6-29-08 Day 2 Niagara to Sault St. Marie

Sunday morning we left Niagara Falls with a goal of getting to Sault St. Marie. The weather was partly sunny with temps in the 70's. We took the QEW up toward Toronto and then onto route 400 to route 69 to 17 which is the TCH (Trans Canada Highway). I had envisioned the TCH to be a double 2 lane divided highway being that is Canada's main east-west route. NOT!!!! It's a plain 2 lane non divided road similar to route 32 that goes through occassional towns where you need to slow down. What it hasw is a 3rd lane every once in a while, usually at a hill where one direction has the passing lane. The main speed limit is between 90 - 100 kmh which is 55 - 62 mph but through the towns it goes down to 40 kmh or 25 mph. We stopped for lunch just before getting on the TCH. A few minutes after getting on the TCH a police car blew by us, lights & sirens going. About 10 minutes later a second cop blows by. We keep going along about 65 - 70 mph as most trafffic does. About 30 -40 minutes later we come upon a traffic jam which now explains the police cars. The entire road is shut down in both directions and everyone is out of their cars/trucks off their bikes. We hear from others that there was an accident and someone died, possibly a policeman, and the road will be closed for an unknown time. We are also told that there is no alternative detour around the accident! After a little more time we hear that there's a power line that parallels the highway and thaat the locals have trails on them and there's an entrance a couple hundred yards ahead and the trail will take you around the accident. We decide to scope it out. I'll leave the rest of the story for Tom to tell as it's a classic that lends itself to coming from Tom with his dirt rider background. We lost about 2-1/2 hrs due to the accident and the rest of the trip to Thunder Bay was uneventful. The pavement surface on all the Canadian roads so far have been in good to very good condition.We arrived in Sault about 7:30 and found a hotel, had dinner and went to bed after another good day on the road.

6-28-08 Day 1 And We"re Off

Note - some posts may be delayed due to lack of web access

Pinch me because it hasn’t set in that our trip has begun. I think that’s the general consensus among the five of us. We had about 20 people show up for breakfast this morning for our send off. The Day newspaper had a reporter and photographer there, and rumor is they will try to put a story in Sundays (tomorrows) paper. We had 2 people   (IZ Smith & my friend Harley Charlie) escort us to Waterbury to pick up Tom’s brother Mark. We left the Shack at approx 8:15 this AM and found a hotel on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls some 500+ miles and 11 hours later. We went down to the Falls after dinner last night and got the aove pic.

Recap of the day - We had 3 gas stops, a lunch stop and one pause to put on our rain gear. Of course it stopped raining about 2 minutes after we started out with our gear on and we sweated our butts off until we stopped for gas again and took the gear off. We did our border crossing into Canada at the Peace Bridge in Buffalo. Pretty quick just showed our passports, they write down your plate number and ask you if your bringing any contraband! Just takes a few minutes and then there’s a $3.00 toll on the Canadian side. Did I mention that we got caught in another shower the last 5 miles to the hotel of course without our rain gear! One of the interesting things I've noticed is that thanks to Bob Douton, a member from our club, he made us "Alaska or Bust" signs to put on the back of our bikes. This has generated lots of interest between people passing us that either give us a thumbs up sign or honk there horn or becomes a conversation starter when they see us where are bikes are parked. There are lots of folks that would love to trade places with us but that ain't gonna happen!!!!!!!!!!

Ready to Launch

Well the bikes are packed, last minute preparations complete like haircut & banking, many of the good byes/well wishes/send off parties have happened, and I probably won't sleep a wink tonight. I should be sleeping now! Tom, Pete & I had a live on air interview at WXLM 104.7 Wed. AM and then Tom & Pete also stayed to do one for the Wolf 102.3. The Day newspaper is supposed to meet us for breakfast tomorrow AM. Weather tomorrow is 90 and muggy with possible thunder showers in the afternoon. Hopefully no hail!!! We are planning on getting to the Canadian side of Niagara Falls for Day 1. At Thursday's weekly club meeting it was decided to have a contest to guess the total number of miles that we will travel. That's going to put a cramp on this blog for me as I was planning on providing stats/details each day of our daily mileage/MPG/etc. type info but will have to come up with different info to avoid ruining the contest. Gotta get to sleep. Stay tuned as the ride begins.

6 days to launch

I can hardly contain myself. I seem to be telling everyone I see about our trip. Yesterday the Long Riders had a final planning meeting/cookout at Donna & Tom's house. We firmed up that we intend to be fluid and other then a few firm dates and locations (meeting & dropping off the fly babes) we'll stop & go as we decide on a day to day basis. Everyones bike has been checked & serviced. Some of us will get rear tires replaced in Alaska others just put new on. We organized who's carrying what so we don't have duplication of things like sets of tools, air compressors, spare parts. Fortunately Pete is towing a trailer which gives us a little extra space mostly for the fly babes gear. Tom even has devised a way of carrying a spare front & rear tire which is good as we all have basically the same size tires. We are trying to be self sufficient which will be critical in a lot of areas when your hundreds of miles from nowhere and maybe thousands from the part you need. As I'll be solo the whole trip I've been designated to carry some to the extra gear that's handy to have such as tire irons, bead breakers, jack dunnage, etc as the other folks will be riding two up through out Alaska. We talked about places we'd like to stop at, alternates routes that we may take, potential run to the Artic circle (weather/road conditions permitting), cruising speed (70 mph), packing a lunch or stopping, and a myriad of other thoughts and suggestions. The NLMC is planning a sendoff cookout at this Thursday's meeting and we've been geting well wishes from most everyone. Other then doing our final packing we are READY for depature. By the way I picked up a cool little laptop that 8x6 and 1 inch thick with a 9 in screen so as long as there's a wireless connection available I'll be able to make daily entries. Also we have this neat gadget called spot (http://www.findmespot.com/) where you can go to this webpage http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?&glId=0dZFG8J3iSt3TFy8xKNDySr4Vy5o6mPsz and it'll show you on a google earth map where we've been over the last 24 hours. That's all for now.
PS - If anyone is intersted in joining us for our departure breakfast we'll be at the Shack restaurant in East Lyme at 7 am this Saturday the 28th. See ya from the road!!!!!!!!!!!

Background about our ride

Welcome to my Alaska motorcycle ride blog. This is my first blog so try not to laugh to hard.

First a little background on how I became part of this ride. About 2 years ago at one of our weekly meetings of the New London Motorcycle Club (NLMC) http://www.newlondonmotorcycleclub.com/home.html our road captain, Tom Lloret, announced that there was going to be a club ride to Alaska in the summer of 2008. The commited riders were Pete Lodi and Tom. When I first heard him say it I laughed to myself and said how great it would be to go but probably not realistic that I'd ever be part of it. Periodically Tom would mention that the trip was still being planned and I kept telling myself that I should "Just Do It"! I had been considering buying a new bike and knew that if I was going to go on this ride that my Road King wasn't the best suited bike for a long range multi week trip and I should go with an Ultra Classic if I was going to be part of this ride. After about 6 months of waffling about going or not around January 2007 I started letting folks know that I was considering selling my bike and it was gone by February. I ordered my 07 Ultra and picked it up at the end of April. My thought process was that if I do go on the trip I wanted to have a year's time on a new bike to make sure that there weren't any problems with it that sometimes come up and be at some point in a 14-15,000 mile trip. So at this point I've now got the right bike for the trip. The more I rode the new bike, the more I realized that I wanted to go on the trip. So by the middle of last summer I decided that I'm going! At that point the ride still seemed far off and my enthusiam level was not very high. As of last fall our commited group had grown to 5 as Tom and Pete's brothers (Mark and Joe) also commited to make the trip. We are now 20 days away from leaving and it's the same 5 still on track. I can tell you my current enthusiam level is almost off the chart as I'm psyched to embark on a "ride that will be full of memories"!


We are giving ourselves approx. 6 weeks for our journey. Our summary plan is to leave at 8 am on 6/28/08 after having breakfast at the Shack restaurant in E. Lyme. In broad strokes our route will be to head northwest to Niagra Falls and cross into Canada go up around the Great Lakes and take the Trans Canadian Highway west to Calgary/Edmonton area in Alberta provice. At that point we go Northwest up through British Columbia then the Yukon and on into Fairbanks, Alaska. We expect this to take about 14 days with a few sightseing stops such as the Calgary Stampede http://calgarystampede.com/ We're planning about 12 -14 days touring in Alaska. At this point Pete & Joe will be splitting off as they are planning a different route home and both being retired have more time to spend on the trip. Tom, Mark and I will go from Anchorage, Alaska down toward Vancouver and cross back into the US near Seattle, Washington and take a route home across Idaho, Montana, Wyoming for a possible stop at the Sturgis rally in SD http://www.sturgis.com/ then heading east back to CT around the 2nd week of August. I'm planning on trying to post daily if we have access to the web. Stay tuned for details!