Fall Is a Great Time for a Solo Motorcycle Trip

I knew this trip was going to challenge me. Unseasonably warm at this time of year is still cold. But I think that’s why people travel solo. It’s interesting, you have to figure it out for yourself. Maybe we like that challenge. I hadn’t even made it 3 blocks from my house before I realized just how much of a challenge this was going to be. It took that long to realize that I was freezing… already.

I was faced with my first opportunity to back out. I could just turn around, get in my car, drive to my pads and wait with them for my teammates to show up. But I decided I was going through with it and that was that.

The first decision to be made was how to get through the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). The urban sprawl is real, folks. After some deliberations I decided to take the 401 super 10 lane highway. I hate riding a motorcycle on that highway, but I figured I might as well just get through the city and then enjoy smooth ridings from there. And, honestly, it wasn’t too bad.

I made it through and decided to stop at the first rest station outside of Toronto, which was in Kitchener. From there I would figure out the rest of my route. But just as I was exiting the GTA I came across my first horseman: Grooved Roads. At higher speeds (I was doing about 110 km/h, so not crazy) they grab your tires and make small corrections to your wheels. Bear in mind that motorcycle tires are not flat on the bottom but rounded, meaning only about ¼” of surface area contacts the road. This makes motorcycle tires very sensitive to the small grooves.

The reason grooves are so hated is that they mimic the exact feeling of losing traction. Your bike keeps feeling like it wants to slide out from under you and your instinct is to fight it and hold on tighter. The real trick, though, is to let the grooves do what they’ll do to your wheel. The movements are small in the grand scheme of things and the real risk is that you will overcorrect. Not the most desirable situation on a solo motorcycle trip.

For the next few kilometers, I tried every trick I knew to not hold on too tight and make it to the rest stop. It wasn’t too bad but consider the whole “groovy” explanation to be foreshadowing.

Sunshine and Rain

While drinking a nice hot coffee and letting my knees thaw out, I started mapping out the next leg of the journey. I wanted to avoid cities and major highways like the plague. This trip was about two things: solitude and foliage. I decided to go to Sarnia and cross the border there and found a relatively straightforward route. However, after getting lost a few times I decided to put the GPS through my helmet speaker system with the music I was playing. I typically would hate to do this, but I had a schedule that day, The game was that evening, and I had to reach town, check into a hotel, and then get to the rink in time for warm-ups (ha-ha, “warm,” right?).