Our 2,300 miles long adventures

[PosterFZ6]

Originally I wanted to make a trip down to the Florida Keys, unfortunately bad timing and lack of good plan led to the necessity to change the destination to Montreal. This was our real first motorcycle touring adventure. We wanted to finish it big and make some memories before Daniel, my brother and my partner in crime for this adventure, was shipped away to US Army boot camp in the beginning of September.

We had no idea that our 3 day trip to Montreal would turn to a week long adventures stretching from Quebec province, Maine and Massachusetts.

In the end we have clocked 2,300 thousand miles on our bikes. Mostly we had fun days but there were also times when the thought of getting back on the bike made us sick, well not really. But it was harder and harder to climb on our bikes as we clocked more miles.

Anyway that's enough for the introduction. On we go with the first part of our trip.

Day 1- Trip to Montreal through the state of New York.

Due to our time constraint we had to opt out for the I-87. Riding a motorcycle on a boring interstate is akin to killing oneself by being bored to death. Unfortunately we had to opt out for speed and cruising at 85mph is really only doable on an interstate.

We left New York City in the late morning at about 8am. By the time we made our way outside of the city it might have been close to 9am.

Photo with mom before leaving.

Somewhere on I-87, in the mountains before Lake George

still on I-87, same spot

making a pit stop to pee and some photo opportunity

last 75 miles before the Canadian border

same spot


Finally in Canada... ugh...

arriving in "Downtown" of Saint Helen de Bagot

where are we ?!

Daniel pretending to smoke some rubber lol

St. Libore, we finally found our motel


Sidenote, we are back in NYC, but I didn't have a laptop with me during the trip so I am sharing the pics now.

tomorrow I will post part 2.

 

[VEGASRIDER]

LOL...nice donut!

By the way, thank Daniel for his service. Looks like he's a young and fit, I'm sure he will do fine in boot camp.

 

[motojoe122]

That pic from the street level is great!
Glad you guys made it home safe and had a good adventure, looking forward to meeting up again for another NJ ride:thumbup:

 

[PosterFZ6]

Part 2- Montreal

Not a lot of pictures of the bikes etc. but whatever.

Here's me excited to go to the MAC ( Montreal's Contemporary Museum of Art). Sadly it is closed on Mondays. Too bad I was really excited.

view from the McGill University's lawn.

view of Montreal from Mount Royal

freaking raccoon were there too

Cathedral Notre Dame

Chillaxing in the Old Port area of Montreal

Look what I have found!? Awesome.

Montreal's City hall Palace

POUTINE!!!

Montreal was fairly nice. Though I preferred Quebec City more than Montreal.

Ohh and Jesus Christ on a push bike. Poutine is just not good. Who wants to eat soggy fires? I knew what it was beforehand but I still didn't expect it to not like it.

 

[PosterFZ6]

Early in the morning we headed off to Lac de Saint Jean. I knew that the route wouldn't get scenic until we got on the Route 155.

From our motel to our destination was 5:30 hours of riding. Add stops for rest and some food I think we rode more than 7 hours. We did a lot of stops for photos so it wasn't really that bad.

The route was beautiful. the road was awesome to ride. Albeit we were scared of riding in the mountains and the scary mofo logging trucks.

2/3 of the way before reaching our destination, we were expecting some rain. Last thing I wanted to be in was to get caught up with a rain in the mountains I was riding for the first time.

Turns out that we actually were chasing the stormy weather. It passed us at one point and was ahead of us. To us it looked like it was actually chasing us. So we sped through the last part of the journey. To our surprise once we got to Lac de Saint Jean it started to rain.

We quickly found a motel to stay out of rain and rest after a whole day of riding.

few photos for you guys.

before leaving our motel in St. Libore

one of our GPS units died. We had to quickly stop in Drummondvile to visit Walmart and get a new unit. of course only like 1 person spoke English from the employees. I don't speak French one bit but I figured that GPS will pretty much be "le GPS" in french haha.

Walmart's layout is pretty much the same as in the States so luckily I had an easier time finding the units.

Also I made the mistake of going into the store while still wearing my Dainese Thorax Wave Pro. I got strange looks from everybody. I almost felt like a terrorist lol.

First sight of the mountains on route 155

the road ran along the river. scenery was beautiful. The pictures just don't do the justice.

everytime we stopped to take a picture around the next curve on the road the scenery was even more beautiful. Sadly we didn't have the time to keep on stopping everytime we saw a better spot for a picture.

daniel dressed like a true Canadian, haha

Daniel felt like climbing the wall

of course he had trouble going down. rocks were very loose and he almost fell.

I don't know who "tagged" the wall with this. NY does not "heart" NJ haha


the road was very quiet. you could hear echoes. of course we had to take advantage of the echoes by signing our renditions of " ohh Canada" national anthem.

my turn

pit stop to pee

we found a burnt down cabin along the road.

almost there. We were maybe 15 miles away from destination. At this point we started to feel the very first drops of rain.

We found a motel by the road. Of course this deep into Quebec we found ourselves with even less people speaking English. Somehow we managed to communicate with the proverbial arm and a leg.


next parts will come tomorrow. thanks for looking.

 

[PosterFZ6]

LOL...nice donut!

By the way, thank Daniel for his service. Looks like he's a young and fit, I'm sure he will do fine in boot camp.

We didn't do the donuts.

We have passed through a few villages in Quebec and you can see motorcycle donuts every few miles. I guess some Quebecoi teenagers are quite bored lol.

We didn't want to waste our tires on that. And to be honest we don't really even know how to do donuts in practice.

As a side note.

Before I bought the Fizzer I considered getting the new Vstrom 650. I kind of regret not getting it. I have went off road few times on the Fizzer during the trip and it was so much fun. I bet the V strom would have been awesome to ride.

 

[red06]

looks like alot of fun thanks for sharing

 

[rdrManny]

nice pictures with ride report..

 

[Erci]

Fantastic adventure!! :thumbup:
In my opinion, going to Canada instead of FL was a blessing in disguise. Even I87 is at least scenic and has some curves.. FL.. you'll see THE longest stretches of road without a single bend!! Just painful on a motorcycle.

Oh and poutine.. had it when I went to Canada first time many years ago. I'm still trying to forget that taste :rof:

 

[Motogiro]

Great report and thank you for taking us along!

 

[William]

Excellent report and photos! :thumbup:

That trip looks like it was an awesome adventure.

 

[TheRabbi]

This is so incredible, I'm so jealous of anyone that's even remotely near scenery like this! Dfw is SO flat!

 

[rivettm]

Makes me want to get out and ride even more.

 

[PosterFZ6]

Thanks guys for all the comments.

Honestly I was terrified of doing this, but with each day and with more miles on the clock I gained more confidence and I was more thirsty of the adventures.

Anyway back to the trip and the photos.

We decided to leave our motel early in the morning. We had maybe only 2 hours of sleep. We left at 6am.

Let me tell you one thing. We were not prepared for this trip. We realized that when we left so early in the morning. At that altitude and latitude the climate is a bit colder. The temperature was at 54 degrees F. Now add riding at 60-75mph and you have a few degrees lower.

I had a mesh jacket ( which was fine during the day hours, but so early in the morning I was freezing) Man do I which I brought my Rev'It Goretex winter jacket.

I had a 4 layers of clothing on me and 2 pairs of gloves. I was still freezing.

Thank god we had our rain gear with us. We had to stop after 30 minutes because we just couldn't ride any longer. We put on the rain gear which acted as a wind breaker. It did the trick. But we were still cold.

When we reached St. Jerome we stopped by a local MCDonald to get some hot tea. We warmed up and off we went.

before we left our motel

after we left all the towns. on route 172

soon we were in the middle of nowhere. It was very beautiful. pics don't do the justice.

one thing I noticed is that Canadians will haul pretty much anything. Crazy mofos.

the weather warmed up a bit by this time. we decided to take off some of the layers.

another thing I noticed was that there was a roadkill every 5 miles. scary stuff.
of course I had to illustrate this myself, haha.

to my surprise and luck we didn't see any moose

on the ferry

We went along the route 172 to Tadoussac. to cross we had to use the free ferry.

On the otherside of the crossing there was an outpost for sightseeing whales.

You see at this point the St. Laurant river mixes with the salt water of the Atlantic. You could spot whales with your naked eye there.

I myself saw a group of 4 whales. the outpost had a guide and sightseeing equipment for all visitors. I think the entrance fee was something like $5 for me and Daniel.

Daniel chillaxin a bit

We had a route planned. After the ferry we took route 138 to La Malbaie, there we took a very scenic 362 route known also as the Rue de Flueve(river road?) which ran til Baie-Saint Paul. It was very beautiful. We have a video from our gopro camera. I will try to edit it tomorrow and post it.

Some photos we took at the very end of the 362 route.

Tomorrow I will post a couple of videos we took while riding along the St. Laurent river and then almost the whole route of Rue de Flueve.


We have a lot of photos coming and videos too. I will try to post at least one day's worth of pics of our journey here everyday. We have 4 more parts coming.

 

[PosterFZ6]

I will post more after the weekend. My bro is shipping out on Monday so I wanna spend time with him instead of editing go pro video. Sorry guys this will have to wait.

 

[Motogiro]

I will post more after the weekend. My bro is shipping out on Monday so I wanna spend time with him instead of editing go pro video. Sorry guys this will have to wait.

Thank you and your brother for the adventure and great pics. Tell brother to be safe and thank you for serving.

 

[PosterFZ6]

Thank you and your brother for the adventure and great pics. Tell brother to be safe and thank you for serving.

thanks for understanding. I hope all of you have an awesome labor day weekend.

 

[lytehouse]

Very Nice ride, so glad you could do this with your brother before he has to leave.

chillaxin = chilling and relaxing, I'm guessing?

Gotta love the slang you kids come up with!

 

[PosterFZ6]

Very Nice ride, so glad you could do this with your brother before he has to leave.

chillaxin = chilling and relaxing, I'm guessing?

Gotta love the slang you kids come up with!

Well, I am not much for slang. in fact it's more of an inside joke between my brother an me.

We are recent immigrants. We have been in the states only about 11 years.

When we learned all of this slang English in school we thought it was hilarious. We never really use it unless we wanna poke fun at it.

 

[PosterFZ6]

Sorry for the delay. things just got kind of busy for me.

I will leave the video to the end.

So finally we have arrived in Quebec City. Of course we didn't have any reservations done so we had to depend on our TomTom's function to find nearby motels.

We spent good 2 hours going from one to another. They were all occupied!
I will skip the embarrassing story on how I peed all over the engine of my bike in the parking lot of a "supposedly" abandoned motel. Good times, lol!

old city walls

reconstructing the "titanic scene" haha

the gates to the old city

the fountain in front of the parliament

the next two photos are of the building where the city's garrison of troops are stationed, or so was I told

on our way down to the local bars to taste some good local beers

now we decided to find a nearby pizzeria place. We didn't want to keep drinking on empty stomachs. Pizza was very good. Might I even say that it was better than NYC's pizza.

then we went off to another local bar " Le Sacrelige" for another round of beers.

me drunkenly pondering on something, lol

i swear that wasn't me lol.

MORE PICTURES TO COME SOON. i HAVE TO LEAVE FOR A CLASS NOW.

update-more photos

so apparently Quebec province has a fast food franchise joints called St. Hubert. What do you know that's my name!

we relaxed a bit during the free concert of military music from around the world. Pretty cool!

then we went off to find our parked motorcycle in the old historical town. we passed by the fountain again

that's all for Quebec City.

Next batch of photos will be from our way down to Bangor, Maine to visit the Acadia National park.