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A little story
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June 26, 2008 at 2:32 am #1604MattParticipant
I decided to celebrate St Jean Baptist day (the “national” birthday of Quebec) by taking a ride up north into rural Quebec with my camera. What better way to use a day off work than to tour around taking photos of whatever comes my way.
My planned route looked like this:
Leave Ottawa on Hwy 5 North until it merges with the 105.
http://maps.yahoo.com/#mvt=m&lat=45.569884&lon=-75.798152&zoom=12
I often take this road to go skiing at Mont-St-Marie. It is a gorgeous road in the winter, and I was curious to see it in the summer. I’d follow the road 40km farther North than I’ve ever taken it to a town called Gracefield.
http://maps.yahoo.com/#mvt=m&lat=46.062782&lon=-75.833933&zoom=12
From there I’d get off the highway and take a municipal road (happily called “Point-of-Comfort”) for another 50km to Notre-Dame-du-Laus and the 309, follow it south to Val-des-bois and turn onto the 307.
http://maps.yahoo.com/#mvt=m&lat=45.893027&lon=-75.619013&zoom=14
Take the 307 south back into town. I often take the 307 North from Ottawa to go skiing at Mont Cascade. So this had a sense of symmetry that appeals to me. Go up one road to past a ski hill, come back down a road past another ski hill. Great plan.Now, I should point out, I have rotten luck with planning trips. When I look at a map, the roads that grab my attention the most are the squiggly municipal roads. This has bitten me twice now. You see, Google maps doesn’t tell you what is paved and what isn’t. And chances are, if it looks good on a map, it isn’t paved.
But I got smart this time. I used Google’s aerial images to make sure my chosen municipal road was paved!I left just about 11am. It was mostly overcast, cold, and windy. After only half an hour I stopped at a small chip stand and got a burger to warm up and keep my energy up (I get negative when I’m hungry, and since the only company I had to cheer me up was inside my helmet, I figured being well fed was a good plan). Once I got back on the road, the sun was starting to come out in spots and it was starting to warm up.
I took one nice stop to take some photos from a bridge, and then another when I reached Gracefield to photograph a lovely little church.
And then I turned onto Chem Point-du-Comfort (“Point of Comfort Road”). The road was marked as an 80km/h road…
Another aside:
Quebec drivers are notorious for blowing through stop signs and red lights (I see it weekly on my commute to work), never using their turn signals (“never use your turn signal, it gives away your intentions! Always keep the enemy guessing”), and speeding on scale that I’m pretty sure can be linked to the entire province believing they are first cousins to someone named Villeneuve…
The problem, I am learning, is that these stereotypes also extend to the road planners.
In Ontario, they figure out what two places a road needs to connect, what class of road they want (traffic capacity, speed limit, all those good things), and then they go about blasting and laying the road. The end product is a road that I can drive at 10km/h above the posted limit 99 times out of a 100. When there is a slow turn, it is carefully marked, with a “safe speed” that again, I am perfectly content at 10km/h above.
In Quebec, they figure out what two places they want to connect, start blasting, and then lay the road in the path that is cleared. To figure out the speed limit they take the bravest guy on the construction crew, throw him in the most beat pick-up they’ve got, toss him a two-four of cheap beer, and whatever speed he can take the corner without spilling his beer, that’s the posted limit.
Some of those good ol’ boys can hold their beer really steady.
As a general rule I’m most comfortable taking Quebec roads at 10km/h under the posted limit. Now, I’ll admit, I still can’t get past the mental block of really leaning the bike over. But when the corners have frost heaves bigger than speed bumps, sand and gravel spilled across them, and zero run off… I like the idea of living long enough to growing old…Now, back to point-du-comfort. Point-du-comfort is a municipal road. That means it does not have to meet all the rules and regulations that apply to highways. First off, it isn’t nearly as maintained. The surface was rough, scored, undulated, often sandy or covered in gravel. Which means that taking the above into consideration I was doing a mighty 60km/h in the 80 zone. Secondly, municipal roads do not need warning signs listing the safe speed a corner can be taken at, they simply have a sign telling you what way you need to turn. I discovered this when I came upon a very bumpy and dirty tight left hander. In theory it was an 80 corner (no sign told me otherwise). In reality I went into it at 50. And I still ended up a hairs breadth from spreading my motorbike across a farmer’s field. I just managed to keep the bike on the pavement long enough to hit the 1 foot wide sand shoulder on the straight then ride the back brake to a sandy stop; where I proceeded to pull my heart out of my throat. Good morning, this is your wake up call.
I continued on my leisurely way for a few more kilometers until the pavement ended.
Lesson of the day: Pavement and grey gravel roads look the same on Google Maps.
I figured, well, it can only be a few kilometers, I’ll take it nice and easy.
And nice and easy I did. I’d slither and slide along at 30km/h on the flats, give it lots of juice to keep it hooked up on the climbs (feathering the clutch to keep it from slipping out) at a mighty 25km/h and I’d ride the many downhills with the clutch in, the back break on, and the front brake light as light can be, going down at roughly 10…
I believe they call this “Character building”.
After half an hour I saw a small sign informing me I was now in Notre-dame-du-laus. Good news I was almost through! I then came upon the greatest joke in all of Quebec. A speed limit sign, saying 50km/h. I hadn’t done anything more than 30 in half an hour!
Shortly thereafter I passed a cottage being built. This really hit me just how out of the way I was. I was genuinely shocked to see hydro/telephone poles going to this cottage. I hadn’t see a telephone pole in over half an hour!
By this point I was into a really solid rhythm, and didn’t stop to take photos. Which is a shame, because I really wish I’d taken a photo of the 6-foot tall inukshuk giving the finger to the world (made from 500 pound boulders blasted from the roadside). Or the 200 meter long wood surface bridge that was so narrow I can’t believe construction equipment could actually cross it. Which I know they did, since a dump truck trundled past me in the other directing shortly after crossing the bridge.In the end it took me over an hour to reach pavement again. More than 30 kilometers ( I keep saying 40, but I didn’t look at my odometer before hitting the gravel, so I’m not really sure) of slow gentle gravel, dirt, sand, and mud. All done on my little ZZR-250 sport touring bike…
At some point in my gravel riding groove, I remembered something my Dad had teased me about the previous week. He’d half-jokingly said that I’m no sport bike rider (given that I like staying close to the posted limits). My response was that I’ll happily be a cruiser driver when I’m older, but for now I like my sporting bikes just fine.
Except of course he’s right. I’m not a sport bike rider. Even once I get past my mental block that stops me from really leaning the bike over, I still doubt I’ll feel the need for excessive speed. And more importantly, I’m still too attracted to the little squiggles on the maps. I’m still going to keep ending up on dirt roads in the middle of nowhere. Time to face it, my next bike is going to need some “adventure touring” DNA…When I did finally reach pavement, there was one last joke. After only 200 meters, the road was closed, and I had to take a dirt road up and over a hill. Which meant another long climb up loose dirt and gravel, combined with another long descent.
Getting onto the highway never felt so good. So good in fact, that I didn’t bother stopping in the little town and just rocketed south. Which my badly shaken bladder objected to. Cresting a hill I spotted an orange flashing light, curiously enough mounted on top of a chip stand. Done and done, I ordered a small fry, cola, and a trip to the lou.
After some food I figured the rest of the way home would be easy. All highways, no more dirt roads, and only 100km to go. I got to the 307 and was once again smacked by the Quebec road planners-from-hell. The road surface was mostly clear of debris and pot holes, undulations keep to a minimum, but, and this is a big but, they let a mad man set the cornering speeds. This time I think he was actually related to Villeneuve. The road is 80, yet there are constant 45 and 35 corners. But on one side is a river and on coming traffic, on the other a wall of greenery (I’m not sure if they were trees, or just brush covering a vertical rock surface) and zero shoulder. Every corner is blind. You can see roughly 10 meters ahead, if you are lucky. Certainly better riders than me could ride the pavement at those speeds, but to do so and trust that there was never going to be anything in your lane ahead? No child playing, no car pulling out of a cottage, no debris on the road… No sir, not for me.
As I got farther south, the road straightened and sight lines increased, but it didn’t get “easy” until I passed the second ski hill I’d been so pleased to plan this trip around. And by that point I was too exhausted to enjoy it – save for cheering inside my helmet every time I entered a 50 zone.
It’s official, I’m no sport bike rider.
Pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/matthew.krull/MotorcyclesJune 26, 2008 at 3:24 am #7856megaspazParticipantsomething about the best layed plans of mice and men… Sounds like you had quite an adventure, but you made it through and it sounds like you got some good experience out of it. It’s better to be alive than a not-alive sports rider…
Ride your ride and ride safe.
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If there’s anything more important than my ego
around, I want it caught and shot now…June 26, 2008 at 6:02 pm #7893JirikiParticipantI have actually been on that road before! I was heading north in the winter to have fun on some logging roads (in my car)… not sure I would have taken my bike out there though, nice commitment…
st. jean baptist day?? pffft… happy early canada day…
June 26, 2008 at 6:27 pm #7894MattParticipantHappy Canada Day
Or at least, it will be in a few days!I actually felt a little akward a few times out there… I wear a bandana around my neck (keeps the wind out of my jacket). It is covered in canadian flags… Perhaps not the best choice of attire on St Jean Baptist day (a group of guys drinking beer in the back of a pick-up gave me some mighty dirty looks while I ordered my fries)… But aside from them, everyone I ran into was nice.
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