When the escarpment no longer does it for you

On a Friday night in early June this year, sitting at my desk, wondering where the hell to ride my adventure bike somewhere adventurous, an idea skidded into view: Open Google Earth.

Why I hadn’t thought of this before I cannot say, for I spend hundreds of hours annually checking up on volcanoes, islands and former residences to see how the coconut palms and banyan trees I planted 20 years ago are doing. I rubbed my hands and smiled, thinking, How can this not deliver?

I searched for forest areas I didn’t know about within an hour or two of mid-town Toronto, where I live. In Ontario I found the expected — nothing new. Then, increasing the altitude, a significant mountain range known as the Appalachians flashed to life. Jesus… the Appalachians… how could I have overlooked them all this time? Zooming in, I realized the chain arcs up just south of Buffalo, NY, itself around an hour and a half from my front door. I was wired now. I printed off a couple of maps and set my alarm for 5am.

Screaming down the all-clear predawn QEW at 120-150km/h, I made sunrise as I crossed to the USA at Fort Erie around 6:45. Lost in Buffalo awhile, I finally spied my ticket south: Highway 219 (follow the road from the border-crossing through Buffalo, exit at Hwy 90 West, then take 219 South).

Fueling and warming up in North Boston, I went out and got lost, grabbing any road that looked better than the one I was on — down there they all do. You’ll be leaning into something, thinking, Finally the back-road of my dreams and no traffic either. Then suddenly it’s, Hold on, what’s that. A quick U-turn and you’re nudging the sexiest bit of tar or gravel you’ve ever met. That’s how it goes. And because the secondaries often follow rivers, you come upon countless tertiary and unmaintained roads with, say, swooning willows framing a one-lane tumbledown bridge over an ice-clear creek and a strip of tar or dirt running dead-steep up some old hill on the other side. Invitations everywhere.

Even in high summer it’s foggy and bone-crackin’ cold most mornings at least till 10. The valleys wear white wigs. As you motor, smells of sweetgrass, hay, pine and Grade-A freshness pick up where the other leaves off. To the motorcyclist accustomed — that is to say, bored — with riding SW Ontario, looking for a new twist, the place is as bent as a truckload of paperclips. New York spoils a hungry rider utterly rotten.

Housed in The Store, at the corner of 240 and 242, where an old, dead rail line cuts out of the valley to the southwest, is the good food. Heart-attack buttery French toast with sausage and hot pepper sauce on the side, plus never-empty coffees unfroze all of me fast, as did the company. The proprietor, Doc, is a biker himself, and his staff and customers are all talkative, sarcastic, political types, the farmers, town and forest folk from the area. I felt welcome and didn’t want to leave. Doc joined me at a picnic table outside under the sun, as it burnt morning mist out of the valley, and he told me useful things.

It’s a peculiar history that makes this part of NY state what it is. It’s been dying industrially, or at least in a state of long-term stagnancy, since the ’70s. There’s nothing much new being built, few subdivisions fringing pristine old towns inhabited by quiet retirees and bored teens with 400hp muscle cars as their main solace. But there is money, new and old. This was among the last areas of the US to be settled, Doc told me. Bad farmland being one reason. It makes for a curious blend of peoples. There are Canucks there to summer and ski the Ellicottville hills, farmers who coax out what the minimalist soils will give up, hardcore country folk with crooked houses and yards full of steel carcasses, dogs and kids, and a wildly random collection of Americans who’ve fled all imaginable permutations of something worse in order to turn over new leaves in a hard-wearing, but affordable, version of natural beauty and calm.

And the roads, the roads are quite simply a gift. Never straight for long, ridiculously empty, copless, truckless and largely bikeless. Where it’s macadam, it’s mostly in good shape; where it’s anything else, it ranges from easy, graded gravel to gnarly, rocky road allowance-type twistage through hill, farm and along creek sometimes for ten or more miles. But you can’t get lost or run out of gas without trying hard. The speed limits are in the 45-55 range on most of the tertiary roads, but I’ve not seen a speed trap or many moving cops off the Interstates and everyone speeds. Anyway, you’ll find yourself riding below the limit half the time, just to believe your eyes.

Then there’s Pennsylvania. First off, lids are optional if you’re into that. A classic and fast way in is via 219 through Salamanca, NY and on to Allegheny State Park, worth a ride on its own (new tar, not a car, but I don’t go during deer hours, place is infested), and connect to some good views and more roads around the big dammed lake to the southwest. Or you could head east on 242 from The Store and angle south on 16. Doesn’t matter much, it’s all very fine riding. I like Warren and the other old oil refining towns. Oil City, and Titusville, both off to the west, also stink of history and Penn crude. They have a vibe to them you won’t find anywhere else.

For the ADV rider with ADD, Penn’s OTT. If you’re hot for dirt, it’s got oil well access roads by the barrel. They’re often unmarked. I took one and it turned into a network, some dead ends, mostly not. It was in good, rough shape, nice and quiet and not one human encountered, not even an ATV. I had a lie-down at a lease and fell asleep for a half-hour. There’s oil pumping out of Penn soil and you catch wiffs of crude as you ride.

If you see warning signs saying Posted: Private Property, No Entry, etc. don’t be an ijit and go in, or you’ll end up on the wrong end of a gun. If there’s no sign, no mailbox and no guy with a rifle, you’re probably okay. But note this: Americans take their private property real, real serious. That’s one place not to cross them, even accidentally.

Come late afternoon when you’re getting spent, go to a gas station, buy a tallboy beer, find a shady spot, sip it back and lay down for a good snooze. You’ll be rested up for the comparatively bleak ride back home (if you live in T.O.). Watch for cops on the Interstates. Bike tolls are cheap — unless you run ‘em.

I did five or six day rides to this territory during the summer and was so unbored I was often 16 hours in a stock F800GS saddle, a seat so bad that after two hours it’s like sitting on a pile of tools — but still, I couldn’t make myself go home.

This is your moment. Go. Honestly, this area makes the Escarpment look like a Walmart parking lot. The leaf show is on and the afternoon temps are mellow, meaning you’re less likely to tear off your armour in a sweat and make a skin donation.

Me? Not this weekend. I’m up to Tobermory with a film crew and a new 3D camera — work and working play.

When the escarpment no longer does it for you