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July 24, 2014
Day 6 - Kalispell, MT to Great Divide Inn, Yoho National Park, BC (Thr 7/24/14)
7/24/14
Today, I will try to make it to Banff, B.C. in Canada.
Update: I am alive and well and resting peacefully at the Great Divide Inn in Yoho National Park, British Columbia, Canada.
Starting Odometer: 16,357
Ending Odometer: 16,705
Miles Driven Today: 348.0
Miles Driven This Trip: 2,053.7
Here's a rough map of where I drove today.
In the morning, I'm awake. I set an alarm now. I've learned so much from riding with these guys for just 2 days there aren't words. One of the main thing is to get up and get your ass out of bed and get rolling before 10:00 a.m. If you can get in 100 miles before noon, your day looks so much better.
So, I'm awake...moving about...when Nick knocks on my door. "Come on, Rob...you riding with us today?"
"I can't man. I'm going to break north for Banff. But you guys have fun. I loved riding with y'al . Keep the bottom side down."
And with that, Nick and the rest of the gang ride away into the sunset. They were so cool, there just aren't words. It's so nice to not have to lead, for a change. Riding with them was so nice. All you have to do is follow, and that's big when you've been on the road for a while. To just sort of not worry about the GPS, the maps....to just say "You guys go ahead...I'll bring up the rear."
So much fun. Such a beautiful ride with these guys. So happy to have met them on the road. And, maybe it seems like I didn't know them well, but you have to understand that friendships forged on the road are most closely like those formed in battle. We became very close, very quickly.
So that, after 2 days of riding with them, I was truly sad to see them ride away. But I've decided to turn north and head up into Banff. I want to hit Banff, Jasper, and then get over to Prince George...it gets fuzzy after that.
So, they take off, and now I'm on my own again.
Mail. I've got to mail these letters I've been carrying around in my gear for the last week.
This life lesson is all about task avoidance. I'm through with it. I'm solving problems now. I'm taking the reigns of my life back.
Find the Post Office...go down there and buy some stamps and envelopes. Come back into the room, get all my bills ready to be paid...they're all ready to go, except for that one letter to Canada. I've still got to pay this bill for $109 for crossing a double yellow line in Hundred Mile House 3 years ago. And I've never paid it. I'm deathly afraid of crossing into Canada and being tossed into prison like the Midnight Express.
That would suck so bad. I haven't been to jail once this year, and I think about getting thrown back into the pokey. It's a bad feeling. A very bad feeling.
So I call the number on the ticket from Canada and pay the bill over the phone. "Now...this will take a few days to process, but I'll just make a note in here so Mary will see that you've already paid."
And I'm thinking..."Mary? Like there's only one lady in Canada that handles these things? Lord God."
"Look....when I get to Canada today...when I cross the border....I'm concerned about this ticket that I've just paid...It's been outstanding for like 3 years....Is there going to be a warrant for my arrest?"
"Oh no. We don't do things like that up here. We handle things very differently than you do in the U.S."
"Oh. OK. Thanks."
So, this is a big weight off of my shoulders. I've paid all of my tickets...and I probably won't go to jail when I get to Canada.
When I go outside, everyone has left except for one other bike in the parking lot. I hop on my bike, swing by the Post Office in Kalispell, MT to mail my letters, and then take off out of town heading roughly north.
I made a reservation last night/this morning at about 1:00 a.m. for a room near Banff, and I figure the ride will take me about 250 miles today, sot it won't be a crazy long day or anything. This will be my shortest day of the trip so far, and I'm ready for it, honestly.
The problem with being on the road every day is that there's never enough time to get everything done. There's just too much to do in one day, and not enough hours in the day to get it all done. I'd love to just take a day and relax and catch up, but I won't afford myself this simple luxury. Must keep marching onward or I won't make it to my destination.
So nice of the lady at the hotel last night to give us rags, a bucket of hot soapy water, and a hose. Like, we all washed our bikes in the parking lot in the shade of the Liar Tree, with a ceramic face going "shhhhh". I've never had anyone greet me so warmly on a bike. The Hilltop Hotel (sic) is what it was called. Excellent place.
Now, rolling out of town towards Whitefish. Roughly north. It's roughly an hour to the Canadian border. Now, Montana is a beautiful state. Indescribably beautiful. Up here, there's more gently rolling green hills. Of course, always the stunning Rocky Mountains backdrop. But rolling north now towards the border. Every so often, I stop to shoot a picture or twelve. Rolling north....trying to get up to Banff now.
The radar detector won't work, and this is deeply troubling to me. Oddly, it quit working the same time that my bike failed to start yesterday. So, it doesn't make sense really. I try to piece together what would explain the fact that the DC outlet on the bike appears to have ceased functioning. A fuse? A bad socket? A bad radar detector? I can't really figure out how to isolate what the issue is. Finally, I decide that what I could do is ask a total stranger to plug my radar detector into their car and tell me if it works.
But before I go that far, I decide to try turning it on. Now, as long as I've had it, I've never turned it own. I didn't know how to change the volume on it until after I got a speeding ticket. Now, I turn it on, and it works. That's what the problem was. Doh!
Robert M. Pirsig actually talks about this in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Don't trick yourself into believing you know something to be true, when it isn't true.
So, the reason the bike would' start is because I left my headlight on. The reason the radar detector quit working is because it probably turned itself off when the battery died. Or I turned it off in my panic to start the bike.
As I get to the border, the line to cross into Canada is insanely long, and a bike comes by me, goes down a frontage road, bypassing this long line of cars, and pulls into a package liquor store on the U.S. side of the border. I follow, hoping to cut ahead in the line.
"How'd you get behind us? You left ahead of us?"
"I think maybe I stopped to take some pictures?" I'm not sure who these people are, or how they think they know me. It's very confusing. I just just stay home and not venture out unaccompanied like this.
"Do you think I could pull out there and cut in line?" I ask.
"I'm sure you could. They wouldn't mind." They're canucks. Peg and Gary.
"I've never seen the line this long," he offers. "They must only have one lane open."
"You left the parking lot before us this morning. How did we get ahead of you?"
Slowly, it dawns on me...we stayed at the same hotel last night. They were the last bike the parking lot when I left.
Now, we're talking about our little adventures. I re-leaned on this trip not to brag about my little adventure. Because I've met people on this trip on bikes from Texas, Florida, New Jersey, Washington...you name it. You learn not to brag, because someone will point out that they're been on the road WAYYY longer than you have. And that's embarrassing. So, mostly I just tell people I'm driving to Alaska, and let them make of it what they will.
Peg and Gary have been riding around down in Glacier, and I forget where else, but they live in Canada somewhere. They're telling me roads to take, and I'm listening...."Advice on the road are pearls of wisdom or gifts from heaven" Something like that. Gary tells me to turn right at the Radon Hot Springs and go into Banff via the "Kootenay" park, whatever that is.
So, we sit in line together, very slowing inching forward towards the Canadian border. We're talking the whole time. He's telling me I can follow them and they'll show me when to turn off, which is nice. I mean, I have a GPS, but it's always nice to have some locals help you out with directions, planning,....anything really.
Before we get to Immigration into Canada, I panic.
"What do I need to show him? Just my passport?"
"Yeah...just give him your passport. He'll ask you some simple questions. That's all."
I present him with my passport.
"When's the last time you were in Canada?"
"About 3 years ago."
"Where did you go then?"
"I drove up from SF to Alaska and back."
"Do you have anything on you to defend yourself? Pepper spray, mace, guns?"
"No. My only form of defense is to outrun whoever is after me."
And with that, he waves me into the country. Doesn't put me in jail. Doesn't ask to see my driver's license, insurance, registration, title, etc. Just waves me on through.
I wait on the other side for Gary and Peggy. They come up, and I'll follow them through British Columbia until they show me where to turn. But, about 12:00 noon or so, we pass this little coffee shop and they motion for me to pull over.
"We want to buy you lunch," they offer.
"Well you twisted my arm," I laugh.
Now, we're in this quainty little coffee shop, eating lunch, and swapping war stories about being on the road. Apparently, there was a ruling last week on some native tribe living in Canada. Unlike all of the other Indian tribes, this tribe never signed any treaties with the Canadians. Now, they're claiming their ancestral tribal lands as their own. And the Canadian Supreme Court just sided with them. Which is pretty cool, it seems.
Also, the Keystone Pipeline is supposed to carry oil from the Oil Sands up in Alberta. They're waiting on that to get built, obviously.
After lunch, I foliow them a bit, and they wave me off at my turn. I follow their advice and, after driving north for an hour or two, turn right at the Radon Hot Springs, into the Kootenay National Park.
The park is amazing but, as soon as I get into it, it starts to rain on me.
I'm driving through a blinding, freezing July rain in Kootenay National Park. The speed limit is 90 km/hr (56 mph). I'm going 86 mph in a bone-chilling rain. The lady in the box said that It would take "at least an hour and a half" to get through the park. I'd wager money I made i through in less time than that.
The scenery is just amazing...I'm trying to think of what the mist rising off the water reminds me of....I think it was the "High Mother of the Gods" River in Peru. I finally emerge from the Kootenay Park (COOT' n AY) and I'm on some major interstate now, headed roughly north towards Lake Louise.
I'm not sure what the name of the hotel I'm booked in is called. Or where it is, exactly. This is the curse of the age of technology. All of these details escape me, but they're in my phone, of course.
The problem with technology is that you come to rely on it. And the iPhone has a brain. It knows when I really need it to work. And, in these times, it shuts down.
I know that, generally speaking, the hotel room I booked is somewhere past Lake Louise. But I'm not sure what the name of it is. Or the address. Or the phone number. But I can't call, because my phone is bricked again. So, I can't see any of this info I need to find a place to get out of the rain.
Now, I've spent a lot of time beating up on my Garmin Montana 600, but I will say this for it. That thing is rock solid. It's waterproof, and it will run all day on a single charge. If I could just put the address of my hotel room into that Garmin, then I'd be on my way to a warm hotel room. But instead, I'm driving down the interstate in a driving rain, looking for anything to get me off of the interstate. A gas station would be nice. But no...all I see are signs for rest stops. Scenic overlooks. Even a "Temple". Like...thank God the Hindu's have a place to worship. How about a fucking gas station, people?
I'm afraid I might lose my hands. I imagine explaining to my grandkids why I don't have hands. "No...I wasn't born this way...it's just that Canada doesn't have any places to buy gas in their country."
Finally, a sign for Lake Louise. And there's a gas station. I pull off, pull into the gas station, and get out of the rain. I drop all of my shit and walk into the gas station like an insane man, on escape from the mental ward.
But I'm in good company. Two other Harley riders did the same thing as me. Abandon their bike at an open pump. Fuck the rest of the world. People are pulling up, buying gas, and going on about their lives. We are 3 frightened lambs, commiserating around a coffee put, cursing the rain, the gods, and the Dimocrats.
I ask them to charge my iPhone, but it's dead and not working. So I go to a hotel in Lake Louise, open my laptop to discover a name and address for my hotel reservation. Now rolling north in the driving rain again towards my hotel. I pass a hotel called the Stage Coach Great Divide Inn with a Vacancy sign out front. The GPS takes me 5 miles up the road in a steady dull cold rain and an empty town of Field, British Columbia. And a closed Information Center.
Slowly, I realize that the Stage Coach Great Divide Inn I just passed in the driving rain 5 miles back was, in fact, my hotel. Race back to the hotel in the freezing cold rain, tired, exhausted. So glad to be out of the rain. But there' some confusion over the reservation. Somehow, I made it for tomorrow night. I hate Hotels.com so much there aren't words. 30 minutes later, they've finally changed my reservation to tonight. I'm sipping hot coffee, trying to save my hands in the next room.
A guy comes in on a Harley and asks me how far it is to "Salmon Arm", but does't like my answer. "Dude...it's about 3 hours from here."
He's anxious to get out of the rain also. And he ends up being my roommate for the night, as I've rented a "shared room" for the night for $38 a night, which I'm pleased to do so I don't burn through my cash so fast.
Tomorrow, the forecast is for more rain, so I'm skipping Jasper, and heading west across the plains towards Prince George. I plan now to take Highway 37 (I think) up from Prince George, through Kitwanga, and up the Deese Lake Highway.
I get a scalding hot shower and it's so nice to have a hot shower after riding all day in the freezing rain there aren't words. You'll never know how nice it is.
Starting tomorrow, I'll start trying to put up some bigger numbers. I'll be riding 400 and 500 miles a day instead of 300 miles a day. I've got to get moving or I'll never make it to the North Pole.
Posted by Rob Kiser on July 24, 2014 at 10:13 AM
Comments
Hey boss! Sounds like quite the adventure so far. Got your rain riding face on, eh? 😁😁
Be safe, thanks for the updates! We are leaving Sequim tomorrow, headed back to CO and work...
Posted by: Steve on July 25, 2014 at 10:16 AM
Stevo - You're the only guy I know who's somehow still riding more than I do...and I'm not even in the United States! Glad to hear you're keeping the bottom side down. When I get back, we'll have to go for beers to catch up on war stories.
Rob K.
Posted by: Rob Kiser 
on July 29, 2014 at 2:27 AM