently lacking in context. Nonetheless, his ability to engage with the local populace did provide some of the more interesting parts of the book as well as giving the reader a basic understanding of the people and the environments in which they live, and through which he travelled.
Gandolfi makes no secret of his politics or his views on current world events such as the Iraq war and at times it seemed Gandolfi was using the book as his personal soapbox. Whether one agrees with his views or not, I just found the injection of politics to be an unnecessary irritant that contributed nothing to the story of his travels. It is a minor flaw to be sure, but still it bothered me enough to warrant a comment in this review.
So bottom line? I would offer a qualified recommendation for this book. Is it a requisite item for inclusion in any motorcycling library? Not really. But as the story of one man’s voyage, it’s an interesting read and one can’t but admire Gandolfi’s courage for undertaking such a trip at his stage in life.

It wasn’t Teddy

A few years back a friend and I were riding out west and took the Northern Ontario route, following the Trans Canada Highway north of Superior. It was 1200 miles of trees, rocks, hills, curves, trees, more rocks, and logging trucks crossing the centre line on blind corners and when cresting hills. Like the airline pilots say, it was hours and hours of boredom punctuated by moments of sheer terror, so we were doing long days to get it behind us as quickly as possible.

On the third day of the trip we were looking for a campground up near Kenora, close to the Manitoba border. After stopping at several that were full, we finally found one with a vacancy. It was long since dark, and we were exhausted after 12 hours in the saddle, so all we wanted was a place to pitch our tents and sleep. The fact it looked kind of run-down and didn’t have a pool or any other amenities? No problem.

We paid our $25 to the guy at the office and got a map and directions to the site. We rode over, pitched our tiny pup tents by the light of our headlamps, and within minutes were sawing logs, dead to the world.

At least until the crack of dawn when we were jolted awake by a huge ruckus – banging and crashing and growling - seemingly right outside the tents. I was out of my sleeping bag and the tent before I was even awake, nearly colliding with Frank, who likewise had bolted. What the….? In the pinkish pre-dawn light we could just make out the source of the commotion – a large steel drum located right beside our campsite. With a huge sign on the side that said, “DANGER - Bear Trap. Do not approach!”. And with a very large black bear inside letting us know just how pissed off he was.

That’s also when we noticed that all the other campsites in the neighbourhood were vacant – except for ours!

At any rate, since buddy sure wasn’t going to let us get any more sleep, we figured we might as well pack up and hit the road early and get breakfast in the next town, by which time the shops and restaurants should be open. We rolled up the bags and tents, tied everything back onto the bikes, and headed out.

As we left we stopped at the office and told the attendant (a different  guy) about the bear. When he asked how we knew, we told him we were camped right beside it.

“You were what?” he said, “That section was supposed to be closed until we caught that bear. Who told you to camp there?”

“The guy last night. Gave us the site number and directions, so that’s where we went. We didn’t see the trap until this morning when Winnie the Pooh decided to check it out.'”

He started to laugh. “That son-of-a-bitch”, he said. “When I came on at midnight last night he said he’d baited the trap. Now I know what he meant.”

Look Ma, no hands!

This is hilarious. Stupid, but hilarious.
This rider (in India?) is in heavy traffic, laid back, texting on his phone. Almost as good are the comments of the guys in the car taking the video, and the behaviour of other drivers changing lanes with all of 6 inches to spare. That alone would ensure I’d have an iron grip on those bars and my knees would be pressing dents into the sides of the tank. But not this guy.
Requisite disclaimer: Do not try this at home, unsupervised.

A new riding year has begun!

Unlike some lucky souls, this year’s inaugural ride did not include cherry blossoms and azaleas. It was 100 miles of snow in the ditches, bare trees, the smell of manure on freshly tilled fields, and eyes tearing from the cold (should have worn the full-face).
With the sun shining in a clear blue sky, it was just too nice a day to take the cage into the city to pick up the few bits and pieces I needed from the dealer. So on went a few extra layers of fleece, the lined gloves were found in the bottom of the toolbox, the windshield was snapped on, and we headed down the road. All was right with the world. Until the return trip. I had forgotten how the temperatures plummet with the setting sun at this time of year. And how much colder riding into the wind is than riding with it. (You know you’re getting old when you have to be retrained on the basics after a 5-month layoff.)
But that’s just noise. In an hour or so, when I’m back to normal body temperature, I know I will have enjoyed it.

Two wheels of a different kind

One of my brothers lives about 3000 miles away, so we don’t get to see each other very often, but when we do we have some great times and some great stories to tell afterwards. This is one such story. It is, strictly speaking, a tale of two wheels; it’s just that the two wheels are the rollers on a belt sander rather than the wheels of a motorcycle.
The last time I visited, and after the requisite couple of beers to catch up, we ended up out in the garage (where else?). When I’d last been there it was little more than a shed that you could fit a car into, but since then he’d insulated, finished the inside, put in cabinets, lots of shelving, good lighting and so on including putting in a brand new garage door – which now displayed three large dents, in a roughly triangular shape, about 2 feet off the floor. Naturally I asked what happened.
“Well let me tell you about that, but first have another beer.” he said. “You ever listen to the CBC?”
“Of course.”
“Well one day they had on this program where this guy was talking about belt sander racing. I didn’t catch all of it ‘cause I was working on the truck at the time, but these guys would race belt sanders for fun.”
I’d heard of belt sander racing, but couldn’t quite figure where this was going.
“So I was out here one day and came across that 4-inch sander over there” he said. “Well it works pretty good, so I thought I’d give it a try. I cleared a path from here to the door, put on a course sanding belt,  duct-taped the trigger closed, sat on it, and plugged ‘er in.”
“You sat on it? You’re not supposed to ride the thing!”
“Yeah, so I found out. Keerist, did it ever take off! Damn good thing the cord was only 6 feet long because even after it pulled out of the wall I was still going like hell when I hit the garage door.”
Now I’m laughing. Hard. Beer coming out the nose hard.
“Yup. Those two lower dents are my knees. The top one is my forehead. And an $800 door too.
“Didn’t try that again.”