Motocross Stories

New places, new faces - no turning back!

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...

Raising the Bar with Ian Coristine

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 wor...

The Thistle Off-Road Festival

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...

Radio Interview for Rally for Rangers

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.

Click here to listen

Horsepower and Medicine

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...

Patagonia Day 9 - The final destination

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...

Patagonia Day 8 -Two amazing places

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.

The track for the day. I didn't started recording until we were in the park. If you

Patagonia Day 7 - Torres del Paine

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...

Patagonia Day 6 - Puerto Natales

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 b...

Patagonia day 5 - Punta Arenas

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 woul...

Patagonia day 4 - Leaving Ushuaia and riding for 17 hours.

After a well deserved rest in Ushuaia, we were told by Moto Discovery that our biggest riding day would be today. Today meaning December 7th as I am now writing these stories from memory so please accept that some facts may be wrong, if you were there, please offer your own memories in the comments...

Patagonia - A day in Ushuaia

Getting to Ushuaia was a grueling day but perhaps partially due to the struggle, it was incredibly rewarding. When the glow of the setting sun lit up the enormous cliffs along the roadside, it really set the scene for what an amazing place this is. Prior to arrival, we were polled about our desi...

Patagonia day 2 on bikes - the roads to Ushuaia

Yesterday was an epic ride filled with unexpected adventure. We woke up in Russfin which resembled a logging camp from Northern Ontario except in nice condition. There is a sawmill there, the lodge where we stayed and not much else. There was a single dirt road going in and no place to buy fuel, bu...

Patagonia - day 1 on bikes

The first day of the rally started with a minor delay. Wesley found out, just as we were swinging our legs over the bikes, that his missing luggage had been finally delivered to the Rio Gallagos Airport. It didn't take too long, enough time for another coffee at the Hotel Santa Cruz. I started the...

Patagonia Day 1 - a meetup in Buenos Aires

An 10 hour red-eye flight put me in Buenos Aires at 11AM. I did get to sleep on the plane, but not very well. Took a cab to my BnB and Uber to meet up with fellow Rally participants. We met at a very nice restaurant in a large market area and on the menu was beef. When I walked in I was greeted by...