Random Thoughts on a Spectacular Ride

Rode from Blaine, WA to Blaine, WA yesterday. About 400 miles round trip. Went with my cousin, the Mad Russian. (Hey, what can I say? If you know the family you know who he is, if you don't it doesn't really matter what I call him in the blog.)

Beautiful ride through Mission, Hope, Lillooet, Pemberton, Whistler, and home. Some thoughts I had as I rode around.

• Zero Ave has a lot of speedbumps. One every kilometer or so. Don't remember that so it must be fairly new. No longer a good way to get from Douglas to Abbotsford.
• Spuzzum is an awesome town name. Not sure I'd want to live under it, though.
• The Trans Canada Highway often resembles a back country road. Amazing that it is the major highway across the second largest country in the world.
• Middle of nowhere and all of a sudden there's a guy pushing one of those carts that you sell ice cream from. Yeah, one of those. You know exactly what I'm talking about. This guy had to be five miles from anywhere in all directions. What the...?
• The road from Yale to Boston Bar is, in fact, one of the nicest motorcycle roads I have ever ridden. Beautiful scenery, sweeping curves, well engineered roads. If I did this ride again, it might be fun to make it a two day ride and stop to ride the Hell's Gate Airtram.
• Apparently the "Canadian Minister in Charge of Making Sure People Get Where They Want to Be" doesn't think people should go to Lillooet. The sign for the Lillooet turnoff is actually combined with the sign to exit at Lytton and it's about the size of a First Class Postage Stamp. "Exit here for Lytton" it proudly exclaims, followed by a tiny little "and Lillooet". Of course if you aren't going to Lytton, you probably stopped reading by the time that part came up. We went flying by. Fortunately I read ridiculously quickly and was able to save the day. Otherwise we might be in Saskatoon right now, wondering what happened.
• Speaking of the highway to Lillooet, should there be minimum road requirements before you are allowed to call something a "highway"? Perhaps "small unmaintained road 12" would be a better designation. Holy cow. Destination Highways: BC rates this as "best motorcycle roads in BC number 40". Beautiful ride but as you bounce through the potholes, swerve to avoid small avalanches, "watch for livestock", etc, you have to wonder what they were thinking. At first I thought maybe it just hadn't been repaved in a while and needed to be downgraded to the "Not the best roads in BC" list, but the MR tells me that 14 years ago, when he was working as a lumberjack or something way up north, it was exactly this bad. Well, they saw something they liked.
• If I were Larry Nelson, the General Manager of Interior Roads, Ltd I don't know that I would put up a sign on the worst stretch of the worst road announcing that my company was in charge of road maintenance. Probably not their fault. They probably get paid minimal amounts of money by the provincial government to do cursory maintenance on thousands of miles of back country roads. OTOH maybe they get paid buckets of taxpayer dollars and do very little to earn it. Hard to say, really.
  
  According to the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure, "In British Columbia, highway maintenance and repairs are provided by local highway maintenance companies contracted by the Ministry of Transportation and Infrastructure. They monitor our highways and bridges for problems that could cause a hazard to the driving public such as debris, dead animals, fallen trees, defective signs, bridge damage, potholes, flooding, washouts, mudslides, avalanches, snow and ice."
  
  Given the big pile of avalanche rocks on the road one has to wonder when the monitoring happens. Of course the mission statement doesn't actually say they'll do anything about it, just monitor. Oh well.
• Speaking of Lillooet, if I were visiting I would avoid the restaurant in Reynold's Hotel. The main reason it is still in business might well be that when you get to it there is no indication that there is anything else in the town. My Swiss Turkey Melt consisted of REALLY dry bread, REALLY dry turkey, a skoshe of whitish cheese, beautifully fried to make it look yummy. Served with OK fries and weirdly flavored tartar sauce (actually I requested the tartar sauce to go with the fries, an eccentricity of mine). After we were done eating, we sat for a while wondering if a check might be forthcoming. When it never was, we proceeded to the counter and paid for our lunch. Turns out Lillooet has lots of businesses, you just have to go a little further up the road and around the corner.
  
  PS Their motto, proudly displayed on signs at the entrance and exit to town is "Guaranteed Rugged". Thought that was sort of weird and apparently so do the town fathers, because the slogan doesn't seem to appear on their website.
• To the two riders who parallel parked their motorcycles in front of the Reynold's, if you are reading this "PARK YOUR MOTORCYCLES PERPENDICULAR". Where on earth did you learn to ride? Really? No one ever mentioned this?
• Highway 99 between Lillooet and Pemberton has an astounding number of one-lane, wooden bridges. They probably are safety hazards and due to be replaced but they sure are attractive. It will be a crying shame when they are all eventually replaced with cookie cutter concrete slabs that require a sign just to let you know that you are crossing a creek.
• I guess I am used to Hwy 99 being the giant people mover that runs from the USA border to Vancouver. Sort of odd cruising this scenic back road with one lane wooden bridges
• Whistler was crowded and unrecognizable. Given that I have skied more at Whistler than at any single other ski area, it was sort of depressing to have no idea where anything was or even, for that matter, to recognize landmarks on the highway. They have completely rebuilt the whole highway since I moved away and it is now a giant multi-lane freeway. Plus the sun was in my eyes the whole way so I couldn't really see anything.
• PS on the Whistler highway, it is supposed to be a nice motorcycle road, and it is from a purely technical standpoint, plus the scenery, but the fact that it is now a giant four lane highway makes it less interesting. Basically I felt like I was dragging down an Interstate Highway somewhere. Plus the sun was in my eyes the whole way so I couldn't really see anything.
• The Mad Russian doesn't slow down at all through towns.

All in all a great day, followed by another near-400 mile ride the next day, made for a great last weekend before I have to show up at school.