frEEk
Administrator
ummm... yeah
Posts: 9660
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posted May 29, 2002 01:55 PM
what a weekend!
ok, so i'm a little slow in posting, so sue me.
weather has been crappy around here for quite awhile, and it didnt look too much better on sunday, but the forcast suggested it wouldnt rain much so i decided to head to pemberton (150km north) to meet up with a buddy who lives there & go for a ride to lilloet and back (100km each way). the duffy lake road is the only route between said towns, and it is known as one of the best biking roads in the region, for good reason. i was meeting with a few other riders i met on a local meeting site, and was a little concerned about how that would work out. last time i met with some riders from that site, they were posers and squids of the greatest magnitude. i got lucky this time. 4 people showed up, 3 were fully kitted in leather, all knew their riding abilities very well and didnt push it. and they actually knew how to ride staggered formation properly!! this is getting to be a rare skill.
anyhow, got going under very light drizzle which fortunately didnt hold up too long. was still cloudy but road was dry. a bit more traffic on the sea to sky highway (to whistler) than i'd like, but thats inevitable, especially at 9am on a sunday. arrived in pemberton about 11:30 and proceeded to head to a local favorite snack shack called the Pony Express, or just The Pony to those who live there. being a sunday of little rain, there were alot of bikers out. especially gold wings. saw 2 groups of them on the way up. one was about 6 bikes, the other must have been a solid 15 or so. at this point mattie_k (from the baord) joined us as he is the buddy who lives in pemberton. unfortunately, 3 of the guys i rode up with are rather unenthused about continuing on to lillooet as originally planned and talk of heading back already. however, a little convincing later, we were on our way to D'arcy, a tiny town on the north terminus of highway 99, and a much shorter ride at 45kms each way. it is a beautiful riding road and deserves more recognition than it gets. in many ways its a better road than the duffy. hardly any traffic, practically no cops. decent pavement (better than the duffy, but hardly pristine) and not too much gravel. none of the four had even heard abotu the road, but 3 of the couldnt understand why. they were nothing short of ecstatic when we got to the lake that ends the road about 25mins later. was a great ride too. everyone kept up a strong but respectful pace, and noone tried to push the others to go beyond what they were comfortable with. another 25 mins and we were back in pemberton, and my 4 newest acquaintances took their leave of us to head back to vancouver.
since i wasnt too sure of the weather on the way back (it was raining in vancouver at that time), and the continued dry weather forecast for monday, i decided to stay in pemberton for the night and attack the duffy the next day. i was aching to ride the duffy; havent done so since early last summer.
next morning (ok, so it was 10am) we got up and prepared to make our way out. weather was the same as the day before. warm and dry, though solidly overcast. suited us fine as neither of us much enjoys sweating to death. breakfast at the pony was too generous as usual, & i was so full i wanted to go back to sleep rather than go ride (stupid). but i forced myself on, casue i'm a trooper (riiiight...)! time was getting pretty tight as i was supposed to be back in van no later than 5. didnt help that a final addition to our party was taking his sweet time gettin ready. worse yet, when we finally got on the road and gassed up, he disappeared, only to be found back at the apartment where he said he's not commin (bitch!). oh well. so we're finally off. we're not sure at this point how far we can go as there was a slide reported the day before that closed the road for some time, about half way to lillooet. after waiting 15mins at another closure where they were falling trees, we got to the slide near the north end of the lake which is the road's namesake. the slide, incidentally, was an avalanche, as in snow. that's the duffy for ya. a good 5000ft or so most of that road is. which brings me to another point, the 12 has no bloody power at that altitude!! tried a wheelie at one of the very rare straight stretches, couldnt get the bloody thing up! for someone who is used to just twisting the throttle 3/4 of the way open and having it stand right up, this is rather distressing. wouldnt even get higher than 6" at 7000rpm in first. may i take a moment here to give my condolences to all those on the board who live at such altitudes and have complained about the situation before. i had no idea the torment u were in! back to the ride... we only had to wait like 5 mins for the blockage to be cleared and saw the road was well and truly cleared of snow, both lanes. the rest of the beautiful ride was uneventful, other than the usual cracking of nuts on tank when u hit the odd frostheave on the road and dont react in time. arrived in downtown (HA!) lilloet, gassed up, ate a snack, and saddled up for the ride back.
a little more traffic on the way down, including the slowest semi i ever seen. fortunately there is still enough room to pass such a slow vehicle every so often. tho u gotta be quick. doesnt take too long to get to the avalanche site again, and arrive to see a line of about 15 cars waiting to get by. not a big deal as we expect no more than a few minutes wait and we jsut ride to the front of the line anyway. can jsut see the base of the avalance around the corner and am surprised at the amount of snow that has found its way into the lake. looks like they'v done alot of wokr. too much work. ask the worker standing at the highways department pickup blocking the road the question he's undoubtedly sick of: "how long?". we dont like the answer. 2 hours he says. they set of three sets of explosives to trigger more of the slop to slide. no wonder there's so much snow in the lake. we discuss ridin back to lilloet & back here again, but decide to jsut chill instead. people have already been waiting half an hour. most of the folks are retired, just road-triping or going to visit family. eventually some of the traffic we passed catches up. takes that slow ass semi a good half hour to show. there were 2 or 3 tour buses in line too. after about half an hour, a chopper shows up to deliver an avi tech and pick up a worker. does a very complex and sweeping job of commin in, puttin on a bit of a show for all the stranded motorists standing about. finally decides to land it on the road with very little roode to spare between the rotors and the rock and trees that denote the east side of the road. puts it down no more than a couple hundred feet in front of us, a little more show for the bored public. cool  speaking of bored public, it's amazing how many people will come up to the bikes at the frotn of the pack and jsut stare at them. we had a number of people say hi and start talking about the days when they rode bikes, or the bike they still ride at home, in the case of the one younger gentleman who came to shoot the shit. one girl from the band asked to take a picture of the bikes even. she did so, but turned down my offer to take a picture of her sitting on it. apartently the very thought of actually touching the 12 scared her 
now here's where it turns into one of those "out of the blue" beer commercials for molson canadian. one of the tour buses sneaks past the line of cars and pulls off the road just behind us. theres a bit of a landing jsut a couple feet above the water level just to our right, a pulloff where people can look at the lake (we're right at the lake's north end here), and the rather large (and permanent) log jam that's now keeping a considerable amount of floating snow from being swept down the river. there's a whole whack of children in the 10 to 12yo area mulling about, and the tour bus is apparently the one they came off. next thing u know, they' running back and forth between the bus and the landing carrying cases. cases that hold wind instruments. they'r a school band and we're all about to get a concert! 10 minutes later they'd all set up, music stands and all, and start belting out their first tune. they'r not half bad. u can imagine how all the retired folk are lovin this as am i, truth be told. it's all so surreal that i gotta pinch myself a couple times. a couple bystanders get honourary positions in the band, playing the maracas. their penultimate piece was the kukabera song [sp], which of course required all those in attendance to sing along in a round. i couldnt remember the words, which was just as well, as i would prolly have been thrown in the lake had a attempted to sing 
the concert ends just in time for the avi tech (who is now our stop/slow sign holder) to tell us they'r about to start letting traffic thru again. the other side of the slide gets to go first unfortunately. by now i'm jumping in place, so eager to get going. when it's our turn, we make our way slowly to the actual slide location, to discover that the channel they cut for traffic is jsut barely wide enough to sqeeze a tourbus thru and taller than said tourbus to boot! i am still SO pissed that i didnt have a camera. it's no small slide. the final slide (the one they triggered intentionally) was a class 3.5. thats alot of snow! we pass thru the channel, wave bye to the workers on the other end, and begin the task of warming the tires back up. we didnt come across any traffic the rest of the way. gee, who'da thunk?
so that was just about the end of the best couple days of riding i'v has since laguna last summer. well, almost. we still had to dodge the flames commin from mattie_k's GF's eyes when we got back 3 hours late. u all know the reaction u get when the GF/wife/mom has spent the last 2 hours having visions of u lying in pieces off the side of the road mattie_k is now home free, but i have another 150km to go to get home. of course i'm very very late for work by now. i get going, and make it all the way to squamish without getting wet, as i was hoping and expecting. then it starts. it poured thru squamish. is poured half way to vancouver, then alternated between drizzle and rain all the way home. that sucked. but it was still reasonably warm, so it was bearable. besides, it's vancouver. what the hell did i expect? sun? HA!
and that bring my little report to a conclusion. frankly, i pity anyone who red thru that whole thing. especially given that it could be reduced to "went riding, got stuck behind avalanche, school band performed". hey, someone needs to give redelk a run for his money
   
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Dino
Pro
Posts: 1422
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posted May 29, 2002 06:29 PM
nice story red!!
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uh oh
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frEEk
Administrator
ummm... yeah
Posts: 9660
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posted May 29, 2002 11:32 PM
holy fuck, u read all that?!? dude, u need to work more if ya got that kinda time!
or i should give ya a prize! i tell ya dino, i thought of ya a couple times on the trip(s). following the guy on the r1 on sunday gave me huge flashbacks of us ridin north. cept he certainly wasnt as quick as u
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sassyvanilla
Needs a job
Moderator 2002
Posts: 3587
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posted May 29, 2002 11:59 PM
talk about a "play by play".....the real question is......did you meet any chicks?????
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redelk
Moderator
Please... speak to the hand.
Posts: 3212
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posted May 30, 2002 05:06 AM
Avi Tech?
I guess it would be "rock slide tech" down here. The funny part is that all our signs read. "WARNING - FALLING ROCK". As if it's going to be just ONE rock.
I know what you mean about folks being afraid to touch the bike. I guess that's good in a way, but it's weird how some people react to the offer to sit on it. It's like you've asked them to hold a snake or something.
Oh and BTW, that was far more interesting then ANYTHING I post!
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There are only three sports: bullfighting, motor racing, and mountaineering; all the rest are merely games.
-Ernest Hemingway
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EastBayDave
Needs a job
Posts: 2245
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posted May 30, 2002 05:52 AM
Nice write up. Thanks!
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Enjoy the ride!
02' ZRX1200
00' ZX12R sold
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frEEk
Administrator
ummm... yeah
Posts: 9660
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posted May 30, 2002 11:48 AM
hehe, fraid the only chicks there were of the 12yo variety sassy, so unfortunately not. besides, a dirty riding suit that's been patched up with Red Green approved duct tape doesnt exactly bring the chicks in flocks
red, yeah rock slides are a problem here too, more so on the duffy than anywhere else. the conditions up there are really quite brutal. every 10th corner (at least) will have significant gravel strewn about, and in certain sections u are quite literally guaranteed to find some larger debris. the weather up there is just so severe that the roads and the bordering landscape gets ripped apart at an alarming pace. but more often than not, the problem is avalanches (hence the avalanche/avi tech). u get snow up there till pretty late in the year, and when it really starts to warm up, like this past weekend, the buildup at the top of the ridges loosen up & come down.
i really did enjoy wating the reactions from people. one old gentleman (could only talk very quietly and mumbled constantly)talked reminiscently [sp] about his norton way back when. a rather large lady said a few words about how her & her husband used to love goin riding, but then the kids made their grand entrance and off went the bike, at least for another 10 years. but she still yearns to go riding every spring, and does that "oooo..i wanna ride so bad!" thing we all do when we see the first bike in the spring (and to all u warm climate types who get to ride all year round...SCREW YOUSE! ). funny too how people will come up to the bikes and look at the for several minutes, but wont say a word to u, tho u'r standing right there. too scared of the bikers as well as the bikes so inevitably u gotta say the first words and show em u'r not quite so objectionable a human. usually they loosen up pretty quick. i tell ya one thing tho, it's a damn good thing we didnt do any stupid/disrespectful passes on the return trip! would not have been fun had some pissed off driver come storming up to us & start bawling us out.
and as far as being more interesting red... YEAH RIGHT! all i gots posted here is harmless drivel. u actually post on important & often difficult topics that matter! anyone can recall a ride, not everyone makes a difference by taking action on a real issue. give urself some credit dude!
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