Look at the date of the last journal entry... February 2020! In a month, it will be four years! How did that happen? Has nothing interesting happened in my life since 2020? The last thing I wrote was my personal elegy to my friend Ian who caught a nasty case of cancer and died shortly after. Have we been without Ian for four years already? I can answer that last question with one word.... Yes. Sadly, we have. As for these other generic questions, I will need to elaborate.
It seems all my contemporary stories require a trip back in time. This time, I am dialing the clock way back. It is often lamented by those who've known me from the beginning, that I like to tinker. Everything I've owned and probably half the gadgets my family's owned have been taken apart, inspected and reassembled. Sometimes with modifications, for better or, for worse. But, I was number five of five in my family and as many can attest, I had plenty to observe. From my Dad too, he could do nearly anything; carpenter, electrician, plumber, handyman, mechanic, electronics repair, accounting, singing, poetry, the list goes on and on. So I helped out (got in the way) and observed and learned some trades at a very young age. My two-wheel obsession would make me handy among my friends as I would fix their bicycles, and later, motorcycles, snowmobiles, and even cars.
"We drove Michael to Sault Ste. Marie and he beat us home".
When I reached college age and I had to decide what to do with my life, all I knew for sure is I did NOT want to be a mechanic. Been there, done that, have the scars to prove it. Time to move on. I decided that because I love the outdoors, I might like to be a conservation officer. I signed up for a forestry course at Sault College but I changed my mind before even going. I liked the idea of conservation, but not the "officer" part. I went to college anyhow and switched programs. I went from forestry to computers. Did I mention I was lazy academically? I took easy courses in high-school and lacked the math credentials to make it in the computer program, so I dropped out by thanksgiving and went home. My dad's rant regarding my short stint at Sault College was something to the effect of "We drove Michael to Sault Ste. Marie and he beat us home". Mechanic was starting to look pretty good.
I was an 18-year-old college drop-out living at home and working at the family business. During that winter, a guy named Dave Dusome stopped in for coffee. He worked for OMC and was looking for a place near Atikokan to set up an Evinrude dealership and he figured Quetico North was just the place so, he signed us up. I went to Waukegan Illinois and took a two-week course. I learned everything I needed to know...
]]>It seems like a lifetime ago, and I suppose it was. I started working for Ed Huck Marine in 1990, one year after their centennial celebration. Ed Huck Marine is a marina located in Rockport Ontario in the heart of the Thousand Islands and I was hired on as their SeaDoo mechanic. I enjoyed working there despite the poor wages and seasonal layoffs that Marine Mechanics endured back then. One day in the early fall of one of those years, a small squadron of ultralight aircraft stopped at the gas dock for fuel. That day was memorable for me because its not every day a bunch of airplanes stop by for gas. But this day was also the day that changed the life of my friend Ian Coristine.
Ian was a stranger to me that day as he was the pilot of one of those planes. I went out to the dock and talked with them for couple minutes and soon after, they taxied toward the channel and flew away. I barely gave it another thought until a few years later when I had changed careers and was now self-employed in the Internet business. I had been developing websites for a few years by this point and Ed Huck Marine was my first client. My brothers and I also became Internet Service Providers in our home town of Atikokan and my portfolio of skills grew to include many different Internet technologies. It was around this time that I got a call from Ian Coristine.
Ian needed Internet service on his island and Scott MacCrimmon from Ed Huck Marine gave him my name. This was prior to the days when fixed wireless Internet was deployed to reach the hard-to-reach. I purchased a Hughes Satellite dish and a subscription and headed to Brockville to meet up with Ian to do the install. Ian picked me up on the shore with his little 14' boat, we loaded it up and made the short trip to what he liked to call paradise.
Ian and I spent the day together struggling to get that primitive two-way satellite dish online. We drilled some holes into the bedrock beside the cottage giving it a rock-solid foundation and proceeded to be baffled by the lack of signal. In Canada, the Hughes dishes are pointed low on the horizon and we had a perfect unobstructed view of the westward sky above the beautiful St. Lawrence River. In an act of desperation, Ian climbed up on a tree with a handsaw and pruned some branches that did not appear to be in our line-of-sight and low and behold, the signal lights finally lit up. It was a frustrating day at least from a technology perspective, but it was a great day in every other measurable way.
Ian told me of his love affair with the Thousand Islands, about how he had discovered it by chance when he...
]]>A couple of years ago, while researching what local race I could attent with my vintage RM 250, I discovered the Ormstown Vintage Off-Road Festival. While I had planned to attend, the universe had other ideas for me and I had to pass on it. I was okay with my decision because there will always be next year. Unfortunately the VORF was cancelled in 2018 due to NIMBY neighbours.
I made an attempt to get something going here in Ottawa at SandDelLee for 2018. The fine folks at MX101 were happy to host, but I could not drum up the interest necessary to draw an adequate crowd. I learned that what made Ormstown work was that it was a multi-day event that offered riders many opportunities to ride. Traveling a long distance just to run a couple motos was not something that interested a lot of folks so I mothballed the idea.
Enter John Lake. John also saw a need for an Ormstown replacement and armed with more time to organize, he got "The Thistle" going. Just like Ormstown, this will be a multi-day event with Motocross, Trials, and Enduro riding. If you like vintage motocross, this is an event not to be missed. I volunteered my time to build a website and set up a registration form. I have also been helping with the promotion of the event and some with technical support.
I was interviewed on CBC Radio on December 22 by Giacomo Panico for "All in a Day", the local weekly current events program. This was essentially a de-brief coversation following the Patagonia Rally for Rangers ride.
]]>When I turned 40, I finally put some effort into learning to play guitar. A year or two later I sold my Yamaha motorcycle and bought a Yamaha Guitar. I didn't stop riding dirt-bikes, I just reduced my seat-time. I did manage to learn to play guitar well enough to have fun around a campfire and it also led me to discover the ukulele. What I like most about the ukulele is that it opened up new social channels for me and I made some great new friends who like to play instruments and sing songs.
At the Bytown Ukulele Group, one of my favourite things is the open-mic. I frequently go up and sing a song in this safe and non-judgmental environment and I especially like to watch the others that also have the inclination to perform. That is where I first met Charles de Lint. He played a song called "the Lonesome Death of Ukulele Ike". On the way out that night I commended him on his perfect rendition and that has led to a lasting friendship that goes beyond just music. Charles and his wife MaryAnn have become some of our favourite people. They are creative, talented, wise, compassionate and generous people and I am lucky to call them friends.
When I mentioned to Charles and MaryAnn about my fundraising effort to raise money for Rally for Rangers, they donated generously, right away. Charles had just finished releasing his long awaited novel "The Wind in his Heart" and talk of my motorcycle adventures, past and yet to come, spawned an idea which resulted in a new story that was in the same setting as the Wind in his Heart.
Yirah Green has been working in a hidden arroyo on the Kikimi rez, secretly rebuilding an old dirt bike that belonged to her late Uncle Jimmy. Her best friend, Santana Corn Eyes, knows about the project, as does a ghost who visits her, silently urging her on. Yirah says the spirit is that of her departed uncle, but Santana is worried. Why would a ghost be crossing over to this world? Maybe it's not such a good idea to get a a dead man's motorbike running again. And if Yirah does succeed, will she be patient enough to learn how to safely handle it? Set in the Painted Hills near Santo del Vado Viejo, this original short story is loosely connected to de Lint's acclaimed novel, The Wind in His Heart. "One of the most original fantasy writers currently working."—Booklist "Charles de Lint is the modern master of urban fantasy. Folktale, myth, fairy tale, dreams, urban legend—all of it adds up to pure magic in de Lint's vivid, original world. No one does it better."—Alice Hoffman...
]]>Our final day on motorcycles. We rode from El Calafate to Los Glaciares National Park and gave the motorcycles away at a ceremony beside the Perito Moreno glacier. The day started with nobody in a hurry, except for Jeff, our mechanic. Jeff had 13 motorcycles that had taken 10 days of hard riding and had to return them to showroom shape in just a few hours. A bunch of us pitched in and helped where we could. We drove the bikes up to the carwash five-at-a-time and got all the Patagonia dirt off of them with a time to spare.
I only went on one bike-wash trip and then I devoted a few minutes to music. I brought with me on this trip a small travel ukulele. The body of it is about the dimensions of a 10" 2x4 and it has a concert ukulele-sized fretboard. I had taken it out a few times and played it and as bad as I am, I was still the only one there playing songs. During the long boring stretches of paved road, I kept my mind occupied by writing a song. The premise of the song was to take fictional characters and put them into the setting that we all shared in the Patagonia Rally for Rangers ride. I would ride for a while, make up a verse and when we stopped, I would write it out. I ended up with about 5 versus and managed to trim it down to three with a bridge to tie them together. My goal was to sing the song for my closing interview with the media crew and time was running out. This was the last day and all I had was a few short verses and tune in my head- I still had to figure out the chords and key. I went up to our room and wrote the song out onto paper and started putting in the chords as best as I could figure out in the short time I had to prepare. Once I felt the chords were close enough, I went and sang the song in front of the camera. My first crack at singing the song out loud was recorded. I even racked-up my harmonica and played that too. I messed up a little bit, but with all things considered, I pulled it off. Dylan and Aha were very encouraging, they liked it and I felt relieved to have completed my goal of writing and singing an original song from the roads of Patagonia. The photo at the top of the page is of me singing the song later in the day. Thanks to Phil Bond for the great photo.
Day 8 riding and it was another long day on the bike but the scenery was beyond my expectations. Nine days in Patagonia and you might think you had seen the best there is by now, but the best was yet to come.
For me, it was another long day as I agreed to head out early with the media crew. I was up at 5:30 AM, four of us were to head out early, but only Tom and I heard our alarm clocks that morning. It made for an easy time with the media crew with only two bikes to shoot. We headed back into Torres del Paine Park, the same place we were at the day before. Two things were quite different on this morning though, one was the temperature, the other was the view. It was quite cold that morning, there was a lot of new snow visible in the mountains and the temperature had to have been around 0 C. The view on the other hand was spectacular. The clouds that hid the scenery from view the previous day were chased away and we were left with blue sky and white wispy clouds.
Tom and I took our time with the video crew and it was nice having a little extra time to soak in all that we were seeing.
Our arrival into Puerto Natales came at a reasonable time considering the distance we had travelled and when compared to a couple of the previous days-with-struggles. Our hotel was on a gulf shoreline that looked more like a lake than the ocean. After we had dinner and then gathered in the hotel's lounge we bided our time reminiscing the day's events. Hamilton put some effort into recruiting people for a morning swim in the ocean. Surprisingly, there were several takers, myself included but come morning my enthusiasm lapsed. I am okay with my choice though, I have done quite a bit of cold-water swimming including a dip in the river on Christmas Eve two years ago. Hamilton is pretty serious about his polar-dips. These are not an in-and-out affair, he spends some serious time in the water and is a fountain of knowledge on the subject. Many people seem to believe that hyperthermia will set in in about 90 seconds or so, but reality is a much larger number and Hamilton clearly demonstrated that fact.
For our adventure on this day, we were doing a day-trip to Torres del Paine National Park. This is a large park, about 181,000 hectares. For my friends familiar with Quetico Park (near where I grew up), Torres del Paine is about 1/3 the size, which makes it pretty darn big. The scenery is dramatic, with the large rugged mountains with the famous horns, the glaciers and glacier lakes.
Last December I got an email from my friend Dave O'Malley who found the website for Rally for Rangers and thought I would be a good candidate for the rally. I applied to be a rider and when I was accepted, Dave was the first person I told. He was more exited than I was and he immediately set to work making graphics that I used to help with my fundraising efforts. Dave is graphic designer who has been producing top quality creative services for decades with his company Aero Graphics. Dave was also first to donate money and also relentlessly nagged his friends to donate too. Without Dave, I would not have made this trip....
]]>Another long day with disappearing roads, shipwrecks, guanacos, a broken truck and back tracking. I have to hand it to our guide Roberto, he did his best to get us off the paved roads, but this part of the world is vast and relatively uninhabited. You can drive down a main highway, such as Route-9 between two cities and seldom experience oncoming traffic. When on the secondary roads, which are not paved, one can certainly feel alone in the world and unexpected things can happen.
The day's destination was the beautiful Puerto Natales, Chile, gateway to the world-famous Torres del Paine. It is about 250KM from Punta Arenas to Puerto Natales. We could easily make it there in 5 hours with a couple breaks and a fuel stop, but it would be just more pavement and wind. Instead we would travel East on Route 255 to La Estancia San Gregorio and then take dirt roads back to the northwest to our hotel in Puerto Natales.
The guanacos are kind of like our deer here in Canada but much bigger and more plentiful. We were warned on day-one that these guys can dart in front of you at any time. Over the 9-days on the road, I had several very close calls with them. They are very shy, they don't like our presence at all and they scatter away when they hear us coming. One day, a young guanaco ran across the road in front of me and jumped the fence. The poor guy didn't make it and crashed down on the ground. He immediately picked himself up and began to run along side the fence looking for a place to get over. I was riding right beside him on my motorcycle and clocked his speed at a very impressive 65 Km/h.
While travelling down the dirt road,...
]]>The previous day proved to be long and challenging especially for riders not used to riding on wet, round, marble-like gravel in the dark - so almost everyone. We had a late-night meal at our hotel in Cerro Sombrero and went to sleep. In the morning I found that this was to be an easy day, we would travel to a sea-port and take a ferry to Punta Arenas. One of the Moto Discovery guys mentioned another border crossing but said "just kidding" before he was lambasted with sighs and groans. Our fearless guide Roberto had a very challenging ride in the rain the previous night after being turned back by the Chilean customs to have a small piece of paper rubber-stamped. Where we took the gravel roads, Roberto stayed on the pavement with the wise thought that at least he would be able to see the yellow line on the wet dark roads. A few hours sleep is all that was required for all to recharge and we set out in the morning.
I have to admit, I was pretty tired of having my ass strapped to the seat of this little bike and I was happy to know that 120KM was all we had to endure on this day. I also have to admit that I was in a bad mood and was really just thinking about how I would rather be at home. I think these feelings are normal for anyone and they did pass before too long. The bike ride, while only 2 hours long from Cerro Sombrero to Provenir on the Strait of Magellan seemed much longer than it was, but it was pretty in a typical Patagonia way.