Kevin & I rode all the way up to Ottawa. We stopped for a bathroom break near Granville, I said "maybe we'll get lucky with the rain", and Kevin could have shot me. Not one mile later, there were cats and dogs hailing out of the sky. Whoops.
We rode up 22 to Ticonderoga, cut up to 9 and over to Lake Placid. Kevin is as snug as anything, but I'm freezing my azz off due to the shitty gloves I swore I was going to burn at *last year's* BTB. I force him to pull into the Lake Placid HoJo so I can grab a tea and make love to the hand dryer in the men's room. That HoJo smelled like (in Kevin's words ) "hot dog water" and (in mine) toilet pucks. Blech. We scrammed out of there. We passed 1,000,000 bikes going the other way to Americade, and we were not sad.
In Canton, a raging debate ensues when Kevin gets a bunch of USD out of an ATM to spend while he is *in Canada*. My brain can't deal with the effrontery of this, less so as it is demonstrated over the next two days that any number of Canadian retailers happily accept US money. Well hell. You learn something now and again.
I think Kevin had his own pucker moment going over the wet grated bridge at Ogdensburg NY. It's exciting enough when it is dry and calm. Meanwhile my shitty gloves are soaked and take 5 minutes to put on, so I leave the throttle hand off after paying the bridge toll, and I am going over this thing one-gloved. But I've done this bridge a few times, so I don't get that oh-shit feeling anymore.
We cross into canada, and the edge of this shit weather. Near the St. Lawrence we hit our first dry pavement all day. As we rolled into Ottawa around 6pm, the sun broke through the lower edge of the clouds. Ahhhhh...
Yesterday was so awesome, I repacked my tent and led Kevin out through some of the nicer roads, and we capped things off by staying overnight at a friend's idyllic lake home in the Muskokas. Kev & I parted ways in Huntsville, and I rolled in today with about 1500 miles on the clock.
A selection of moments from the weekend:
http://mokzone.smugmug.com/Travel/Benni ... gVy#P-1-10
Thanks everyone for a great time.
mike