I've had to work this week so this is the first chance I've had to post about the ride I went on last Sunday with a new group of fellas from GTAMotorcycle.com.
We started out from a parking lot in front of a Tim Horton's on Woodbine south of 16th Avenue in Markham. That's Bernard on the far left in the blue jacket, the fella with the serious back protection in the middle is Errol, while the person standing to the right of Errol is Ray. And that's Chris on the far right. The other fellas are going to have to write me to identify themselves because I can't remember their names.
I didn't do a count of bikes, but there had to be more than 30 who came on the first leg of the trip down to Snake Road in Burlington. We broke up into several groups.
I asked to be in the slowpoke group and a guy named Tibor, in the beige jacket in this photo, volunteered to ride lead for us.
I think Tibor was the only person there not on a sport bike of some sort -- the next pic features his bike in the foreground when we stopped to connect with the other groups in the parking lot of a church at the corner of No15 Sideroad.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think it's a Vulcan Classic (probably an 800). Tibor lamented not being able to ride as fast as the sport bikes, but believe me, he can really ride. I had to work to keep up with him.
This is Tim with his Kawi at the church stop. Tim and I have been comparing notes on camcorders and camcorder mounts. He's taken some pretty nice footage of his rides.
And this is Cleemore with his Gixxer at that stop.
I'm afraid I can't remember the names of the red duo, taken in the parking lot of the church, in this photo. Perhaps they'll email me to remind me and I'll add their names later. The route we took to Snake Road from there included some interesting roads with a couple of nice curves.
The beginning of the ride didn't bode well, since two bikes went down before we even got to Snake Road.
Here's a sad Mike and his bike, which he took into grass once he figured out he was going down whether he liked it or not. The fairing took a hit, but his sliders protected most of it so the damage wasn't too bad. The other pix is a closeup of the damage to the fairing.
I didn't get the full story on what happened to this Ducati, but it clearly took a fall to the right because the brake lever lost its knobby bit on the end. The Duc belongs to Chris, who's in the group shot on the top of this page.
This was my first time on Snake Road: it has a lovely rhythm to it, although it's way too short -- maybe about 10 minutes worth of riding. There are a lot more curves in it than is apparent when you click through to this Google map. But it was a long ride on the 401 to get there.
The number of bikes thinned considerably after Snake Road, and by the time we finished lunch and set off for Terra Nova there were only eight of us left. The rate at which we kept losing people was somewhat disconcerting on this last leg of the ride. Bob and Tibor got caught at a red light when six of us got through to get onto a ramp onto the 401. Here we are waiting on the side of the road to see if Bob and Tibor were coming along behind us. It turned out they didn't follow us because they thought we were taking a different exit.
We later lost two more people and then there were only four of us. But Tim was texting Bob and eventually we hooked up with Bob and Tibor near Airport Road before the turn to Terra Nova, so six of us ended up on Terra Nova.
Although Snake Road was a nicely technically challenging, Terra Nova provided lots more turns for a greater distance, and some really nice hills. Here's a link to the route Bob said we took from River Road to Terra Nova.
There was one sweeping curve that felt like it was almost 180 degrees. Part of the pavement was pretty rough and patched at the beginning, but the surface improved after that.
I was struggling to keep up with everybody. There were a lot of hills and it was almost sunset so every time I topped a hill the sun was in my eyes. I'd slow way down until I could be sure what was on the other side of the hill. I booted it a bit on a straight after that 180 to try to make up time and ... at the last minute saw the fellas waiting at the side of an intersection. Belatedly realized there was a stop sign. I braked immediately, but was going too fast to make the stop. A quick look left and right showed there was no one coming, fortunately, so I skidded to a halt and turned around on the other side of the intersection.
Bob commented that I'd just used up one of my nine lives. Heh. It's that horseshoe up my ... I mean, my lucky horseshoe that keeps following me around. Was relieved to know it's still working, though. This final shot is our last gas stop before heading home. Although we did a fair amount of slab riding to get to the curvy bits, it was a gloriously warm day and they were all within an hour of downtown. That's good to know when you don't have half a day to get up to Elephant Road or the 507.
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