Well, here I was ready to embark on my AZ Ontario Tour. I almost didn’t. Despite my eagerness and planning, this trip just didn’t want to happen. I had to cancel the first attempt due to illness, and this second attempt was almost cancelled for other reasons. Anyway, as evidenced by the presence of this section on this web site, I clearly made it out. This ride report / journal of sorts is a mix of motorcycle and photography hijinx, as it was as much about the one as the other.

My father gave me a crash course on how to use his SLR camera – aperture, shutter speed, ASA ratings, the flash, etc., and I was on my way. Well, after some nudging. Packing a tripod onto a little 750 is evidently an art. Next, my bike really only reluctantly started that morning. After the fifth or sixth attempt, the engine finally stayed running. Those who are up to date with my wheels know that it only reluctantly starts in cold weather (below 10°C). Today was worse than usual.

So, I’m finally under way. At Leslie and Highway 7, my first destination (for Markham, Richmond Hill, and York Region), the bike starts faltering at the light; the battery was not able to keep up at the low idle. So, I goose the throttle to 3000 rpm just in time, wait out the light, then pull into the first parking lot south of Highway 7. The bike, thankful to be out of traffic, stalls. The second run/push start is successful, and maintaining engine speed of 3000 - 4000 rpm all the way, even at traffic lights, I make it home. After all it took to get going on this trip, including taking time off work, f___ me, I think. (My apologies for the expletive to those who were offended, but it succinctly describes my mood at the time; to everyone else, apologies for the underscores…).

By the time I get home, a trip of only a few kms, the bike is idling not too badly on its own. The decision now – take the bike to Rocket Cycle, sort it out, and in so doing, miss a day of riding – or take my chances, keep high engine speed all day, and hope I can always push start my bike at each stop? As well, keeping in mind that my bike doesn’t start well cold, it would mean I must never let the bike cool down for the whole day. This latter option was rather foolish, but I REALLY wanted to ride. I’d even taken the day off work.

Ordinarily I am the type of person to play it safe, but a voice in me said "f___ it (same disclaimers earlier apply here again), go for it." So, back I went to the Markham sign. Made it there ok, set up camera, and wouldn’t you know it, the motors were not working. More experimentation reveals batteries in the camera are dead. Why? In showing me how the camera worked the night before, my father forgot to turn the camera off before putting it away. Figures, eh? Par for the course for today, anyway. After figuring out how to remove the motors, I shot the rest of the trip in manual mode.

I push started the bike, and was off to the next. For anyone who has push-started a bike (while you are on it, that is), if it doesn’t completely wind you, you’re in very good physical shape. Especially when you might have to do it a few times before it finally works. I push started the bike at the next two photo stops. At each stop, I moved as fast as I could so that the engine will still be warm when I push start it again. Finally, by Unionville, the battery had charged enough to turn the starter by itself.

The rest of the ride for the afternoon went fairly uneventfully. In general, I was riding at considerably higher engine speed to recharge the battery as best as I could, for later in the cooler evening when starting would be more difficult. Interestingly, at a few of my stops, motorists pulled aside to see if I was all right. The world’s a friendlier place than I thought. One observation: when slowing down to assist a fellow motorist, watch your own back first. A Harley duo slowed to help me out, and in so doing, paying attention to me and not the traffic around them, nearly killed themselves.

When it gets dark in rural Ontario, it gets dark. I only rode with highbeam when absolutely necessary, due to my electrical system concerns. It was pretty darned cold up there, too; snow was on the ground everywhere. What this all meant was I had even less stopping time with the bike if I had any hope of restarting it. Some people have asked me why I couldn’t just have left the bike running. The answer to that is an idling bike (such as the Honda Shadow) doesn’t generate enough power to run the bike from the stator. It is actually only at higher RPMs that the stator can keep up with the power demands of the bike. This is especially the case when running the complement of lights on the bike.

I’ve raised this point once before, and was keenly reminded of it this evening – tank bag map windows are fantastic. During the day. At night, however, you can’t see a damn thing. There’s an opportunity here for a motorcycle map light. If any entrepreneurial types are reading this, I’ll expect royalty checks in the mail.

Well, at Duclos Point (my D destination), I switched from 400 to 800 ASA film. During this exchange, I noticed that I had forgotten to configure the camera for the 400 ASA roll that was in there. Meaning, I shot the 400 ASA roll while the camera thought it was 100 ASA. This film is out to a special lab for processing but methinks my Keswick, Island Grove and Jackson’s Point shots are now bunk. This is very annoying. It’s like shooting photos of a wedding, and then noticing your camera had no film in it.

Anyway, out there at Duclos Point, you had all the proof you needed that I’m a city slicker. In the middle of nowhere, in the pitch black, by the edge of the woods, for a few moments, I’ll admit to shaking knees. And if there weren’t howls and rustlings in the background to boot! Fortunately this passed relatively quickly. Anyway, it was so dark here, even with the 800 film and flash, I needed the bike’s headlight to help illuminate things. Yes, I know what you are thinking, but what about my battery? Well, the process went something like this: headlight on, quickly aim and focus, turn headlight back off; next, wind camera for next shot, set the timer, plan my position, charge the flash, turn the headlight on, press fire, run into position, take picture, run back to bike and shut the headlight off, readjust camera, etc. And, wouldn’t ya know it, the bike started very nicely afterwards. Same deal transpired at Uxbridge. No problems there. An aside: people in Uxbridge are particularly friendly and were constantly stopping to see if I needed assistance. Lesson: if you’re ride is failing, head for and break down in Uxbridge.

Anyway, off to Zephyr. Made it there, but as I slowed to a stop, the bike started its infamous faltering idle. It was even having trouble flashing the turn signal; unbelievable that a turn signal takes that much power, but each time it flashed, the engine near stalled. Well, I wasn’t born on Thursday for no reason – I knew if I stopped the bike here, I would be stranded for good. It was a searing moment, let me tell you! Before me was the grand Zephyr, the coveted Z staring me in the face, so picture perfect, yet I knew I had to roll on, empty handed.

All I had left unclaimed in my day was Zephyr, Leaskdale and Coppin’s Corners. Oh, and an F – I hadn’t been able to find a Franklin Beach sign anywhere; Fenelon Falls was my next best bet. I felt very much the failure abandoning trip, but comfy and safe at home by my typewriter now, I commend my intuition.

So, I will return on Sunday to grab my last few cities - Zephyr (revisit for photo), Leaskdale, Cannington and Fenelon Falls. I think I’ll revisit Keswick, Island Grove and Jackson’s Point on the way, just in case my 400 ASA roll doesn’t develop.

The AZ Ontario Tour as I have laid it out, can certainly be done in one day. In the summer, it could be done entirely within daylight hours. The total distance is about 400 kms. Note that X is not in this trip list. Uxbridge is the substituted as the "next-best choice". There is no X town in Ontario, in fact. Anyone know where the nearest X would be (be it province or state)? Anyway, I was under way at about 10am, and returned home with tail between legs at 8pm. I figure that if I had a functional reliable bike (unlike my Honda Davidson), and had been able to hit my last few destinations, I’d have been back by 10:30pm. Now, keep in mind, I kept a good pace the whole way, with no real rest stops anywhere. I underestimated my exhaustion as well, as I was a complete vegetable for the remainder of my Friday evening at home. There is no overstatement in that sentence, I truly was bagged. Even Saturday was I zonked. Now, granted, if I hadn’t needed to do all that crazy stuff to keep the bike operational, it would have been less exhausting.

So, I am thinking about describing the route in some detail, enough so that a person with nothing to do one day could follow suit. Let me know if you are interested. I’ll let you know if I followed through and actually wrote it out.

So, on Sunday, I headed out on the continuation of my AZ Ontario Tour. As described in Part One, I had only missed three letters, C (Cannington), L (Leaskdale), and F (Fenelon Falls). It was my intention to make good on those today. For photographic completeness purposes, to prove to the naysayers I actually made it to these places, I was also going to revisit sites for which photos needed re-shooting: Zephyr, Keswick, Island Grove, and Jackson’s Point.

Having arrived home Friday night on the wisps of electric vapour, I spent some time Saturday sorting out my battery issues. The battery was quite flat, no surprise, so I charged it up at home. I then brought it by Canadian Tire, as their Parts Counter will assess your battery for free. Well, you get what you pay for, ‘nuff said. Anyway, battery seemed well enough; it had sufficient crank power, etc.

Sunday morning, the bike started like a dream, and off I went to meet some cretins at Demi’s Cholesterol Emporium. From there, I headed north, back to Zephyr. Would you believe that by the time I got to Zephyr, my bike was having trouble with electrical power again? So, once again, it was a day of push starting and rushing around never allowing the bike to cool down at stops. On this day, which was very cold (about 6°C), a halted warm engine in gale winds cools down really fast.

I re-shot Zephyr, Leaskdale, and Cannington, and then headed out to Fenelon Falls. Upon arriving, as I was setting up the camera, I burst a vein in my forehead. Recall how I blew the roll of 400 ASA film on Friday? Yeah, well, to add insult to injury, if I didn’t shoot my 100 ASA film of today with the camera incorrectly set to 800 ASA, left over from Friday night. The expressions I voiced at that moment would even have offended Mr. Andrew Dice Clay.

Not only did I have Keswick, Island Grove and Jackson’s Point from Friday to re-shoot, I now had Zephyr, Cannington and Leaskdale to retake. I retook each of the latter three, and then headed north to Jackson’s Point. It was nightfall by now, as you might imagine, and all I had on me was 400 film. I had only planned to be out for a few (daylight) hours today. Good luck finding 800 film on a Sunday night in the country. In fact, good luck finding much of anything on a Sunday night in the country. I resolved to do the best I could with what I had.

After Jackson’s Point, I went back and shot Keswick again. This was interesting as I had zero lighting (even had nothing from the bike), so I had to time my shots with the headlights of passing traffic.

One more stop left – Island Grove! Island Grove is about ten minutes from Keswick. I was home free at last. Well, my dear little Honda had other plans in mind. To make a long arduous story short, the bike died. Even going down Woodbine at 5000 RPM, there was not enough power output for the bike to sustain its electrical system. Clearly I have a stator or and/or short-circuit problem. My more immediate problem was that there I was, with dead bike, on the shoulder somewhere along Highway 8, in near total blackness. Here’s where I imitate one of those kooky TV infomercial actors: CAA Plus came to the rescue, and they were really quite good. I only had to wait for half an hour before Fred and his flatbed showed up. He was friendly, helpful, and before long, we were en route. I can also admit to appreciating the comfy ride back in the heated cab.

So, my AZ Ontario Tour ended with something less than glorious fanfare, but I was still content. I had, after all, reached all my destinations, even if I didn’t have all photos. I’ll just make a better go of it next year...

I have prepared a rough route list, with directions, for any nuts wishing to repeat the tour. It should be posted somewhere in the vicinity of this article you are reading.

Cheers,

Well, wouldn’t ya know it, I got every print developed, even the two rolls I thought I had ruined. Those two suspect rolls I took to Steichenlab Photo Lab downtown Toronto. They developed the negatives, and Japan Camera afterwards produced the actual prints. Steichenlab was able to compensate for my mistakes by knowing in advance what my mistakes were, and adjusting the development process accordingly. Not every image came out wonderful, but they all developed to at least some reasonable degree. Amongst the images posted here, I’ve pointed a few of them out.