Indianapolis GP: Race Day!

On race day, we got to the Speedway while the 125cc race was underway.  Cess and I immediately headed for our seats, while our friends checked out vendors row.  Our seats worked out extremely well as they were high enough that we could see (and take pictures) of the action without having any of the safety barriers and fences in the line of sight.  The 125cc race was very competitive right to the end where one of the riders crashed in the last turn of the race.  He was obviously fine as he hopped up, picked up his bike and finished the race, but we still felt bad for him.  Lousy way to lose a few spots right at the end.

Next up was the 250cc race, which while still good, wasn't quite as competitive.  The top 2 riders remained 1-2 the entire race.  But hey, at least Aprilia had a strong showing taking 3 of the top 4 spots!

Before the main GP race started, Kevin Schwantz did a few parade laps around the track on his '93 championship bike.  Itwas awesome to see a racing legend of the past on the track.  Despite being in his 50s, he was still moving at a pretty brisk pace. He wheelied down the straight!!

By about 3pm it was time for the GP bikes to hit the track.  The race itself was decided pretty early with both Valentino Rossi and Dani Pedrosa crashing in the first few laps, basically handing the race to Jorge Lorenzo.  Rossi's bike was damaged and he was unable to continue, while Pedrosa eventually got back into the race... in last place.  Over the remaining 20 or so laps, we were treated to an absolutely incredible show by Pedrosa.  He was clearly the fastest man on the track and lap by lap we watched him closing in and passing other riders.  When everything was said and done he managed to move up 7 spots to finish 10th.  Knowing how far back he was, it was an incredible feat.

The overall atmosphere was great, the sights and sounds intoxicating.  The one thing I found quite odd was that there were only about 60-70,000 people at the race.  Hundreds of thousands attend boring NASCAR races at the same venue.  I just don't get it.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful.  We hit the road to head home right after the race, and walked in through the door at about 3am on Monday morning. 

Indianapolis GP: Qualifying

One thing that we worked in during our trip planning was meeting up with one of our World of Warcraft guild members, Kallesto.  He drove 3 hours to come and spend the day with us and experience some of our motorcycle culture.  Thanks for coming out!   

We got to the Indianapolis Speedway at about 1pm, just as the 125cc bikes were finishing up qualifying.  The MotoGP bikes were up next.  Cess and I watched a portion of the qualifying from the inside of the track around turns 2 and 3 before moving to our assigned seats, section J, located just before the main straight.

The weather was great the whole day and hearing the bikes up close was quite an experience.  You can totally distinguish each of the bikes based on sound alone.  While the roar is pretty loud, we haven't felt the need to break out the earplugs just yet.  We'll see if that changes today on race day.

One quick pic from yesterday:

Motorcycle gear galore

Before heading on to Indianapolis, we stopped off at Iron Pony Motorsports, the largest motorcycle gear shop in this part of the US.  The store is absolutely huge, and there are some really good deals to be had.  We spent about 4 hours at the store and between the 5 of us, we purchased 2 large cartloads worth of gear.  Cess and I got some super deals on:

• Dainese perforated leather jacket (for me)
• Dainese textile pants (for me)
• 2 MotoGP jackets (for Cess); one leather, one textile
• Fieldsheer mesh textile pants (for Cess)

With these buys, we'll be able to replace some gear that we've had for a few years and is now in need of replacing.

Iron Pony Motorsports:

Gear:

On the way to the Indy GP

We're spending this weekend at the Indianapolis Grand Prix, one of the races on the MotoGP circuit (the premier motorcycle racing class in the world).  There are 5 of us going to the races, so we all met at a friend's house in Mississauga.  We'll be in his car the entire trip, so we get to be backseat drivers, woowoo!  We crossed into the U.S. with no incidents at the border.  After nearly 700 kilometres, we arrived at our hotel just outside Columbus, Ohio.

Matt's postmortem

We've now been home for about a week and have had a little bit of time to reflect on the overall trip.

The pace:  I think the pace we had set for ourselves was pretty much perfect.  In general, our longer days tended to not go beyond 600km.  That still allowed us to get to our destination by late afternoon/early evening.  The shorter days we had interspersed throughout the trip were also great and allowed us to see some extra things and reduced overall fatigue.

Nova Scotia:  We're definitely going back.  There are some more places we'd like to visit, even in areas we frequented on this trip.  For example, I think we'd like to spend another 2-3 days in and around Lunenburg alone.  Not to mention, we'd like to do the northern coast of Nova Scotia as well.

Rain gear:  Ah yes, our favourite topic of the trip.  RAIN!  It was abundantly clear that we got quite wet on this trip.  Having said that, it's also evident that the rain gear we had helped a great deal.  The Frogg Togg oversuits would eventually allow water through (especially under higher speeds) but they greatly reduced the amount of water that our riding gear retained.  Hell, we were able to put our jackets on the next day without spending hours drying them!

Scala Rider Q2 units (aka bluetooth communicators): I can't stress enough how fantastic these units were.  Being able to continually communicate with Cess allowed the riding time to still be time we were spending together, instead of two individual rides.  Provided that the speakers are mounted correctly in the helmets, we were able to hear one another at up to 130-140km/h; that's impressive!

Touring on an Aprilia Tuono:  Ok, so it's not the sort of bike people think of when you say touring.  You know what though, the bike did perfectly fine.  The ergonomics, power, and range were great for the sort of touring we're doing.  It's certainly no Gold Wing but then again, it doesn't pretend to be.  The only thing I think I'll have to change for our next tour; the seat.  Pain in the ass.  Literally.

So... where to next?

Day 12: Homebound!

Today was the last leg of our journey, as such, it was a bit bitter sweet. On the one hand it marked the end of our vacation, but on the other hand, it's going to be nice to sleep in our own bed tonight. It's been sunny the whole day, a nice bonus considering the relative boredom of riding nearly 700km on a divided highway.

The boredom of this route caught up to us around the Québec and Ontario border where highway 20 turns into the 401. At roughly that point, Cess started feeling pretty tired and sleepy. We made sure to keep chatting on our Scala Rider units until we got to a rest stop just east of Gananoque. There, Cess had a power nap on top of a picnic bench.

The rest of the way went without much incident, however, there were plenty of slowdowns due to long weekend traffic heading into Toronto.  When everything was said and done we had covered nearly 700km over the course of about 10 hours (about 7 hours of that was riding).

Day 12 Route:

Nap time:

Day 11: Dodging (rain) bullets

The route today was fairly simple, hug the coastline all the way down to Trois-Rivières.  Before setting out, we checked the weather forecast and... surprise! rain was in the forecast for most of the day in and around our destination.  The first two thirds of today's route went without incident, we spent a lot of time dodging ominous looking rain clouds.  Just as we would approach a dark cloud, the road inevitably would take us around it.  Whew!  The weather wasn't great (it was even chilly at times), but hey, we were dry.

By mid afternoon, our luck had ran out and we found ourselves in the midst of an ever increasing amount of rain with gusts of wind thrown for good measure.  By the time we were reaching Québec City, it was raining hard enough that we had a difficult time seeing ahead.  Navigating in such conditions was definitely challenging.  Seeing ahead of us was hard enough, let alone the GPS.  The bluetooth communication devices we've been using on the trip were once again extremely useful.

Finally, with about 60km to go, the weather started clearing up and we even saw a bit of sunshine.  It's amazing how much of a difference that made.  Despite being thoroughly soaked, our spirits and mood were elevated a great deal.

Let's just hope those sunny weather forecasts for tomorrow's ride home hold up...

Today's route:

Day 9: Parlez-vous anglais?

Our original plan to get from Dalhousie, NB to Parc de la Gaspésie, QC was to cross into Québec and then hug the coast (east-north-west) taking us through the town of Gaspé.  That was going to be a 560km leg taking an estimated 8.5 hours to complete.  However, when we woke up this morning, we made the decision to take a much more direct route to Parc de la Gaspésie, a mere 200km from Dalhousie.

We are staying at Parc de la Gaspésie in a small riverside cottage.  By mid afternoon we had checked in and were already starting on some of the shorter hiking trails.  We opted to have dinner at the restaurant at the Gîte Mont Albert (the main hotel at the park).  Folks here are quite proud of their restaurant, and rightfully so, the food was excellent.

Tomorrow morning we'll be up at the crack of dawn as we need to be in Gaspé for our 9am whale watching tour (it'll take about 3 hours at a non-leisurely pace to get there).  We never did get a chance to get in on the whale watching action while in Nova Scotia, so we're going to make up for that here.

In other news, my 5D or the Sigma 24-70 lens (I can't determine which just yet) is acting up.  At times, the camera will try to desperately focus (imagine lots of loud focusing noises) but fails miserably in doing so.  The body must obviously think that the image is not in focus as it won't allow the shutter to close.  The issue seems a bit intermittent though.  It happened for the first time a few days ago but then disappeared until today.  Now it's back.  Ugh.

Update on Sunday, August 2, 2009 at 8:58AM by Matt

Day 9 route:

Our cottage at Parc De La Gaspésie:

Day 5: Incognito in the mist

Today's schedule took us 450km from Halifax to Isle Madame (a group of islands off the southern coast of Cape Breton).  We were a tad concerned before setting out from Halifax as the weather forecasts indicated small amounts of rain throughout the day.  Normally, we wouldn't worry about this, but hey... they were supposed to be small amounts of rain a few days ago too. 

We left Halifax and were soon on our way along the southern coast of Nova Scotia heading northeast towards Cape Breton.  Before long, we entered into rolling thick mist which we ended up travelling through pretty much the entire day.  We didn't break through the mist until we hit Guysborough, about an hour from Isle Madame.

During our route, we hurried to catch the Country Harbour Ferry. We arrived with 2 minutes to spare. Surprisingly, we were the only passengers on the ferry.  The gentleman who collected our fare confirmed that the ferry travelled back and forth across the Country Harbour every 15 minutes, even if there were no passengers waiting to cross.  The ferry is pulled across the water using a cable system, similar to the way a ski lift works.

Day 5 route:

Country Harbour Ferry:

Misty roads:

Day 4: Lunenburg to Halifax (aka, WTB faster cars)

Yesterday was a busy day. We started by sailing with the Bluenose II for a couple of hours in Lunenburg. The weather was fantastic! After lunch, we packed up and rode to Ovens Natural Park to walk along the Sea Cave Trail. Next we rode to Peggy's Cove. When we arrived, the temperature felt like it has dropped 10 degrees and a thick misty fog blanketed the area. After a short walk and taking a few pictures, we headed off to Halifax for the evening.

Surprisingly, it took us quite some time moving from one destination to another. The culprits: slow drivers and low speed zones (or worse! a combination of slow drivers and low speed zones!). Nothing like being stuck behind a convoy of cars doing 60km/h in an 80km/h zone. Woowoo. Having said that, the roads were good and twisty (with some freshly paved stretches too!). There were quite a number of beaches along the way, most of them with actual people on them. Brrr.

We'll add some pics as a follow up.

Update on Monday, July 27, 2009 at 8:34PM by Matt

Ok, here we go.  Pictures from Day 4 as promised.

Day 4 route:

Raising of the main sail on the Bluenose II (or as Cess likes to call it, the "Lunenburg"):

Sea Cave Trail at The Ovens natural park:

Peggy's Cove:

Rocky coast at Peggy's Cove: