I planned a weekend getaway with my son Logan for some time ago, and the weekend had finally arrived!
Young Logan was due to get out of school at noon on Friday. I needed to rescue his young self and scramble through gravel for 1.5 hour into Port Alberni, from our home in Bamfield, on Vancouver Island.
He is 8 years old, in grade 2, at the local school which has only 37 students ranging from kindergarten, up to grade 12.
We sneaked away early. His class had a field trip, so we ditched and arrived in Port about 1:00 p.m.
There was a large construction mayhem, just outside of town, on the only highway that connects Port, to the rest of the world, and they sport one hour closures, off and on all day long, only opening long enough to clear the line of traffic. Then they snap closed again, for another hour.
It was due to open at 2:00 p.m., so this gave us a bit of time to load and ready our 2002 FLHTPI for our trip. I wanted to reinstall the luggage rack that came with the bike, as we had a ton of gear, including a tent and sleeping bags, so we needed all the storage space we could get. It took a bit longer than I anticipated, but we nailed it to the front of the line for the 2:00 p.m. opening. We were off!!
As we wound our way to Nanaimo, I realized if we really stepped on it, we could make the 3:00 p.m. ferry to the mainland, one of the real joys of living on the rock…. NOT!!!
After blasting a lot faster than I really like, with anybody on the back, and definitely faster than his mom would care to hear about, we pulled into the ferry parking lot at precisely, 3:00 p.m!! I thought , “No way are we gonna be this lucky.”
I asked the guy at the toll booth if we were gonna make it, and he called the loading crew on his radio, and asked them to hold on one second, there was a motorbike coming. He smiled at me, and said we were lucky the loading boss was a buddy of his. Otherwise we would have to wait two hours for the next ferry. This guy, must have been a biker as well, because when he handed me my change, he wrapped the coins up tightly inside a 10 dollar bill, handed me my cash, and said, “Twist it man.” I couldn't believe it, we were the last vehicle on the ferry. They closed the gate behind us, and it immediately left the dock.
Logan and I high five'd like crazy, and I knew right there, this was going to be an awesome trip.
It was a big adventure to him, as he had only been on it twice before.
We ate an early dinner in the lounge, and he wandered around the boat checking everything out. We played a bunch of video games in the arcade and went up to the top deck and watched as we neared the big city, Vancouver. He was blown away by the size of the city, from the water.
The ferry docked in North Vancouver, about 4:30 p.m., just in time for rush hour, but I didn't care, as we were two hours ahead of schedule, so we were rolling with the flow..
After unloading from the ferry, we started making our way, on the Trans Canada highway towards Hope, about two hours away. Camping was planned for the first night. It didn't take long to become snarled in afternoon commuters, trying to get home early on a Friday.
It was an absolute crawl on the freeway, even slower than normal, so I turned on the touring machine radio to check out the traffic report. There was an accident and car fire on the #1 highway east of the Port Mann bridge, which was about five miles in front of us… AAAAGGGHHHH!!
When we finally made it to where the fire was, he saw it first hand, as the emergency crews were still dealing with the whole thing. Logan thought the whole experience was pretty kool, and I must say, when looking at it with a kid's outlook, it was pretty wild, when you think, that the town where we live, has only 1 stop sign, and about two miles of paved road..
After passing the accident scene, the pace of traffic picked up considerably, and we sped up to highway speeds again, making it to Hope by about 7:30 p.m.
We picked a spot to camp, just off the main highway, set up our tent, and walked over to the local diner for some supper.After a good meal and way too much pop, we walked back to our camp, lit a fire, and sat and talked till well after dark.We bought a map of BC while we were on the ferry, so Logan pulled it out, and spread it on the picnic table, and plotted our route.
He ask me what towns we were riding to, and he drew a line on the highways connecting the towns, until he had our route all planned out.Funny thing about maps, I can remember being fascinated by them when I was a kid, looking them over and over, dreaming of all the kool places I wanted to go.
I remembered that the gas station across the road closed at 9:00. I needed a coffee thermos refill, since I wouldn't get much sleep that night on the hard ground. I wanted some hot coffee to sip on in the middle of the night when I was forced awake by the pebble strewn ground. Logan spotted bullet hole stickers at the station and bought them. I gave him the go ahead to plaster the cop bike with bullet holes. A pretty kool addition, I must say..
Finally about 10:00 we crawled into our sleeping bags and settled in for the night. The weather was very warm, even after the sun went down, and weather reports called for more of the same the next day.
Logan slept like a rock all night, I know this because I was up most of the night listening to him snore. I started to drift off again about 5:30 a.m., and Logan woke me up. I was laying in the path of the tent flap. He couldn't get to take a leak.
Oh well, it was an awesome morning, and I was ready to get out of the sack anyway.I got up and started the fire again for no particular reason, and by about 7:00 a.m. I had a huge ripping fire going.
It's even more humorous to me because my partner in life, and Logan's Mom, is first nations, making him part native, and the white dad was feeding the big bon fire going outside the tent. I was forced to sit 20 feet away.
Once Logan was up, we brushed our teeth, loaded up the cop bike, and headed out, around 8:00. We stopped in Hope for fuel, and carried on, planning to have breakfast at Hells Gate.It's a huge gorge on the Fraser river, where they have a gondola set up to take you to the bottom, where they have lots of touristy stuff waiting, as well as a restaurant, interpretive center and such.We arrived at Hells Gate about 9:00, only to find, it didn't open until 10:00.No biggy, we went back to a small diner we saw just down the road to grab a quick bite, but they weren't open at all today…Once again, frustration turned to wonder, as Logan could care less about waiting, since there was lots of kool stuff to check out.
This particular stretch of highway has eight tunnels in a 30-mile span, so we road through a few of them, over and over, as Logan liked the way the bike sounded as we revved the crap out of it in the middle of each tunnel.
I remember as a kid, whenever we would drive through a tunnel, my Dad would tell us to hold our breath until we got to the other side, then he would slow right down in the middle of the tunnel, until we gasped for air.We would all laugh like crazy at him for holding up traffic. On entering each tunnel I told Logan to hold his breath all the way through, then I too would slow down to a crawl.Near the end of the tunnel, we were doing about 20 MPH, and Logan punched my back hard to speed up.To much fun, it reminded me of traveling with my Pops when I was a kid.
Back at Hells Gate at 10:00, they opened up, and we were the first to get on the gondola, for the slow trip down to the bottom of the gorge.We checked out a short movie, explaining how this was a gold producing river back at the turn of the century and how people traveled from all over the world to the “Gold rush” on the Fraser river.
We scarfed a huge breakfast in the restaurant over looking the mighty Fraser River at its narrowest point, watching as millions of gallons of water ripped by, right below us. Awesome!
Logan tried his hand at gold panning and snatched five flakes of gold to take home, which, he is sure, is enough to buy us a new house very soon.
There is a bridge where you can walk across the Fraser, and then hike back up the 500 foot bank to the highway, but we took the gondola back up.
We met a guy from Clinton in the parking lot, on a brand new Road King, so we had a chat about bikes. He took a shot of Logan and I together, by our bike, under the Hells Gate sign. This is one of my favorite pictures now.
We loaded up the bike, and carried on.We stopped in Spences Bridge for a pop break, as it was really starting to warm up.While we were there, we saw at least 50 bikes go by. We were nearing Ashcroft, and there was a major Drag racing event scheduled. It was to be our next stop, and we were only about a half hour away.
There was some unreal fast Jap bikes there as well, pushing the 200 mph mark, but the kings of the track were the top fuel Harleys.Logan couldn't believe how loud they were. Neither could I for that matter.We stuck around for a couple of hours, then we decided we better go try to find a room for the night. My back wouldn't stand another night on the ground.Also with this many bikers in town, I figured motels would fill up fast.We were right. We checked out five motels, before we finally found a vacancy in the small town of Cache Creek, BC.
When we were leaving the drags, I told Logan we had to go get a room, and I needed some more cash. He asked me where we were going, and I told him Cache Creek.He thought that was pretty funny, having to go get some cash in Cache Creek.
When we booked our room, the guy told us it was the last one he had, so we were lucky. We checked in and jammed back to the races for a while. They shut down at 5:00, and we decided to ride to Logan Lake BC, about an hour away, so Logan could see the town that was named after him.
We caught rain on the way there, but no big deal. Although, being a mining town, the roads were muddy. By the time we arrived, the bike looked like 50 miles of bad road.
We settled in for the night, and I'm sure I was asleep hours before Logan, as he stayed up to watch his favorite show, “Monster Garage”.When we got up in the morning, he told me all about it, it was the one where they turn a cop car into a doughnut machine.He though it was hilarious..
I ripped down the road to the A&W and grabbed some breakfast for us.We ate in our room, then loaded up the bike and got ready to head out.Logan was really stoked about the coming day, as we were headed back to Vancouver to take in “Playland”, a huge fair with all the scare-the-crap-out-of-you rides.
Logan decided on an alternate route back to Vancouver, so we headed north of Cache Creek to the HWY 99 junction and headed west.
This is an awesome windy highway through some of the most beautiful mountains in the world, but I've never been on it at this time of year (early May). We were surprised when we got passed Lilloet, rolling up into the mountains. There was still 2 feet of snow piled up on the side of the highway. It was chilly, so we stopped, and donned on our electric vests for the rest of trip.
We were warmed up and back on the road enjoying the snow covered surroundings, instead of grimacing at the cold.
We blew through Whistler, home to the 2010 Olympics, around noon, but Logan wanted no part of stopping there, since we were only two hours from Playland.
The windy “Sea to Sky” highway from Whistler to Vancouver is a blast on a bike, but we were on a mission. We arrived in Vancouver about 1:30, and when we came through the Massey tunnel, and Logan saw the Roller Coaster, he started clapping his hands, and slapping me on he back.He was pumped !!You gotta remember, he lives in a town with only 250 people, and one small playground for the kids to play at.This was a HUGE deal…We got in to the park just before 2:00 p.m. and we road every ride in that moved, some three or four times.Logan's favorite was the old wooden roller coaster, the oldest one still in operation in the world. It was scary fast, as well as giving you the added rush of watching the old wooden structure bend and creek, at every turn.He tried his hand at rock climbing, and did awesome for his very first try at it.
We went on a ride called the Hellavator..What a rush, this thing blasts off going straight up like a rocket, about 100 feet up, then freefalls back to earth at 200 MPH.At the top, you are weightless for a few seconds.
When we got off, I asked him, “What did you think?”
He said, “It was fun, but not fun enough to do it again !”
I think his guts were still at the top, along side mine. He told me, “I think I know why they call it the Hellavator, it's like an elevator, but it feels like HELL !” He's 8 years old, I laughed my ass off.
Finally at 7:00 p.m. they booted us out of the place. We made our way out to the parking lot, and got our cool weather gear on for the half hour ride to the ferry. We pulled into the parking lot, where you line up for the boat, parked the bike, and walked over to the village of Horseshoe Bay, where Logan says they have the best fish 'n' chips in the world.
We sat out on the patio of one of the local eateries, watching the boats come and go, eating fish 'n' chips, while we waited for our 9:00 p.m. boat back to the island.It was going to be a late night. The boat doesn't arrive in Nanaimo until 10:30. This time it was behind schedule and we didn't load on board until 10:00.
I spoke to my wife on the phone, telling her we would not be home tonight. We planned to spend the night in Port Alberni, because it was going to be so late.She told me to fill him full of his favorite hot drink, French vanilla cappuccino, to keep him awake for the last leg of our road trip.
The ferry docked in Nanaimo about 11:15, and we were off on our last one hour ride to Port Alberni.It was unreal warm, and a beautiful night.
Logan thought it was kool rolling off the boat, as there was a bunch of other bikes coming home from the races, and motorcycles get priority loading and unloading on the ferries, so we all fired up at the same time to blast down the loading ramp.Hogs firing up inside an enclosed area, while hundreds of people trapped in their SUVs watched in awe. That gets your blood going, and Logan felt it too, waiving at all the ladies in their cars who were checking him out on the back of our hog, surrounded by a bunch of Angels.
We arrived in Port Alberni at 12:30 a.m., at my buddy Nick's house, where I keep the bike, and crawled into bed. I drifted off to sleep talking about all the elements of the trip. Logan's favorite was the day at Playland. My favorite was hanging out with my best buddy, Logan.
Can't wait to do it all over again in the fall…..
