Tour Day Georgian Bay

Here’s our better late then never report.

Now Rick has posted his, this was drafted so I will just post anyways!

Rick Clancy (Golonghardman) and Tobin DeCou took to the roads for our second tour of the season.

First tour, back in early May, consisted of riding from Old Chelsea to Bancroft On (255KM) on day one and then we split up and Tobin went 110 KM to Peterborough and Rick went 210 KM to Port McNicoll On. That went well and hurt a little so early in the season. We had a great time.

This time, we decided to take more time and equip our bikes a bit more touring style.

Setting up our regular road bikes with saddle bags (attaching to break bolt and skewer).
We drove to Peterborough since Ann and I had a wedding to go to in Midland, Sat night right after this tour. So Rick would drive back to Ottawa on his own.

We planned our route, argued, changed our minds on our destinations and came up with a counter clock wise route around beautiful Georgian Bay.

We took to the roads thinking of taking this easy, touring style. Yeah well, BRR mentality kicked in soon enough and off we where working hard at maintaining a 30 KM average, with loaded bikes don’t forget.
We stayed near Casino Rama on night one, great buffet! No time for gambling.

We found great roads all to ourselves along the way.

Night 2, Rick found us what looked like a great place, a campground in the middle of no wear, we rented a cabin. My bed was more like a hammock (so I slept on the floor) and we had 2 couches in there, one that both of us refused to sit on, a bit to much history on that couch. Everyone where very friendly, but a bit simple. We had a great time playing air hockey, Tobin kicked GLHM’s ass! It was intense! The next day, we make our way thru Sudbury to the nice paper town of Espanola . Nice place, but “smells like ass sometime” according to the Hotel staff (young girl)! We stopped to eat just out of Sudbury at a Chinese buffet and then the skies opened up. Did it even rain hard, we where just happy to be inside. Eventually we finished and rode out in a light rain trying to take advantage of a rare tail win that the storm brought in for us. We got on a back road for a while, thinking this would be nicer then the big highways. NOT! With light rain still coming down and the roads being as wet as can be, when the truck would go by us we would get lost in a cloud of rain mist and almost blown off the road! Rick and I had to stay apart from each other because of the rooster tail, but this made the trucks more in a hurry to finish passing both of us and they pulled in right in front of my wheel, making me disappear into the mist and giving me a shot of adrenalin every time. As Rick said, you just hope they never get it wrong….

The next day, we had our shortest planned, easiest day yet. Yeah right! We had 118 KM across Manitouly Island to do before 1:30 PM for the fairy to Tobermory. We figure we had plenty of time, not counting on our breakfast taking to long, huge hills to climb and a crazy head winds coming off the Great Lakes . After much suffering and great teamwork, we made it with 12 minutes to spare. Once on the fairy, I spent $16 on good cafeteria food, Rick spent $26 and ate the whole thing!







Above, Rick hanging over the rails and the guy next to him never even reacted!
Once in Tobermory, we went for a swim and rescued a family of 4 and a dog of a not so smart canoe ride in rough waters. We where heros! The next day we had a great ride to Wassaga beach. The local “crazy women” from a small town fell in love with Rick and his “nice bum” as we where waiting for our breakfast. To funny, I gave them space and spent as much time away from the table as I could. No picture, sorry Rick, you’ll need to rely on your memory. Wassaga was great, lot’s of people watching and friendly tourists. Not a busy time.

Along the way, Rick used so much lube that it went right thru his short shamy and onto his seat!

We rode 1000 KM in 6 days, kept an average of just under 30 KM/hr and had a great time!

Rick had either bacon or sausage once to twice a day and never ran out of energy! Tobin should learn from this…

Not one single flat between us. Love my Kenda tires!

If anyone wants all the route details and so on, just ask.

We should try to do something again like this next Year!