F-Blog – Whine country

I’d been hoping to join an accomplice on a Sunday morning ride up the 507, but bad babysitting planning on my part prevented it.

So at around 2pm yesterday I got my 1/2 day pass and rode the QEW around the Horseshoe exiting at Fruitland and along the Escarpment to Niagara-on-the-Lake and then the Falls. I had no map and don’t know the area well. Seemed like that fact might make it a slight adventure.

The Escarpment, if you don’t know, is a limestone welt that rises anywhere from 100 to several hundred feet above the ground it passes through and runs about 400km from the Niagara area to the end of the Lake Huron-Georgian Bay peninsula at Tobermory. I’ve hiked, mountain biked, climbed its rock, but never had I ridden a motor along the old ‘scar.

I took the first road going up it, working east toward the Falls. That would count as the first time putting the new bike on a steep bit of switchbackery. And just when I was really starting to like it, I was up. So I found another road down and then another up, and so on for most of the day.

This bike eats the steeps like they’re gasoline pills. No grade can affect its performance. It’s a cheeky player through the corners, too. Hit a bit of sand and gravel on one curve, but kept looking to where we wanted to be going, and though both wheels shuddered and chirped an inch, they stayed true to intent. No time even to locate my fear.

But now that I know the bike really handles, as well as grunts, I guess I’m fully stoked. What else can it do, I wonder? Guess I’ll need knobbies to find that out. TransAmerica Trail, anyone? Seriously. I’d like to take a few weeks off next summer and engage that ribbon of mud and heartbreak in some light battle.

As time went on yesterday, though, my ass began to feel kicked. Tailbone seems to bottom-out on the seat after a couple of hours. It can be relieved by leaning down onto the non-gas tank on my left arm, or by adopting a perfect arched-spine sitting posture or by standing on the pegs like a twat, but these only help for so long. At some point you have to get off and walk your arse back to civility. I can’t tell if the seat is iffy or my cheeks are still in training, but I was fearsome glad to get home at 9pm and back to walking.

When I look back, it was a seven-hour ride with, at most, one of them spent off-saddle. Guess I expect too much. Fill me in, fellow F800GS owners, and others.

P.S. Niagara Falls and the grounds around it are quite nice, but what’s up with the dowtown? It’s as if they hired the worst urban planner in Nevada, fed him a few expired Oxycontin and let him go nuts. ‘Uninspired’ woefully understates that mess. And, while I’m at it, Ontario casino culture is not quite delivering the Vegas/brat-pack/black tie/bon mot/martini classes that might’ve been hoped for. More like morbid obesity meets the dacron track suit. Good luck with that, Niagara.

Paul Fenn

paulfenn.com

F-Blog – Whine country