Prelude - Pre Bella Coola

We have returned. After a long hiatus, we are ready to get back in the saddle and tour again, solely for your amusement. 

Our last blog was the 2019 ill-fated Bride of Mexican Motorcycle Manoeuvres in which we won an all expense paid Lear jet flight from Puerto Vallarta to Edmonton.

In the intervening time, we have both retired, moved, had COVID,  built a house, made friends, volunteered. What we  have NOT done, is traveled, motorcycle toured, (save a couple of brief trips; not blog-worthy), been scuba diving or really any other kind of holiday. It's all good; everybody had a hard time through that period and we were generally pretty lucky.

However, we are anxious to get on the road and this will be our first real trip together in four years. It is only a short one, about 2100 km but we have some very ambitious motorcycle plans and we need to build up to them as our posteriors have grown soft. And we are willing to take you along for the ride, if you would like to follow.

This trip will be a combo camping/motel trip from West Kelowna to Bella Coola, take the Northern Sea Wolf through the Inside Passage to Port Hardy, down to Englishman Falls, across on the ferry to Horseshoe Bay and home on 99 through Pemberton and Lillooet, assuming we aren't dodging forest fires.

To get our butts conditioned, we have been riding some numb bum rides on the order of 500 km, exploring the countryside. My cuzzin Iron Butt Bruce would laugh at that distance. He does that before morning coffee. However, we have recently been to Manning Park, up and down Old Hedley Road, Green Mountain Road, White Lake Road, Falkland-Chase Road, Tunkwa Road, all roads particularly favourable to motorcycle riding. In other words, twisty, narrow, remote, pretty and paved. Nan has logged about 1,000 km this season, me, about 1,500. Last Sunday, we did such a loop up to Kamloops, where the temperature hit 39.6 degrees CELCIUS, then across The Connector (which links us to the outside world via Hwy 97C to the Coquihalla) where the temperature was a whopping 15 degrees, along with pouring rain and hail. We had been enjoying a lovely lunch at Tobiano Golf Course, watching a weather system move in our direction and our lovely young waitress observed "Kamloops is getting hammered by that storm!" A minute later, I got a text warning motorcyclers of a Severe Thunderstorm Warning:

Of course, our other issue is that we are a heck of a lot older than our past trips, made worse by the fact that we always seem to have ailments and injuries. That has made the challenge of getting our "bike butts" conditioned even tougher. It involves more frequent stops, active stretching and drinking lots of fluids.

But the tradeoff will hopefully be worth the effort. Motorcycling is unmatched for meeting people and hearing interesting stories.

We invite you to follow along, post a comment if you are inclined (all comments are moderated) and enjoy the sights and adventures we post!