Archives: 21st August 2001

Dirk and Cora were out at work all day so Theo and Alma kindly let us camp around their kitchen table today, while Brigid tried to get some more work done on the dreaded website. John and Theo tried to adjust the pre-load on the Triumph’s suspension, using a handbook clearly intended for the previous model. Meanwhile, Alma organised our laundry.

Brigid’s back had been giving trouble, so we booked an appointment with a local chiropractor, and John took the opportunity to have his back overhauled at the same time.

We picked up our e-mail, and found that John had finally received a settlement offer from Arbella. It seemed a derisory sum after all the money that he had had to pay out for the initial repair. It was somewhere around this time that Alma mentioned to Brigid that Theo had been fretting about the legal title of John’s new bike.

The main problem was that, because the bike was not actually registered to John, he might not be legally insured to ride it. Also, there was the small matter of the border guards. “It would be good if you could get a copy of that Title faxed over tonight. If I was approached by a couple, travelling together, on two bikes, one bought in Massachusetts, and one bought in Texas, I might ask to see the paperwork … and if the you handed me a hand-written Bill of Sale, I might just think that the bike was stolen. And then there is the guy who sold you the bike, do you trust him? This could make getting separated on the Interstate look like nothing …”

John and I looked at each other, and then at Theo. “What do we do? Split up at the border? What if Corbin doesn’t forward the Title?” “Oh, don’t worry about it, it’ll probably be fine”, says Theo.

Don’t worry about it! Are you NUTS?! We now had visions of being detained indefinitely at the Canadian border, the bikes confiscated, and Corbin rubbing his hands over John’s money, riding away into the sunset on his new Moto Guzzi!

Between us we composed a suitably contemptuous response to Arbella’s offer, and then it was time to make our way over to Dirk and Cora’s place.

Cora had cooked up a feast for us by the time we arrived. Theo was more or less ordered to stay for dinner – just as well, as there was enough food to feed a small army. We must remember to try barbequed sweet corn at home (15 mins in their husks, as far as I remember). After Theo left, we kept Dirk and Cora up far too late, I fear.

horoughly revived by a good night’s sleep, we tucked into Alice’s monster breakfast. There were eggs, bacon, scones, muffins, toast, homemade jam, juice, tea, ham, cheese … Even as we ate, Alice would appear with yet more food, until eventually we had to admit defeat.

We arrived back at Southridge Farm at about 10 am. Alma offered us coffee, but we were so full, all we could manage was a glass of water.

After a quick tour of the farm, we got back in the car. Theo needed to check on the progress of his bike repair (the fuel pump had packed up on a trip to Toronto), and Brigid needed to replace her leaking jacket. The first stop on our tour, therefore, was Clare Cycle in Fenwick. (In Canada, motorcycle dealers do open on Mondays!) Without much ado, Brigid chose a new Joe Rocket jacket, and Theo established that he would be able to collect his bike the following day.

Then it was on to Niagara Falls … by a slightly circuitous route necessitated by a bridge mishap a couple of weeks before. (A lifting bridge had mysteriously fallen on a passing ship, crushing the ship’s accommodation, and seriously damaging the bridge. Human error was suspected, but the operator was unavailable for questioning … having been admitted to hospital for ‘stress’ … Miraculously, no one was seriously hurt in the accident, but Ontario’s traffic is likely to suffer disruption for some months to come). It had seemed a good idea to buy tickets to walk through the tunnel under the Falls. But none of us had reckoned on the crowds. (The last time we came through Niagara was early June – before the school holidays.) The earliest available ‘slot’ was 3.30 pm, so we got back in the car and headed for Queenston, where it was possible to take a jet boat through the Devil’s Hole Rapids below Whirlpool Bridge. (Seems Theo and Alma were intent on getting us thoroughly wet again, somehow …).

It was raining slightly when we arrived at the jet boat dock, but there was no queue. Just one other family were mad enough to think that boating in the rain might be fun. The jet boat turned out to be entirely enclosed, and as we pitched and dived in and out of the rapids, it was difficult to imagine that the open boat could possibly have been more fun! Our driver (perched perilously above us in his open cockpit) spun 360° ‘Hamilton’ turns, and plunged the boat under the green waves. After a 30-minute pounding, we emerged, slightly giddy, but still dry and smiling!

We ate lunch in the Fire House restaurant, which we had all to ourselves. Then we drove slowly through pretty Niagara-on-the-Lake, and visited a reconstructed pioneer village. The waterfall that ran by the old mill, was dry, and we joked about sending Joe Miroballi a picture with a note saying, “Look! We visited Niagara Falls, but they had turned it off!”, after he tried to convince us that they do ‘turn off’ Niagara Falls in winter (… to prevent ice flows going over the edge …).

On the way home we stopped at the Chateau des Charmes vineyard to pick out a bottle of wine. We had never thought of Niagara as a wine growing region, but the peninsula is dotted with huge estates. In fact, this part of Ontario is on the same latitude as northern California and Spain! Certainly, the summer had been exceptionally dry so far. There had been no rain in a month, and the corn crops were ruined.

Dirk and Cora DeJong came over for dinner, and we found a lively restaurant in a lakeside town called Henley … which, believe it or not, hosts an annual rowing regatta!

After dinner, Dirk and Cora more or less insisted that we should spend Tuesday night with them in Freelton. Although we were theoretically in a hurry to reach the West Coast, it seemed too good an invitation to pass up, but we needed to do some navigational planning before accepting. So we spent what was left of the evening at Theo’s kitchen table, plotting the last leg of our trip west, aided by a road map, ruler, and one or two Manhattans.

We had been in touch with Theo Meester, who had kindly offered to show us the Niagara Peninsula. We were looking forward to the 450-mile ride to Ontario, and we amazed the household by being packed and ready to leave at 8.30 am, just as Deborah arrived back from Cape Cod with Delia.

It was just a case of hitting the mileage today, so we had no plans to deviate from the Interstate. We had made this particular trip once before, very early in our trip, and we knew that we should easily be able to arrive in Beamsville, Ontario, by 6pm.

As luck would have it, however, the weather had changed. The wind increased, and, as we stopped for lunch at a service area on the Interstate, Brigid pointed out some threateningly dark clouds. To John’s annoyance (he was hungry) Brigid started to unpack her rain gear, and pulled out her red PVC poncho to cover her backpack. At last with everything water-proofed and stowed to Brigid’s satisfaction, we were allowed to eat.

As we emerged from the restaurant, Brigid had to admit that she might have been wrong. The clouds seemed to have dispersed and no rain had fallen. But only minutes later, the skies darkened again, and the rain started. Lightly at first, then torrential, until we had to take refuge under a bridge while John changed into his rain gear, and covered his backpack.

We rode on a distance, and the rain eased off a little. But we were both wet and uncomfortable. Brigid was soaked through and cold. We stopped at a service area for a reviving cup of coffee.

Brigid began to peel off layers of drenched clothing. Her (supposedly waterproof) Frank Thomas jacket was dripping, and colour from the plaid lining had left hideous streaks of green and brown all down her white T-shirt. Even John had to agree that she couldn’t very well arrive at the Meester’s in that state. A complete change of clothing was called for.

The rain had cleared temporarily for our arrival at Southridge Farm. But it didn’t look as if it would stay dry for long. Theo escorted us to Cor and Alice VanDorp’s B&B, and talked ‘horses’ with Cor while we showered and changed back into something approaching human.

Back at the farm, we kept Theo and Alma up far too late, watching the Mother Road Rally video, and chatting and laughing about our various adventures since we had all parted company in Ontario, CA. When, at last, we were too tired to make sense of the conversation, Theo lent us his car to get back to the VanDorp’s.

Delia arrived back from her rather disappointing Riding Camp (the kids spent only 45 minutes a day riding, and the rest ‘mucking out’!), and was whisked straight off to Cape Cod to take part in a swimming gala. We left the house at about 10am to collect Brigid’s bike from its service.

Having (at least partially) recovered from the shock of the $810 charge for the service (after 10,000 miles, two new tyres were needed), we found our way back to Brighton. We left the bikes, and headed into Boston again on the bus. We didn’t really have anything planned, but we did a little window-shopping, and popped into Eastern Mountain Sports to look at their GPS systems.

What a surprise. The models they were offering differed substantially from the ones offered by Majestic Gallery in New York. They were small, light-weight, and nearly half the RRP.

We stopped by the University bookshop, where we perused the maps section. Then we looked in the campus computer store, but found no bargains. We started to walk back in the direction of Brighton. Deborah and Delia would not return until Sunday morning, so rather than settle for pizza on our last night in town, we splashed out on a gourmet meal at Devlin’s.

Whatever we had been hoping to do today, the first thing was to take the wretched Garmin GPS back to ‘Majestic Gallery’. After a lot of toing and froing, another unit was produced from the warehouse. We opened the box and a slip of paper fell out. “Limited 90-day Guarantee – This reconditioned unit is guaranteed against parts and labour for a period of 90 days …” Oddly enough, that slip of paper had been missing from the box of the original unit. After some argument, the shop owner reluctantly agreed to refund John’s money.

John’s glasses had been bent at some point the previous day, so we next went to find a competent optician to straighten them. The first shop we found had definitely not fallen under the ‘competent’ category. Having established that we were tourists, a hideous, witch-like, assistant with orange makeup and straggly black hair, had grabbed the specs and, with a violent twist of the frame, announced that there was nothing she (or her weasel-like colleague) could do with them.

However, fortune now smiled on us, as we discovered a branch of Lenscrafters, hidden away under some scaffolding on 5th Avenue. There was little they could do with the bent specs, but they did at least try. Just as we were leaving the store, we asked if it was possible to make up a pair of new sunglasses, using John’s existing specs for the prescription. No problem. Within an hour, John had a handsome new pair of prescription RayBans.

It was now time to leave New York, so we headed back to the hotel to collect the bike. It was Friday afternoon, and we were determined to miss the inevitable rush hour. We decided against the Jefferson ferry, choosing instead to follow I-95 the whole way back to Boston.

What a mistake. The traffic was grid-locked all the way up FDR Drive. The traffic was grid-locked all the way out through the Bronx. The traffic moved at snail’s pace (intermittently) on I-95. It was 5pm before we were clear of the City. In desperation, we left the Interstate a few miles outside Providence, RI, and found our way on to the coastal route.

As it got dark, we decided to stop for dinner. We found a brilliant fish market/restaurant and gorged ourselves on fresh seafood. It was gone midnight when we eventually arrived back in Brighton. Henry was asleep in front of the television.

Our first task was to find the United Airlines desk at the World Trade Center, where we hoped it would be possible to change our flights. (The accident in Dallas had lost us two weeks of our US tour, and we calculated that we could make up that time by cropping a few days from the rest of the trip.) Ideally, we should have found an Air New Zealand office, but as Air New Zealand has no flights into New York, another Star Alliance partner was the best we could hope for.

The ladies at United had no access to our flights, and at first it looked as though we would have to contact Air New Zealand directly. But they were interested in our problem, and it was a quiet day, so they made some phone calls. Within half an hour we had confirmed seats on all but one of our chosen flights. We hurried back to the hotel to meet Nora.

Nora’s husband is not well, so she could not spend long with us. We picked an Italian restaurant round the corner, and ordered pasta. It was lovely to see her. John reckoned it must be 30 years since they had last met, but she had barely changed.

Nora had been terribly upset over John’s father’s death, 18 months ago. The family had always been close. Her daughter had just left on holiday, and was sorry to miss us.

Later that afternoon we took the 3-hour Circle Line cruise around the Island of Manhattan. It really was a great way to see New York’s skyline. We learned all about the smallpox hospital and Typhoid Mary, we ducked involuntarily as we passed under the lowest of Manhattan’s bridges, were awestruck by the beauty and size of the Hudson River, and ah’d affectionately as we passed the little red lighthouse.

It was beginning to get dark by the time we arrived back at the dock, so we thought it would be a good idea to grab a bite to eat, and then view the City lights from the World Trade Centre observatory.

As we walked up to TGI Friday’s, John spotted an electronics store. He had wanted a Garmin hand-held GPS for ages, so it seemed a good idea to look at the prices. They had a model which seemed just right. There was only one left in stock, so John started to haggle over the price. Brigid turned to walk out of the shop. The price came down again. Sold.

It was a quiet evening at the WTC, but there was still a small queue for the 59-second lift ride to the 107th floor. Even from the safety of the observatory, looking down at the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building, Brigid complained that her knees felt quite wobbly … then she spotted an escalator with a sign that read, “Please do not use this escalator if you are afraid of heights. In order to exit, it is necessary to cross the roof.” Despite her wobbly knees, a view from the roof seemed to good an opportunity to miss. So up we went, to the 110th floor!

The view really was magnificent. But it was difficult to hold the camera steady in the wind, so once again, our photographs have not done it justice.

Back at the hotel, John put batteries in the Garmin, and switched it on. For a while all seemed well, then a message, “Memory Battery Low”, appeared on the screen. He turned the unit over, looking for the panel containing the lithium memory battery. We read through the instruction book. The only reference we could find said that the battery had a 10-year life, and should only be changed by a recognised service agent. Bummer.

We located Nora, and made a date to meet her at the hotel at 12:30 pm on Thursday. Then it was off to Times Square to begin a day’s sightseeing in the city.

The Subway was a bit of a mystery. Unlike the London Underground, there are no ‘stations’, as such. Instead the steps from the street lead down to an individual platform, travelling uptown or down. You cannot cross directly from one platform to the other, so if you are careless enough to arrive on the wrong one, you have to exit, and use another portion of your travelcard to re-enter the system. There are no maps on the platforms, and not all the trains that pass through actually stop. Oddly enough, apart from our initial confusion, we had no difficulty at all getting around, and the trains themselves are clean and wonderfully air-conditioned.

The garbage that accumulates daily on the streets of New York, is collected at night, but in hot weather it is hard to ignore the stench of rotten vegetables that persists throughout Manhattan.

We bought ourselves tickets for the Gray Line ‘hop on hop off’ tour aboard an open-top double-decker bus. It must have taken a good hour to move even half a mile, and we lost count of the times we seemed to pass Macy’s flagship store.

(Incidentally, this distorted reflection of our bus tour was captured by John as we passed under a tubular mirrored bridge near the World Trade Centre.)

We hopped off at Armoury Park, for Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. John bought a couple of tickets before realising that our National Parks card would have gained us entry for free … The ferry was reminiscent of the old Isle of Wight steamers, packed to the gunnels with waving tourists.

John looked up the Rynne family name on the Ellis Island computer, and was delighted to find four ‘John Rynnes’ had landed there from County Clare.

Back on the coach, we toured the uptown end of Manhattan Island in daylight, then used the other part of our bus ticket for a night time tour.

We packed essential clothes only into John’s panniers, and took Brigid’s BMW in for servicing at Dunbar Eurosports in Brockton. The idea had been to leave Brigid’s bike and head straight for New York, where John was anxious to catch up with his cousin, Nora.

Before we left, however, John had Tom Fournier look over his Triumph Trophy. Tom reckoned that it was in pretty good nick for its year, but pointed out that the tyres were unlikely to last another 5,000 miles. The rear tyre had been losing air, and Tom turned it slowly to reveal a nail embedded in the centre of the tread. Knowing now that both tyres would both need replacing, we headed off in search of a sandwich. It was about 3pm by the time we were finally on the road.

We caught the Bridgton-Jefferson ferry (as much to keep us out of the rain, as anything), and arrived in New York around 11pm. This was the first time John had ever attempted to carry a pillion passenger, and all had gone smoothly (apart from Brigid’s gasp of pain every time he rode over a slight bump – something had to be done about the suspension). However, New York’s roads leave a great deal to be desired, and suddenly John was confronted with uneven, pot-holed roads, which were wet, badly lit, and frequently patched with sheets of metal. We located the hotel (Chinatown’s Holiday Inn) without much difficulty and were extremely grateful to park the bike in the hotel’s underground car park for the duration of our stay.

Without our tour guide, we went back into Boston to do some essential shopping. We also wanted to see ‘Old Ironsides’, the oldest commissioned US warship, The Constitution, which dates back to the War of Independence.

This time we walked from Kenmore, all the way across the North End, and across the river to the dock, stopping at Paul Revere’s house on the way. We caught the ‘T’ home, but were worn out by the time we arrived back in Brighton.

There was live Irish music advertised at The Green Briar, so we offered Deborah and Henry dinner. Henry and Genevieve were not as keen on fiddles and whistles as we were, so left Deborah with us to enjoy it.

Delia was doing the Riding Camp with her cousins, so we all piled into the car for the trip to Gloucester. We had had bagels and tea for breakfast, but nevertheless were famished by the time we arrived with Deborah’s sister, Kate.

Deborah offered us a cup of tea to go with Kate’s homemade cake, and there followed a slightly embarrassing kafuffle, as Kate searched for something approximating Indian tea. An assortment of anonymous-looking tea bags was produced, each one being sniffed in turn to establish its contents.

Eventually, we left Delia and Genevieve with their cousins, and drove down to the seafront to explore ‘downtown Gloucester’.

Gloucester is perhaps best known these days as being the setting for ‘The Perfect Storm’, which follows the true story of a fishing boat and her crew, as they battled with two storms which collided in mid-Atlantic.

Still hungry, we suggested that Deborah collect us at 5pm, on her way back to Boston … so that we could look for a café! In the event, it appeared that we were not the only ones who were hungry.

When we met Deborah back at the pub, she had already ordered for us a mountainous plate of nachos and cheese.

That evening we took a stroll after dinner and discovered the Castlebar pub, one of many excellent Irish pubs in Brighton, which served a singularly good pint of Guinness!