This story originally appeared in RoadRUNNER Magazine. For the fourth time in one day, I am mangling the pronunciation of town names in Nova Scotia. Is it Why-COCO-maw or Why-COG-ama? Anti-GONE-ish or An-TIG-anish. Meredith and I have been motorcycling in Canada for three days, but I haven’t gotten any better at this. Meanwhile our traveling companions, Jimmy and Janet, are wondering if another strategy might serve me better than my current foot-in-mouth approach.
“You know,” Jimmy suggests gently, “As my grandmother used to say: Better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid, than to open it and remove all doubt.”
His logic is impeccable, of course. But a life of silent and seeming perfection would be so much less interesting, don’t you think? And so I go boldly forward, butchering the local dialect in the tradition of traveling Americans everywhere.
“Why yes!” I boldly pronounce in the next restaurant. “I’d just love the soup du jour of the day!”
Fortunately, everyone we meet on this eight-day, 1,834-mile trip from New Hampshire to Nova Scotia and the famed Cabot Trail are unerringly nice in the face of my frequent indiscretions. This corner of Canada is like that: It’s a place where tourism, farming, and the hardscrabble fishing life exist in equal measure; where picture-perfect oceanside villages alternate with rough and odorous harbors; and where 1,500-foot peaks amidst the Cape Breton Highlands drop sharply down to their inverse—bogs and unending mud flats that are home to the most dramatic tides on earth.
And it’s a place where everyone—from the welcoming innkeeper to the forklift operator hefting tons of dredge gear—is ready with a quick smile and ample time for conversation. It’s a Celtic culture, and as William Butler Yeats once wrote about Ireland, these very contrasts form a kind of terrible beauty. And a terrible beauty is the best kind of all.
On this trip Meredith and I are riding a new Indian Roadmaster, a reincarnation of a century-old motorcycle that now bristles with amenities never imagined by Mr. Hendee when the brand was launched in 1902, including heated seats and grips, cruise control, Ride Command seven-inch LCD screen, and most important, 36 gallons of storage in the capacious side bags and top case. This is sufficient even for the 800-page “Game of Thrones” book Meredith has inexplicably decided to bring. (Who needs underwear when you have Jon Snow?)
Meanwhile our companions, Jimmy and Janet, are on another great touring mount: a Honda ST1300. Before departing from their house in Enfield Center, New Hampshire, Jimmy gives me a tour of what he calls the “Garage Majal”: a cavernous barn that contains the complete or recognizable remnants of at least eight motorcycles, near as I can count. As a kind of nostalgic homage to my Indian, Jimmy insists that I blast up the highway in front of his house on a few of his vintage bikes. It’s a delicious menu of ancient iron, and I first choose a Honda CL175 high-piper, the noise of the frenetic twin joyfully ricocheting off the dense woodlands. Then I switch to the piece de resistance: a six-cylinder Honda CBX, which bellows a complexity of mechanical noises I have never heard emanate from a motorcycle before. If this were on iTunes, I would buy a whole album. It’s that good.
Thus primed for our trip, and with the vintage bikes safely ensconced in the Garage Majal, we embark on a lovely 140-mile ride to the Ferry in Portland, Maine, through forests dotted with lakes, some of which formed the backdrop to the famed movie, “On Golden Pond.” Upon arrival at the docks in Portland, Maine, we submit our passports and paperwork, and are admitted to the parking lot, which turns out to be a kind of purgatory: It’s 95 degrees, with 90 percent humidity, and the ferry is delayed. So we can’t move forward, but nor can we go back, through customs. We end up getting finely sautéed, as the blistering sun beats down upon us and 19 other slow-cooking motorcyclists, while the cagers enjoy their air conditioning and look at us with a mixture of puzzlement and pity.
But when motorcyclists are presented with such dire conditions, they generally start yakking about important issues of the day, like aftermarket exhaust systems, gas prices, and who’s atop the leaderboard in MotoGP. You can’t complain too much when you’re surrounded by the brethren.
The ferry docks in Yarmouth late at night, but fortunately Meredith has booked a hotel just a few blocks away, on the waterfront. The next morning we switch the big Indian over to kilometers, to better observe—or moderately violate—the speed limits. (We eventually manage to survive with no incarceration or even infractions.)
Our first stop this day is Digby, on the Bay of Fundy, where tidal differences can reach 35 feet. We stop at the waterfront park, in the shadow of a lighthouse, for a quick coffee. Jimmy runs a country store in Enfield Center, New Hampshire, and is endowed with the prerequisite for that job: the gift of gab. In every restaurant and inn, he is regaling the proprietor with stories—some of which are actually true. On this day he’s making proclamations about the weather, which he says is a classic example of a “Mackerel sky,” as in: “Mackerel sky, mackerel sky. Never long wet and never long dry.”
I’m thinking he made that one up, but I don’t care: The morning’s rain has passed, and it’s not raining now, so it must be true. And I’m happy for it.
But where does he get this stuff, anyway?
That afternoon we visit Annapolis Royale (see sidebar), and trace the roads along Cobequid Bay, a vast, red mudflat at low tide. Nova Scotia tides, we’re told, operate on the principle of the world’s largest bathtub, swishing back and forth in the innumerable bays and inlets, threatening to spill out the sides. Whatever child is playing at the far end is having a particularly fun day when we were there, as this particular bathtub had sloshed itself dry at our end.
Part of my mission here, besides the great motorcycling, is to eat a large crustacean. With this in mind, we go down the long, one-way road to Halls Harbor, a tiny village on the Bay of Fundy. I go to the town’s only restaurant, order my lobster, and to my great surprise, am proffered the live specimen in a small container, which I am to carry around the corner and hand to a heavily tattooed guy who will drop it in a pot of boiling water. There is thus no question it will be fresh, for just moments ago it was ready to sever my index finger.
I love lobster, but don’t eat it often, and consequently am not very good at it. Even a bib cannot help me, so I retire to the beach to sully myself in isolation. What follows is a cannibalistic ritual that results in shells and scraps of meat scattered across me, my gear, and the rocky shore. To finish, I wash myself in the retreating surf. For some reason, low-flying seabirds find us to be of interest for the remainder of the day.
We have miles to go before our night’s lodging in Antigonish, and need to make time, and so opt for the inland highway for a stretch. Nova Scotia is like this: trace the coast when you have time; hop on the nearby, parallel highway when a reclining chair and fermented beverages beckon. It’s a convenient ripcord you can pull almost anytime, made even better by the giant twin, which happily rumbles to the far horizon, making sweet music at occasionally supralegal speeds. I could get used to this.
We cross the Canso Causeway, considered the official gateway to Cape Breton Island and the famed Cabot Trail, and soon after visit Christy’s Lookout, a simple pullout with a panoramic view of St. Georges bay. We know we’re on the “Celtic Coast” when we stop for an egg sandwich in Mabou, a scenic harbor that happens to be celebrating its gaelic history with a “Caleigh:” a combination of music, dance, and parade down main street. I love Gaelic, but as far as I’m concerned they went way overboard with the consonants, causing me to butcher yet another piece of the local dialect when I say “calley” instead of the Gaelic “KAY-lee.”
As we wend our way in and out of tiny bays, it occurs to me that these are Indian Roadmaster roads—curvy enough to be fun, but no so curvy as to provide fireworks from dragging the giant, bazooka-like exhausts. The bike handles admirably for its size and girth, but I’m also developing a sixth sense of the touch down point, so these parts-dragging incidents are increasingly rare.
Nearing our night’s lodging in Whycocomagh, we detour into the famed Glenora Distillery, North America’s first single malt “whisky” maker. Jimmy and I visit the gift shop, wistfully eyeing the bottles of rare and expensive spirits, which I figure: 1) Won’t fit in our already jammed luggage; and 2) We shouldn’t be drinking anyway.
Jimmy sees how forlorn I have become over this turn of events, and so offers another piece of unassailable logic: with some concentrated effort, he figures we could probably get to the bottom of that bottle over the course of the next four evenings, when we’ll be staying in one location at the base of the Cabot Trail.
Because we’re stout and indefatigable fellows, we agree to try. After some re-arranging of baggage, a bottle of 12-year-old “House of Alister Mackenzie Single Malt Whisky Special Reserve” finds a home in the enormous trunk of the Indian.
A recent “New York Times” article highlighted remote Cape Breton Island as a place to retreat from the current political climate—and pretty much everything else. It occurs to me that this applies to motorcycling as much as anything. Here, separated from the U.S. mainland by a couple hundred miles of ocean, there is a remarkable absence of things—especially traffic.
The Cabot Trail itself is a serpentine, 186-mile loop of largely cliff-edge pavement that is so perfect for motorcycles that most riders agree that it deserves to be done twice—once in each direction. And for this, the focus of our trip, we’ve booked four nights in Whycocomagh at the Keltic Quay (see sidebar), a spectacular waterfront house with a kitchen, grill, and fire pit, which we immediately identify as the perfect spot to discuss matters of the day with our newfound friend, Alister. It will be nice to leave luggage behind and travel unencumbered for a few days.
I have a bit of a ferry fetish, and we start the day’s counterclockwise loop with the cable-drawn Englishtown Ferry, which lasts only a few minutes, but makes a fun launch point for the famed trail. We pass the scenic Wreck Cove, and climb the switchbacks of Cape Smokey—one of the few spots that demand first gear with this torque-monster of a motorcycle.
Cape Breton also happens to contain a national park, with a vast, untrammeled interior and plentiful hiking. At the entry kiosk, we’re waved through without having to pay admission, a gift in honor of Canada’s 150th anniversary.
By late afternoon, we’re getting tired and hungry, and need to make a decision: Meat Cove, or no Meat Cove? (See sidebar.) The trip would add a total of 36 miles to an already long day. We elect to go, but despite signs to the contrary, all restaurants en route are closed. In the end we’re happy to discover that the stunning Meat Cove restaurant, perched on a cliff edge at the northern terminus of the road, is open and has been recently renovated. The food is great, and of course every stop is made better by Jimmy, who’s near-constant storytelling can melt even the most officious waitress. It ends up being a highlight of the trip.
Many motorcyclists have taken photos of the highway down toward Cheticamp, which dips, rises, and grazes the ocean like some imagined movie of a perfect motorcycle road. There are times when the hype surrounding a place equals the actual experience, and this is one such time. It’s like California’s Big Sur, without the motor homes. From there we carve our way slightly inland, the late afternoon light ricocheting off the luminescent Margaree Valley, across vast stretches of verdant farmland.
Back at the Keltic Quay, I begin to make a fire in the outdoor pit to celebrate a remarkable day of riding. Being a coastal Californian, I don’t often have occasion to make a roaring fire. On the other hand, fire is a way of life for Jimmy where he lives in rural New Hampshire, where temperatures routinely dive to the single digits. He can barely contain himself at my ineptitude, and soon jumps up with near explosive energy. He constructs a kind of log house, with precise layering of progressively sized sticks, and we are soon sitting in front of a fire that could be viewed all the way to Halifax.
It occurs to me that everyone should have a Jimmy on their motorcycle trips. I’m glad to have him on mine.
Every motorcycle journey needs a rest day—or at least the intention of one. Jimmy and I don’t really understand the concept, so we spend ours riding 225 miles on the Cabot Trail, in the opposite direction of the previous day’s loop. The wives, anticipating this experience will be, well, a lot more motorcycling, elect to go for hike instead.
It ends up being a lovely contrast to the first day, when we tried to investigate every nook and cranny along the route. Back home, I teach motorcycle safety at a local community college, and I’m pretty picky about my cornering lines, road etiquette, and just about everything else. Turns out, Jimmy rides just like I do. So I spend the day in a state of near meditation, following his lines and braking points.
It occurs to me that you could do laps of this thing like an enormous Laguna Seca—complete with corkscrew, at Smokey Mountain. By 2:30, we’re pushing for home. There are great and weighty matters to be resolved, like “What we should grill for dinner?” And besides, we have a date with Alister.
In the end, it’s one of the most “restful” days I can imagine….
Don’t for a moment let yourself be lulled into a false picture of this place, for it has the history, the industry, the loss, and pathos that speaks otherwise. You may see gingerbread homes with cheerful magenta colors, but even that’s there for a reason (surplus paint from fishing vessels).
Perhaps nowhere is this juxtaposition more evident than our second-to-last stay, in Lunenberg, on the Lighthouse Route. It’s been called the best surviving British Colonial town in the world, earning it a UNESCO World Heritage designation. In deference to the tourist trade, there are plentiful shops selling the latest fashion accoutrements. But just down the hill, you’ll find a stark, Vietnam-memorial-style monument that chronicles the lives and ships lost in the fishing industry—with entries right up to the present day. Make no mistake: men and women are still risking their lives here, challenging the sultry and occasionally violent weather of this far-north port of call.
We find lunch on the historic waterfront in Shelburne, watching small craft come and go, as they have since the late 1700s. We then press on for Yarmouth, opting for the inland express route of Highway 103, where we’ll catch the ferry back to the mainland after another overnight stay (the once-daily ferry leaves at 8:30 am).
Back at the Lake Lawn Motel—where we started seven days and 1,500 miles ago—motorcyclists and bicyclists gather in front of their rooms, cracking beers and bottles of wine, and telling the requisite lies about epic rides, newfound roads, and their next adventures.
It occurs to me that, for days now, we’ve been in search of the real Alister MacKenzie. We never found the guy. But I’m pretty sure we found his spirit, in the idyllic towns, the steely fishing harbors, and the hardened but happy people of this amazing place.
It’s a remarkable motorcycling destination, perfect in its imperfection. If it were any more quaint, it wouldn’t be Nova Scotia. And we’re glad of that.
