Resigning myself to a solo trip, and limited by the distance I could realistically travel in a week, my options were slim. They became even slimmer when I discovered a puddle of oil under the front wheel of my WR. Great... I'd blown a fork seal. Since there wasn't time to obtain replacement parts and make repairs before departing, I needed another bike.
The Africa Twin has been a contender for my next bike for several years, so I decided to look for a late-season deal on one and change my destination to Cape Breton. It'd been at least a decade since I'd visited the East Coast, and I was sold by the pictures and reports I read about the Cabot Trail, which was universally recommended as a bucket-list ride destination. It would make a great break-in ride for the Twin.
After spending a Saturday driving around to dealerships, I signed off on a brand-new 2019 CRF1000L Standard (wasn't interested in the DCT, to keep weight down) from the showroom floor and arranged insurance and a pick-up the following Monday. What a beaut! Coming from a 250, the instant power and sound of the cross-plane parallel twin were both intoxicating and intimidating. My pick-up time was late afternoon on a muggy, hot day, and I would have to cross almost 100km of rush-hour traffic as a massive storm moved across my path. What a way to learn a new bike!
Dodging storm squalls and rain through traffic was a thrilling introduction to the power and handling of the Twin. The engine sound is awesome and it had my giggling in my helmet on acceleration. However, I discovered a disconcerting problem of helmet buffeting which made riding above 80 km/hr dangerously tiring. No amount of crouching or repositioning solved the problem. I began to feel like I'd made a huge mistake by buying this bike... how could I tolerate highway speeds out to the Cabot Trail if I couldn't ride comfortably faster than 70 km/hr?
With the bike home in my workshop, I was determined to sort out the buffeting issue and prep it for my upcoming ride. It's a popular bike with a solid reputation, so there must've been an explanation. Sure enough, I found online discussions about the buffeting, as well as a solution consisting of a butterfly-shaped baffle installed over the fork tunnel. I didn't have time to order one, so I made one from parts in the shop that bolts into existing bodywork threaded holes.
It works beautifully, redirecting the tunnel airflow (and any entrained bugs or road spray) out to the side and rear. If I crouch down 2" (I'm 6' tall) there's nothing but still air behind the windscreen at up to 130 km/hr. Honda really should include this modification as a standard feature on all existing stock of the pre-2020 Africa Twin models. It's that good, and it totally transforms the ride experience.
With the buffeting issue solved, I was now excited again about a long trip. Next up was fabricating a GPS mount for the crossbar and wiring in a cradle for my Garmin Montana. Not the prettiest solution, but it fits perfectly and works well. I've since found a much nicer-looking solution from Motopumps.
I also made one-day 1100 km drive to Dualsportplus to pick up Outback Motortek engine guards, skid plate, rack plate and soft luggage racks to beef up the protection and carrying capabilities of the Twin.
Outback Motortek makes great products with thoughtful and beefy designs that connect solidly to the frame and are much sturdier than the OEM Honda guards. However--and as I discovered while installing the racks the day before my departure--Motortek's side racks for the 2019 Africa Twin do not actually fit because of a mid-season change to the bike's subframe design. With no time to order an alternative, I was limited to using a top bag only. This forced me to strip down my usual kit of camping gear and food by 50%, fitting everything but my tent, shoes, and down jacket into one 35L bag, with the rest in two small dry bags.
Finally time to hit the road! With only 150km on the bike, it was important to keep speeds down while breaking in the engine. My route was hardly efficient, following backroads with little traffic so I could ensure low revs and smooth acceleration during the break-in period. Hitting Montreal during rush hour ensured crawling speeds on Autoroute 30 for the better part of an hour while I roasted in my riding suit and fantasized about ice cold water and beer. The best I could manage was Krispy Kernels and Gatorade in the shade of a gas station while pondering where on earth I'd sleep that night.
One of my traveling goals is to challenge myself, so I deliberately chose a route through small rural towns on the south shore where few Anglos dare tread and even fewer locals dare to speak English. Although I speak a bit of French, I'm more attuned to European accents. Quebec has its own regional accents and jargon that are often incomprehensible to my ears. Victoriaville, where I ended up at a motel for the night, is typical of small Quebec towns on the south shore although it has an incongruous English name. It's a Pure-laine community of small industry with a slightly scrappy but friendly and outgoing rural vibe of smoking and drinking, beat-up vehicles, ATVs and sleds in yards, and photos of beige fried foods on placemat menus. In other words, it's a perfect place for a grimy motorcyclist of any heritage to stop and feel welcome.
The Motel Le Victo fit the bill: plain and noisy, but clean and cheap. My attempts to order dinner in French at the attached restaurant were immediately rebuffed by the high-school waitress whose eyes brightened on hearing my accent. She asked if she could instead practice her English on me, sharing her hopes that learning English would allow her to move to a more cosmopolitan centre with better jobs.
The warm evening produced a massive bloom of mayfly-like insects that suddenly clouded the air and settled in and on everything out in the open. The next day was misty and cool, with persistent rain in the forecast for the next few days. An early start on almost deserted roads led me to another local diner experience off the beaten track, where to the amusement of the locals I managed to order ham and eggs and coffee through an obscure self-serve counter process.
With The Weather Station's "The Way It Is, The Way It Could Be" playing in my mind, I rode past Montmagny and the road gave way to river. I highly recommend detouring off the Autoroute 20 onto Route 132, an undulating road through the stunning fields, rocks, and shoreline vistas of the Kamouraska region.
I would've gladly carried on this way to the Gaspé Peninsula, but the ever-present mist and rain off the St. Lawrence was chilling and my plan took me south on Route 289, another undulating and sparsely travelled rural road that skims the Quebec/USA border as it leads on to Fredericton in New Brunswick. Perfect motorcycle country and a real highlight of the region.
The Lotus Bleu Café in Fredericton has superb coffee and delicious food. But be prepared to wait! I arrived around 2:30 in the afternoon, thinking it'd ensure a quick stop, but ended up losing 90 minutes to a coffee and sandwich, of which about 70 minutes was waiting. No worries... all part of the experience.
To make up time, I rejoined the Trans-Canada Highway to Moncton, enjoying golden late afternoon light and expansive views as a consolation prize for riding four lanes. Very little traffic though: often I rode completely alone, with no other vehicle visible for several kilometers in front or behind. Tired and hungry, I reached the suburbs of Moncton at dusk and spent the next 90 minutes riding and calling all over to find camping or a hotel room for the night. The only option ended up being downtown where I got the last available room. Turns out a wedding party, Cirque de Soleil, and guests of both had taken over the downtown. The hotel's dodgy parking lot in an even dodgier neighborhood where I'd passed strung-out junkies lying on the ground had me thinking twice about finding my bike still there in the morning. A few drunks stopped to talk to me, but fortunately didn't mess with my things.
The consolation prize was fantastic wood-fired pizza and beer at Piatto's nearby. Bike-friendly, too!
The next morning was hosing rain. You know the days: having slept showered and clean in a bed, now you're already wet when you zip up your sweat-stinky suit, the pinlock can't keep up with humidity in the visor and your glasses fog anyway, and you can't open your visor because of the rooster-tails off cars. Still, it was neat looking around the old downtown Moncton. I found the Colpitts family store where my grandmother, a Colpitts herself, was taken in to work as a young orphaned teen (although the store was at a different location then).
Today the store is right across the street from an office of the firm where I'm now a partner. If my grandmother was still alive, she would've gotten a kick out of seeing life come full circle this way. And she'd have loved a ride on my bike, since she never had the chance to learn how to ride two wheels herself.
Nearby was the old hospital where my mother was born, one of the last babies delivered before the hospital moved to a new site.
At breakfast I met another motorcyclist who'd seen me packing my bike from his Air BnB across the parking lot. He was riding north from Nova Scotia and had enjoyed blue skies. I was heading into a massive rain system that had settled behind him all the way down to Nova Scotia and Cape Breton. The rest of the day had me riding through torrential rain, testing the waterproof limits of my Klim Carlsbad suit and Forma Adventure boots. Great views but no opportunities for photos.
Hours more on the Trans-Canada, squeezing past dawdling traffic and being buffeted by trucks had taken its toll. A detour along the coast led through Wallace, where I'd hit the wall of comfort and had to pull in to Whirligigs Cafe to try to warm up and dry out or risk going hypothermic.
The food was good but the restaurant was crowded and yet inexplicably freezing cold, with an unavoidable blast of air coming at me from the ductwork. They probably weren't too pleased either at having a soaked motorcyclist skulk in the corner over so many cups of coffee.
A change into dry long underwear and my down jacket helped thwart some of the cold, but it was still raining out and Cape Breton was beckoning. The ride along the coast of the Northumberland Strait was beautiful despite the rain, and the lack of traffic gave me generally excellent roads all to myself. Several interesting historic sites appeared along the side of the road, including hand-dug channels and weirs used to catch fish back in the 1700s. It was hard to investigate, because of all the hills and curves in the road and few places to safely pull over.
And then there it was: Cape Breton! I just managed to cross the causeway before the swing-bridge opened over the Canso Canal. Here's looking back to the mainland.
It all reminded me of cycling in Scotland back in the 80s, the memory amplified by the persistent rain then and now. Easy to see how the Scots felt at home here. Although today there are many road and business signs in Gaelic, I didn't hear the language spoken myself, and I learned it's become rare among locals.
So many spectacular vistas to take in. In better weather, it would truly be breathtaking and something to savour at leisure. I'd opted to circumnavigate the island counter-clockwise so I'd be closer to the ocean views. Bras D'Or Lake on my left proved much larger than expected, a sea in its own right. Aiming for Sydney, my plan was to grab a hotel room, dry my gear, and get my first oil change for the bike. The staff at Cabot Powersports, a dealer for Honda and other brands, graciously accommodated my tight schedule and changed my oil while I waited and chatted with a retired miner who'd just ridden from Calgary in 3 days to visit his old stomping grounds and set up a cabin on some land he'd bought.
The weather turned decent just as I hit the Cabot Trail. The pictures tell the story.
The curiously-named Meat Cove on the Northern tip of the island, in the Cape Breton Highlands National Park, was my must-see destination for the trip even though it's far off the main route and at the dead-end of a steep dirt road. You need a park pass to reach the access road. The official campground was full when I arrived, but the manager said I could camp on the beach and use the campground facilities for free. What an awesome guy! I ended up choosing a tent spot high on the beach, resting on surf-smoothed rocks which disappeared under my thick and comfortable sleeping pad.
While the official campground is up on the hill and close to services, I think I got the better deal. If you do camp on the beach, stay well away from the cliffs, since rocks fall down frequently. Indeed, we watched a massive rockslide rumble from the cliff into the ocean just past the campground, sending up clouds of dust.
It was the one perfect day of the trip, even though more campers had now set up on the beach around me. The air was still and quiet. A bit lonely being the one person traveling alone amongst families and couples, but sometimes I find the isolation forces a deeper level of self-reflection, creativity, and stress relief than constantly being with others allows.
Of course, the rain returned over night with gusty aggression, but after an early start during a break in the showers I had the road to myself and enjoyed pristine asphalt, wild scenery, and swoopy turns on the Twin.
Part of the Trail follows a fault system, leading to some steep climbs along sheer vertical terrain into the clouds.
One section of the Cabot Trail after leaving the Park was in poor shape and washed out in places, and undergoing extensive construction. It was a bit dodgy navigating the slick mud and stones where the road was both steep and torn up.
Just an endless ribbon of road, carving through deep forests and valleys. Reminded me of Hawai'i or New Zealand's South Island in places.
A breakfast stop at a busy diner in Cheticamp ended up with me sharing a table with a family that had arrived after me. Turns out we have friends in common back in Ottawa!
Cheticamp has its early roots in gypsum mining. Lots of mining heritage in the region, and if I'd had more time I would've looked for some tours.
The standard route for the Cabot Trail is to loop south at Margaree Harbour back to Sydney, but locals recommended I continue along the coast, which was well worth it for the views.
The Glenora distillery is the only one in North America allowed to call its product Whiskey. As a single-malt enthusiast I was strongly tempted to pick up a bottle, but space was tight, the bottle wasn't cheap, and I was concerned about ensuring its safety back to home.
Despite persistent and heavy rain for the first few hours, I rode all the way from Meat Cove to Edmonton in one day, over 1000km on the Trans-Canada. The Twin was happy to hum along, and again there were long stretches of no visible traffic for kilometers in either direction on both sides of the road. Mercifully, the rain abated as I left Nova Scotia. Golden light bathed my arrival at a grimy motel in Edmunston. A few other riders converged here as well, including a couple on this Ural with two severely worn rear tires.
With vicious storms in the forecast and the weather radar backing that prediction, I had to high-tail it north in hopes of flanking the incoming storms and avoiding the worst. It meant another 1000km day, the third of the trip, with few stops. Time allowed one last stop along the St. Lawrence at the historic site of an early European settlement.
The worst rain of the trip hit me at Quebec City: absolutely torrential downpours where traffic came to a standstill with four-way flashers on and I had to wait out the worst at a diner. Then it was grit my teeth and push through to clear skies on the other side of the system. Mercifully, I rode the last few hours home in warm sun, dried out and hungry, but arriving before dark and with the line of storms visible behind me in the distance.
For just a 6-day trip, it packed in a lot of good scenery at a brisk pace although some days were excessively long--especially in the rain. The Africa Twin performed flawlessly and I absolutely love the comfort and power it offers. Some knobby tires would definitely improve its performance on loose surfaces, although it's such a nice bike I'm not sure I'd want to beat on it off-road. Many bystanders were attracted to the bike, coming over to comment on how nice it looked, and wanting to learn more. It's an uncommon beast out east. Saddle bags would've been more ergonomic for packing gear but may have lowered fuel economy. Overall the bike has proven to be a competent tourer, especially after having put 42,000 km on my relatively anemic WR250R.
Right after my return, I received and installed some further upgrades for the Africa Twin, including the OEM heated grips, a 12V accessory plug, tank gripper pads (which really help control the bike when standing, while protecting the tank), and an Eastern Beaver PC-8 switched control box for accessories like heated gear. It's been hard to maintain interest in my trusty old WR--even though the fork seals were repaired while I was away.
