Tuesday, June 4, 2013

This episode of the tour is called The Fellowship of the Road for a reason. It was my first time touring on the bike with someone else, and after a week I’ve come to appreciate the differences.

Riding with someone is a different experience- not better, not worse, just different. Well, not everything is different…you still get to enjoy the roads, you still get to see the scenery, and you still have a great time. What you don’t get as much of is your own bad habits.

For example, one of my bad habits is constantly stopping…to stretch the legs, to take pictures, to stare at the scenery…whatever. When you’re with someone you don’t stop as much because then you will lose each other…or the other person will have to constantly be waiting for you, which is annoying for that person. The benefit of this, of course, is that you make better time. Anyone who has had to wait for me on any of my bike tours can attest to the fact that I am always late…often by several hours.

There are benefits to traveling with someone else. I would never have been able to give Silver the MacGyver air cleaner fix without Greg there. There was a lot of night travel…should something ever have happened it was far better to have another person there than to be in the dark alone. You also have someone else there to take pictures OF you, although over the years I’ve gotten pretty good with my stop timer.

The last day was a long one. We were up and packed by 8am, and after a quick breakfast at McDonald’s we were racing up and over the Kicking Horse Pass. The sun was just high enough that it shone on the west-facing peaks of the Rocky Mountains. I had to stop for a few pictures. Stunning scenery…but cold. The Bow Lake was still frozen over. I knew I would have to come back here very soon to see its aqua blue colour after it melted.

We went north at Lake Louise to Saskatchewan River Crossing where we fuelled up. We did this so that we could take the David Thompson highway east and then we headed north to Drayton Valley from there. It was about 3 in the afternoon at this point and we stopped to visit a friend for about a half hour before heading further east. Surprisingly, I was not experiencing any of the Fades and by the time we reached Nisku we were ready for some dinner at a taco joint.

We were tired of the two-lane highways and wanted to let the bikes roar a bit so we elected to head north from Nisku, took the Henday Freeway around Edmonton and were back on the Yellowhead toward Saskatchewan. The evening was a perfect temperature and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It was about 8:30 when we reachedLloydminster and we stopped for a few minutes to see if we could locate thechrome air cleaner cover that fell off 6 days ago. No luck.

The last leg of any tour is the longest. The anticipation of getting home…of seeing people that you missed…of getting a good, long sleep in your own bed…it’s almost too much and you seem to be inching your way along the highway.

It was nearly 10pm and the sun was just setting as we rolled into Battleford. We crossed the bridge over the North Saskatchewan River….the same river we straddled twelve hours ago on the David Thompson Highway…and as we rolled uptoward North Battleford we were riding side by side. We looked over at each other, gave each other the “thumbs up”, and then went our separate ways to our own homes.

With that, the Fellowship of the Road was over. Waiting for me at home was my girlfriend Heather and my little dog Penny. As great as the trip was, I was very glad to see them both.