Departing the ship brought me minor drama as I rolled off the car deck with great poise, and onto the dark and rainy ramp. On the centerline were wet wooden planks and as soon as my front tire left the steel grating and hit the slick wood I started drifting left and right up the ramp, legs flailing wildly to keep balance. I managed to keep the bike upright, but with much loss of dignity. As often happens after these moments, I heard the immortal words of Eurosport race commentator Carlton Kirby go through my mind, "...and he nearly got it very wrong indeed."
I rested for a couple hours at the BC Ferries terminal, lying down among the half-dozen bicyclists and hikers arrayed under the covered front of the building. The terminal opened at 5am and I purchased a ticket and was shuffled off into line. I cut ahead to join a group of motorcyclists and we were loaded on promptly to the front of the ferry. I stopped in line with a fellow on a beautiful ZX9R, which he said had 70,000km on it. Astonishing bike.
The ferry from Prince Rupert to Port Hardy is a new German-built vessel called the MV Northern Expedition. After I boarded and deposited my luggage in the rear "solarium" area, I got to watch the Captain and First Officer of the boat make fools of themselves as they loaded the tender after doing a waterline inspection. They couldn't seem to quite figure out how to secure it to the davit arm, and after 5 minutes of swaying back and forth from the hoist they eventually asked to disembark the tender and allowed a crew member to finish fiddling with it on his own. I offered him some consolation, "all that bother and they didn't catch any fish, eh?" The boat is new and it seems that they're all trying to get accustomed to it.
I bade farewell to my last vessel, the MV Taku. I didn't realize how much I would miss her. Take momentary notice of the open-ended solarium on the Taku's top deck, where I stayed for much of the journey.
This BC Ferry route is not quite as pretty as the Alaska Ferry, but still quite nice. Unfortunately it was continually misty so the views consisted of wispy fog and trees and water and more trees and more water and a fish and water and trees and so forth.
Let's instead focus on the MV Taku vs. the MV Northern Expedition. The MV Taku was built in 1963 and has a maximum displacement of 4,300 tons. It accommodates 450 passengers. The MV Northern Expedition is a newer boat built for 600 passengers, and has a displacement of 8000 tons. Its primary route is the Inside Passage, which is a 16 hour run in summer and an overnighter in winter. It is also completely and utterly inhuman in its design.
Let's begin with the solarium. The solarium on the Expedition is much shallower and exposed to the elements. As you can see, the deck is covered with rain water. The only way into the inner decks is by walking down the outer staircase, or through either exposed walkway to the rear. In short, it is not possible to leave the solarium and enter the ship in rainy weather without getting wet. It is also covered with seating fixtures. I do not know what sort of imbecile designed it this way, but it reminds me of room plans I have built on Ikea computer terminals by filling the screen with quantity 100 of Borkborkbork. To add injury to insult, where the Taku has ample space heating, the Expedition has none.
You will also notice how all of the seating is divided with rigid armrests. This is replicated throughout the whole ship. This leads me to the conclusion that German designers are extremely protective of personal space, or they really want to force people into cabins if they intend to sleep. Perhaps both are true. I counted a total of 10 places in this enormous ship where someone could actually lie down on a piece of furniture. 8 of those were benches in elevator lobbies, presumably intended for temporary seating with luggage.
This inhumanity is replicated throughout the ship in every conceivable way. Here is the hallway to the cabins, outfitted with wall-flush doors and metal security-card locks.
The stairways consist of an angular geometry of brushed steel and glass aside cheap brown motel carpets and faux-wood panel walls, with tile accents.
Apparently the proper place for the hoi polloi is in straight-back reclining chairs, where reclining means an generous additional incline of 10%. Periodically a radio-perfect voice would come on the PA and announce the passage of some or other moderately interesting historical fixture on the coast. Note the strict separation of physical space through the use of steel columns behind the window-facing seating. Vee must forbid that anyone lean forward against a seated passenger, thought the clever designers.
To diversify its revenue stream, the MV Northern Expedition has a cafeteria, a restaurant, and a paid $45 lounge at the bow of the ship. First the lounge, next the restaurant.
The restaurant is where I made a stand against this inhumanity and perversion of modern design. I had not eaten much in the morning, and as the critical hour approached I steeled myself for the struggle ahead. At 5:30PM the doors opened to the $30 dinner buffet, and I would have 3 hours to lay waste to the buffet. I executed my battle plan flawlessly, consuming food in the precise order necessary to cause maximum damage.
Plate 1
Caesar Salad with Shrimp
4 Pieces of Smoked Salmon
Cucumber Salad
Plate 2
Beets
Oriental Salad
Potato Salad
Plate 3
Fillet of Salmon
Steamed Vegetables
Veggie Ratatouille
Two Large Ravioli
Plate 4
Thai Pork and Rice
Chicken in Mushroom Sauce
Steamed Vegetables
Plate 5
Slice of Roast Lamb
Slice of Roast Beef
Potato Gratin
Plate 6
Caramel Custard Cake
Blueberry Pie
Plate 7
Cheesecake with Whipped Cream and Strawberries
Chocolate Mousse Cake
I washed it down with a cup of hot tea, laid back, and let my eyelids droop under the weight of this consumption. It was all I could do to not fall asleep before I paid my pittance at the cash register. I retired to the relative comfort of my tent and sleeping pad on the rear deck and slept there for several hours.
The ship landed in Port Hardy and I found a campsite not far from the ferry terminal. By chance I was joined by Darren, a motorcyclist I had spoken with briefly on the ferry, and we split the cost on a campsite. He passed through San Francisco yesterday and got the benefit of a guided tour, learning how to lane-split and be a proper California motorcycle hooligan. Here's a picture of my bike at camp there, the last shot I have of my bike in its final evolution of luggage outfitting.
In the morning I set out to ride the length of Vancouver Island. It's beautiful country, and it's also the closest I've been to active logging. Many of the areas being logged were right by the road.
It was an interesting coincidence that I had read "The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed" in the ferry gift and book shop. It's a well-written non-fiction book about one strange fellow's reaction to the ecological destruction perpetrated on the Queen Charlotte Islands (now Haida Gwaii) and other BC coastal islands. Grant Hadwin, a former logging engineer, took a chainsaw to a rare mutant "Golden Spruce" tree that had been left untouched and indeed was protected by the large logging company, MacMillan Bloedel. To him, felling the tree was a way to protest the hypocrisy of a company keeping a "pet tree" while clear-cutting millions of acres of pristine old-growth forest. Being not entirely of sound mind, he neglected to consider the tree's role in the native culture of Haida Gwaii, and their own complicated relationship with the logging industry. It was not unheard of for tribes to aggressively log areas out of spite if they are under their de-facto control, when subjected to claims from competing tribes. Hadwin was to be brought to trial, but disappeared under mysterious circumstances.
Logging has a visceral quality, whatever your opinions on forestry past or present. There's the sight of cut trees against living forest, the smell of sap in the air, the rumble of logging trucks, the roar of chainsaws, the muscular contest against earth and tree.
There is something undeniably impressive about seeing and hearing a 20 pound, 9 horsepower Stihl 084 ripping a 50" bar through a tree. Some of the old giants felled decades ago were so large the faller would cut a corridor through the trunk of the tree and cut blocks away from the inside. The sawdust and 2-stroke smoke and noise could be so thick at times that the first sign of the tree of the tree falling would be daylight appearing above.
At an individual level, logging is an manly art, a kind of dance that ends with the death of at least one of the partners. I wouldn't mind having a logging saw with an enormous bar and chain hanging on my wall. As riders we have to face the same contradiction that's embodied in the chainsaw; the thrill of being empowered against the destructive nature of our hobby. There's nothing quite like a fresh set of tires biting hard into the earth and ripping a rooster-tail of topsoil into the air as you catapult forward over roots and grass and rock. Looking at it that way, I can hardly begrudge the faller for falling in love with the saw and the wood.
But enough of the navel-gazing. Vancouver Island is pretty, it seems like a great place to go play.
I took the ferry across from Victoria to Vancouver, and crossed the border in the afternoon. I made a quick stop in Bellingham to pick up some parts I had shipped there. I was feeling good and pondered whether I should do an iron butt down to San Francisco or stop in Bend, OR. I decided to route by way of Bend. Once I headed that way, I ended up on a highway over Mt. Hood that was dark and narrow and cold and windy, which put me out of reasonable striking distance to San Francisco.
Once I got into the Deschutes Forest right outside Bend, I picked a random dirt road and set up camp. It was 3am on a clear night with no moon, and the stars shone bright and numerous. I stayed a day in Bend and caught up with friends and wandered about. It was a beautiful 80-degree day so I swam in the Deschutes River and ogled the town's perfectly sculpted bodies.
I broke camp the next day, wandered around a bit, and headed toward San Francisco in earnest. I passed Mt. Shasta in the early evening, and it was beautiful.
Two bros in a jacked-up Bronco threw me the horns as I cannonballed down the Dunsmuir grade south of Mt. Shasta. I passed them, threw the horns back, and kept the throttle wide open all the way to San Francisco. I hit a top speed of 89mph on the downhill and maintained between 70 and 80mph on the flats. Gas mileage was a record low of 38mpg.
Glad to be home.
