October 14, 2009
All The Dirty Details: Part I
Scooter Sense (Almost) World Tour Re-Cap:
(Almost) All the Dirty Details!
Right off the top, I want to preface this post by thanking everyone who had a hand in the Scooter Sense: Big City Lights and Camp Fire Nights Almost World Tour. Whether it was helping to get t-shirts designed (Yamaha designer, Nick Sang) the bike prepped and to Quebec (Yamaha tech guru, Nick Di Cristofaro), letting me sleep on their lawn (Haskins), or taking the day off work to meet me at the office for a ride , The Almost World Tour couldn’t have happened without your help. Of course, there are a lot of good souls along the way who were willing to barter so thanks to all of them as well….
Conversely, I want to apologize to some of the people who “Tweeted” me before and during the event. Since I was on my circa 2002 cell phone, I wasn’t receiving any updates and your messages were coming through our “Co-Tweet” account. I was only checking our regular Twitter account, meaning we just noticed them today! Sorry for the lack of response but I’m still a bit of a Twit at “Twitting” and could use a lesson or two. Anyhoo, on to the trip re-cap!
Day 1 in Montreal took a bit of time to get going. I woke up at the Universal Hotel after not sleeping much the night before. This was NOT because I had stayed out until 4 A.M. to celebrate Yamaha’s stellar finishes at the Supercross like everyone else on the 7th floor (I can just picture how red, glazed eyes look in high definition). On the contrary, I had stayed in to get a good night’s sleep to be well-rested for the trip! Talk about back firing. The party goers returned with a vengeance around 4, and even with a pillow over my head, I swore I could hear men ripping other men’s shirts off. For any questions about ripping other men’s shirts, please forward them to your regular blog writer, Danny Brault.
So, I had some initial running around to do and I don’t think we actually got the camera rolling until about 9:30 which put us pretty far behind early in the trip. This was also my last meal that I could use money for.
Unfortunately, I was in such a rush I didn’t get the hungry man’s breakfast I had hoped for and had to settle for a bowl of raison bran and some grapefruit slices. Nice healthy fare, for sure, but not something to fatten up on!
We pulled the scoot up to the Biodome right next to Olympic Stadium for the first shoot. If we wanted to make Portland on the Big Rideau Lake by sunset I was going to have to nail the three shoots in Montreal, Montebello and Ottawa. I think the cameras only rolled for about 5 minutes and we were off like a dress on prom night. Not saying that I nailed the shoots, but we got what we needed and were gone. Apparently, daylight is a valuable resource when you’re filming (sarcasm). The shoot here focused on an introduction to the rules of engagement for the trip.
We pounded the pavement all the way to Chateau Montebello. Obviously I have a biased opinion about Yamaha products, so here it is: I held the throttle on that scoot wide open the entire drive on the first day and it didn’t ever burp or stutter. Granted, it wasn’t great for nursing my gas mileage to fit under $25 but I couldn’t think of another time where I had held an engine wide open for that long a duration and had such favourable results. Kudos to our engineers!
At Montebello we tried our best not to get noticed while filming the segment. The last thing we needed were rules and regulations getting in the way of the Almost World Tour. We dropped a segment about how Quebec’s licensing laws allow it to be a haven for scooter riders. Again, it was film-and-go because Ottawa was waiting and the clock was ticking.
Stop 3 on Day 1 brought us to the Parliament Buildings in Ottawa. Before I left I had been in discussions with David McGuinty, the official Liberal Opposition critic for the environment and MP for Ottawa South. I was trying to get a true policy changer on the show to discuss all the benefits scooters can provide to a city. He actually phoned me back personally and was quite interested in helping with this shoot, but we couldn’t get our schedules to match. (What David doesn’t know is that I plan on harassing him for the next few decades 
. Regardless, we got the shots we needed and after downing a Red Bull I had swiped from our race team the night before, we pushed on.
We headed out from Parliament Hill to Portland around four o’clock. My stomach was really starting to grumble, so when I stopped for gas in Carleton Place, I figured it was time to get the negotiations rolling. I convinced the outspoken, camera shy clerk to exchange me a t-shirt for two king size Snickers bars (she bought and traded). I then decided I needed some vegetables with my Snickers so I hit up a paying patron for some Corn Nuts in exchange for another t-shirt.
Did I mention it was cold and rained most of the time? A teacher I had as a kid once told me to “dress like an onion, in layers.” I was glad I heeded her advice because when it’s raining sheets, and it’s about 7 degrees out, preparation gets rewarded.
I didn’t think it was going to get much worse than it currently was, but somewhere outside of Portland we hit one of those famed, early October Frontenac thunderstorms. A different teacher I had as a kid (why is it that the off-the-cuff life skills stuck with me from school and not the finite math?) told me that you can tell how far a thunderstorm is from you by listening for the thunder and counting until you see the lightning. Each second between the thunder and lightning is an average of about 330 metres. Needless to say, I was getting a little nervous when I counted about 0.25 seconds between the clap of thunder and the lightning that was pounding on the farm next to me. It was then that I thought, “I’ve done a lot of things in life, but I’ve never been struck by lightning. That’s definitely a good one-upper for story telling!” BUT, the lightning had eyes for some other target, and my scoot and I escaped unharmed on route to the Haskins.
We pulled into the Haskins not long after 5:30 and rushed to set up camp before dark. Bruce was nice enough to lend me his therma-rest when he saw I would be sleeping directly on the ground, and then ushered Dave, Mike and I in for some spaghetti casserole (e-mail Dave for the recipe. It was solid!) Jan had put together. We ate, drank and were merry. Dave and Mike left around 7:30 to the friendly confines of some warm hotel while I stayed and chatted with Bruce and Jan. In appreciation for their meal and the 10 x 10 ‘ patch of lawn where my tent now stood, I thought helping Bruce with the dishes was the least I could do.
Sometime around 10 PM I figured it was good to go back out to the tent and get some shut eye. Sometime around 11:30 PM I woke up shivering and realized I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. After donning some long johns and another shirt, I felt ready. I woke up around 1 AM and decided a toque and hoody were in order. Then came 3 AM when I took my arms out of my sleeves and huddled them next to my body in a search for warmth. I cursed my wife for telling me that the sleeping bag was good for -20. Did I do something wrong before I left?? This seemed to do the trick and I was mummified until dawn when an intruder came bursting into my tent.
Stay tuned for Part II and III!
HUGGY
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I am getting cold just reading this!!
October 14th, 2009 at 5:03 pmHey Scooter boy, I think you might just be ready to take on a snowmobiling challenge.
cr
October 15th, 2009 at 3:45 pmLOL
“dress like an onion, in layers.”
October 19th, 2009 at 4:50 pmHey CR,
You throw out the “mission” and I’ll determine if I “choose to accept it”!
Huggy
October 20th, 2009 at 9:22 am