Soon after crossing the border, they had to detour to the east repeatedly around forest fires and closed roads made impassable by the previous winter’s severe damage. This added more than a hundred miles to the day’s journey and hours more slow travel in worsening weather. Once they cleared these delays, they were almost three hours behind their planned schedule. The rains then started.

This was snowmobile and ATV country. There were trails with rest areas parallel to roads, including the Trans Canada Autoroute (TCA). There were countless snowmobile and ATV Crossing signs across these limited access roads.

Upon turning onto the TCA, the grey, rainy sky’s ceiling above and temperature plunged as they traveled westward. As the four lane divided highway crested Ontario Province’s rolling highlands, the bikers disappeared into a thick and bone chilling fog.

Then began a slow, persistent, hard battle between the riders and the elements, the severity of which they did not realize at the time. In situations like these time has wings. Their hands grew cold in their insulated gloves. They itched, and they wanted to remove the wet gloves. But they did not, and sought to keep their minds off what was their decreasing core temperatures, stiffening limbs, aching backs and receding perceptual horizons. Neither the road, skies nor they made any new moves, the weather and their moods remaining cold steel grey,

It was all push on the part of the elements and road and give and take by the riders. Slowly and doggedly the riders worked on plowing through 600 miles of endless Canadian wilderness. As the hours and miles passed under their wheels, just as persistently they reeled in that day’s destination city.

Road tip: use rest stop bathroom hand dryers. They endorse the XLERATOR® brand since it can bone-dry one’s hands in 15 seconds and defrost one’s core in 60. Drying soaked raingear, gloves and boots required several minutes.

Cheerful acquiescence is a desirable trait in any rider, especially one who aspires to things during tough times, and fortunately it was part of the ordering of their complex dispositions. However, to get angry makes a man ride harder, and so it was with them on that day. They gave the elements and each other the silent treatment that day, preferring to retain as much energy inside of them to ward off the cold.

The weather was bad, the bikes were handling the slick, potholed pavement, and they were constantly immersed by the heavy fog mist or cold rain spray from passing or passed vehicles. They were hard pressed to keep on trucking this unending road along the St Lawrence Seaway.

At six o’clock, they had done a bit over 500 miles. They had, of course, worked desperately hard.

Meanwhile the sun was sinking, the rains tapering, and the fog lifting. All of the west was grey with small brief streaks of pink. The wind was quieting. The road grew very still and beautiful. The adjacent river’s waters were rosy. Here and there they saw the splashes of jumping fish at feeding time.

A flock of gulls came into view circling low. The riders estimated they were several hundred kilometers from nearest Great Lake, so they assumed that these birds were from another large body of water closer by. Silently, they hoped that the gulls were from Lake Ontario, which would mean that their destination was close.

Suddenly the moon sailed out from behind a fog-bank on the horizon and the road was transformed. It was as beautiful as it was lucky for them. This change brought a real warmth to the riders.

The road was smooth and dry now, and moon-blanched so that they could plainly see their way. The pavement was almost phosphorescent with long gleams of white and yellow stripes, and they rolled on their throttles to make the city come faster to them in the unmistakable manner of a fish nearly boated.

The road was now charging at their bikes like the old billfish trick. The travellers’ final approach velocity to their slumber time city seemed to double as the sun was now finally down.

At last they were free from the biting wetness and the slowly creeping dread of the cold and its numbness. The clearing skies were a dark, clear, indigo blue and appreciably warmer than the daylight weather just behind them. They had entered a gentle stream which a had slackening current, flowing along their sides. Everywhere they saw the blossom heads of wild flowers that would bloom in a day or two along the roadside. This was a time for them to lean back in their saddles and enjoy a sense of freedom and the great open space of the road, and watch for whatever might attract the eye.

The road, the skies, the rivers and the mountains of that day had in some strange way reinforced what they had learned during their years of military service – not to fight and struggle is to retrograde as a free and natural man. Spiritual and intellectual growth and freedom was only gained and maintained at the expense of the physical.

The hard work of their achievement along these roads was what made it worthwhile. But the work had nothing to do with the exquisite, indescribable beauty of the ride’s ending segment. Roads could be long, narrow, poorly marked and mainatained, sometimes awash in debris or rainwater. The speed and power of their bikes coupled with the riders willingness to endure and work at it made those last moments possible.

As the riders slumbered that night there was another hard thunderstorm. The last few days had seen rain torrents at night, which had stopped by dawn. Morning winds were northerly, making the rising sun cool. Cloudy skies completed a trifecta of the cold Canadian summer morning,

As boys, motocycling was a passion with them, but no more for the conquest of twisty roads or narrow winding hills and valleys than for the haunting sounds of the road and the colors and smells of the rivers, oceans, deserts, prairies, mountains, fields and forests. As men, two wheeling was still a passion, stronger with all the years, but tempered by an understanding of the nature of primitive man hidden in all of them.

The greatest pleasure of long distance riding was the certainty of something new to see, to feel, to anticipate, to overcome, and to thrill over. Surely, the longer a man rides, the wealthier he becomes in experience, in reminiscence, in love of nature, if he hits the road in sesarch of the harvest of a quiet eye, free from the plague of himself.

– Marlow’s journal

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