Going to the Sun road – and rained out

This was one of my “Big Thing Days”. The Going to the Sun Road is one of the most famous pieces of scenic highway in the US. Up there, with Route 66 and the US 1 to Key West in the Florida Keys. It is a must do ride and drive.

So I set off from Great Falls in Montana, still feeling a bit iffy but not willing to get further behind in my miles. This was not going to be a major mileage day, but I knew there would be plenty of stopping to look, see and photograph the scenery.

I 89 North is a wonderful piece of road, stretching out with great vistas. Big Sky Country at its best. My bike seems to be getting fuller and fuller with ever more bits and pieces. I am not shopping or buying anything, so I do not know where the junk is coming from. I am getting to be an expert at finding nooks and crannies to fit pieces into.

I am thinking this as I open up on the road. Great music in my ears and my thoughts start wandering around. The fitting into nooks and crannies has the wrong effect on these.

So those of you who know me well will be aware that I have a few real passions. Adventure trips in 4 x 4’s, motorbikes, flying, wine and then sex!

I think that these passions come from my late maternal grandmother, the well-known Edna Anne Love Machanick. A true spirit, she was brought up in a good English home. Went to Cheltenham College for Young Ladies. Then onto the London School of Economics.

Next thing she was in South Africa at a very young age. From what I can gather she found a job as a secretary for one Solomon Machanick. A confirmed bachelor, he was the doyen of the wheat industry in South Africa, at one stage buying and selling more than 50% of the county’s entire wheat crop.

At this point the facts become a bit blurry so a bit of poetic license is needed, because somehow she ended up driving the said Solomon Machanick on one of his extended purchasing trips around the Western Cape. These trips always took a few weeks as he dealt individually with each farmer. This was before the days of the wheat and maize boards and fixed prices. Every farmer had to fend for himself.

Now as you are aware the Cape in winter is a cold and inhospitable place. In this environment even the most dedicated bachelor was no match for the charms of a smart, good looking and determined 21year old Brit. No need to sleep alone when you can enjoy a warm bed in Moreesburg and all the fun that can be had in it. This ushered in the Machanick clan.

My grandfather died relatively young, in his early 50’s, from asthma. My Grandmother then set about travelling with a vengeance. Africa, with her friend Margaret Ballinger, who went onto become a member of Parliament for the United Party. Two white women in a Chevrolet through darkest Africa. As far north as the Belgian Congo. Undaunted.

Then to India where she trekked on ponies to Kashmir and lived on a houseboat for a few years. She met and married again in India. He did not last, as apparently his libido was suspect. My grandmother in her memoirs (much to the horror of my father) candidly talked about her rather casual attitude to sex. Something very unusual, for a woman of those times.

She then returned home because her baby daughter had been cradle snatched and marked for marriage by a much older man. My father. I often wonder how my father, who was the most intensely proper person with more integrity than anyone I have known, allowed himself to commit the cardinal sin of getting involved, no only with someone in the office, but also with his own articled clerk who was 20 years his junior! But then when I look at pictures of my mother at that time, I know the answer. He was but human!

I never really knew my father well. I do not think any of us do. He always worked very hard and travelled. He was in his 40’s when I was born. However my Gran, who was known as Mrs. Mac to all and sundry, was very close to me.

When I was at university in Cape Town I had dinner with her every Thursday and often we would go out together for a Film Society evening or dinner with some of her friends. She could drink and smoke with the best of them and loved a party. She encouraged me to go forth and try things. She loved to hear about the goings on and in particular about girl friends and who was busy with whom. She knew everyone in Cape Town, so nothing gave her more pleasure than knowing something about one of her friends granddaughters that was not meant to be in the public domain.

So here I was now in the US, on a BMW instead of a donkey, fulfilling her dream of adventure travel and thinking about sex . So I used to think I was abnormal as I thought about it all the time. Then I read somewhere that the average man thinks about at least once every five minutes. I think about it every 30 seconds. So this was in my mind and I was motorcycling in Montana.

Up through Choteau – a very nice little place. I stop at the information center to have some coffee and a break. They have a thing about dinosaurs in rural America and Choteau was no different. Dinosaurs,at the information center and a couple in a car, acting furtively when I pull up. They look too old to be fooling around. I stop take my coffee out and watch them. They are huddled over a small laptop. Then I get it. It is not porn. They are bandwidth rustlers! Somewhere there must be an open wireless network. I pull out my iPhone and check. Sure enough Choteau information bureau has an unsecured wi-fi and hence unlimited free bandwidth.

Then north again. More and more bikers going to the sun, also some Japanese tourists. Music in my ears reminding me of so much. Bob Seeger and the Silver Bullet Band. I first heard him when I was in Denver in my SAA days. I bought one of the very first Sony Walkman cassette players. Remember those tapes and Bob Seeger was one of the only tapes I could get.

UB 40 – Red Red Wine. David Bowie – Lets Dance, The Pretenders – I’ll stand by you, Simon and Garfunkel –Mrs. Robinson, The Beetles – here comes the Sun and Antonello Vendidti – Chow Chow Dominica.

This is a cold part of the world. Snow marker of over 6 ft in height tell me it gets heaps of snow in winter. Snow fences in open areas to stop snow drifts building up on the roads. everyon

I stop at the US Post office in Bynum to post postcards to my new grandchildren. Remember when postcards were all you received whilst people were travelling. No e-mails, no sms’s, no calls! I used to write long letters to Eveanne. Now we only write to each other when we are really upset and angry.

Suddenly the mountains are in front of me. The Tetons. Covered in snow and majestic. I need to concentrate as the road is deteriorating. Roadworks. Loose gravel makes my girl very frisky. No longer a well known bed partner. Now a nervous young girl in a new bed. A delicate hand is needed. A sure touch. An instructor.

The back wheel wants to push out. The weight on the back affects the bike’s handling. I would not like to be riding these roads when they are wet. It will be like sliding on glass. Soon I am at the entry to the Glacier National Park. The lakes are crystal clear. Turquoise and aquamarine water. The road runs along Lake St Mary. I have entered on the eastern side of the park. 10 miles of shoreline on my left. Water rushing out of the mountain on my right.

The road starts climbing. The peaks tower above me everywhere I look. Covered in snow and the glaciers run from them right down to the road. It is a perfect day. Not a cloud in the sky just a slight nip in the air. I stop and drink from one of the streams running out of the mountain. The water tastes so good. It is pure, filtered by time and nature.

Then over the top. Mount Logan at a bit over 6600ft. Then next piece of the road is probably the most spectacular road I have ever been on. About 20 miles of the most incredible beauty with waterfalls every few hundred feet, spilling out onto the road. We have to stop for some road works and bighorn sheep are grazing next to us. Down and down we go to Lake MacDonald.

For those of you from MIX and Shurlok who are following this blog, I can assure that it is not named after Dear John. Another spectacular lake. I stop at the Lake MacDonald Lodge, which is big and inquire about accommodation. I figure this will be a perfect place to spend two nights. To read, write and dream about you know what. Tight places and tricky lies (as in on a golf fairway, of course). They are full and no amount of charm can get me a room.

So it will be onto to Columbia Falls or Whitefish for the night. Heading out two more spectacular streams, torrents actually and then a beautiful campsite at Sprague Creek right on the lake. Then and there I decide this is a perfect place to have my first nights camping.

It is a wonderful spot. Perfect weather. Lots of time to set up as the days are long. Here it is an honour system. You fill in details on an envelope. Put $20 it and tear off a slip which you put on a post next to your site. All done and out with the tent. Ground sheet down. Justin it is too big but not too worry.

Tent up in 20 mins. Thanks Harold for insisting that we put it up once before I left SA.  Got it all right first time. All the rest of the stuff out. Realise I have only one tin of Tuna for dinner and no wood. So back to Lodge where there is a store. Ten minute later 2 beers, a bundle of wood, liquid firelighter and a tin of corned beef hash and I am on the way back to the campsite.

I look for the showers. Great toilets, but no showers. I am sure the ranger at the entrance said all the camps have showers. Seems, when I ask around that they only have latrines. By the way, the US does long drops in a way that they smell like the Perfume Store at Harrods. Don’t know how they do it but someone needs to get the secret to SANParks. They do not need to smell like a camel has died in them.

So I need to clean up. What does a good South African do? Thank you my morning gym and sauna partner for insisting on a swim after the sauna throughout the year. What the hero and sex fundi does, is he dives into the lake. I now know why the call them Glacial Lakes! With everyone watching I stay cool. Do not have to try and keep cool! Rub myself up and down and stroll out nonchalantly. We do it all the time in South Africa I tell them.

I am immediately invited for a beer by one of the couples. Stephen and Luanne. Easy to remember – Eveanne, Luanne etc.. Turns out that they are going to Alaska as well. Both professors at a small university in New York State called Alfred. Specialises in the performing arts and ceramic design. This is mainly focused on glass and ceramics as it is in an area of NY State which has a rich history in this area with Corning Glass being based in Corning NY. Incidentally Eveanne and I have been to Corning and their museum of Glass is worth making the trip to see if every you are going by road to Niagara Falls.

She is a professor in the music department. He lived in Fairbanks Alaska for 8 years and established a performing arts department specializing in Shakespeare at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. They have kept a house in Fairbanks and return every year for the summer making the trip by road and camping on the way there and back.

I cannot believe there is a university in Fairbanks and that it has a performing Arts Faculty. The university has over 5000 students. Once again I am impressed. It is this extensive Tertiary education system in the US that adds so much strength and diversity to the country. Alfred, which actually has two colleges in this tiny town and Alaska that has universities in Anchorage and Fairbanks – wow!

So back to my campsite for a quick bite and sleep. Greg Wright I am going to send you a link to this blog because the next bit could have been taken from that epic trip you and I did to Lesotho in the late 1970’s without the Crocodile Inn at Buthe Buthe experience.

First I was distracted while heating up the hash in my new German Jet cooker. They make such good equipment, the Germans. It all works top well. In seconds I smell burning and the bottom of my hash is charcoal. Fortunately I am not cooking the tuna.

The fire won’t start, as the wood is too wet. I spray fire lighter on it. A poor substitute for our South African wads. Eventually I have had enough. So I throw the whole tin of fire lighter on the smoldering embers. In two minutes I have a fire but only after everyone thinking that Osama Bin Laden had arrived to take his revenge.

Twenty minutes later I am in bed with the fire roaring to keep the bears away. Wrapped up in my sleeping bag dreaming of life and love etc.. My new blow up matrass is very comfortable but I have yet to find an inflatable pillow that works well. I wonder who would like to be with me in the tent. You are either a camper or city slicker. My gran and my father could do this stuff. Never my mother or sister. Eveanne always, our children, some of them. Will Greg or Stevi become campers?

With these sort of thoughts I drift off to sleep. It seems like only seconds have passed when I wake up. Something is wrong! A bear? My fire out of control? No. Osama? For sure a roar, and a mighty one at that. Thunder? Yes, thunder?

My thoughts rush back to that night at the top of the Drakensberg in Lesotho with Greg. The two of us in a leaking two-man tent. Freezing cold, my sleeping bag getting wetter and wetter. What have I left out to get wet this time? So my current tent, bought on a sale in the UK after my last big motorcycle trip proved my previous tent to be too small, is of a different design.

A motorbike camping trip differs from a trip undertaken by car. On motorbike camping trips there is nowhere to store your camp items and clothes whereas when you are camping and have a car available you can throw everything into the car if it rains, including yourselves in an emergency.

This was the problem facing Greg and myself, for we had undertaken our epic trip in my father’s Chevrolet Nomad (A piece of shit if ever there was one) and a Yamaha 175 motorbike. Now a Chevy Nomad for those of you who remember them, was a South African designed and built off road vehicle that had no canopy.

As an aside, my father employed a driver named Simon, as he preferred not to drive himself. Simon used to drive him to Morningside Farm on Friday and then my mother would bring Susan and I out on Saturdays, as I had school on Saturday mornings at St. Stithians.

So on one particular Saturday morning Simon was tasked to drive my father around the farm in the Nomad. At the furthest point from the farmhouse the Nomad stopped. Nothing would get it going. My father, who was not very mechanical, decided to get involved. He soon saw that the fuel gauge was on empty and deduced that the vehicle had run out of fuel. Simon was soon on the receiving end of a royal shitting out. He was an arrogant fella and protested that he had filled the vehicle up before leaving that morning which only served to infuriate my father further.

So Digby Howarth, the famous Digby was summoned on the radio, also to be shat out for not ensuring that the vehicle had been filled. He also protested that it had been filled. My father was now close to going supersonic. Digby crawled under the vehicle and lo and behold – the fuel tank was no longer there! It had fallen off. Such was the build quality of Nomad.

So on my first night camping in the US I had rain coming at me and nowhere other than the tent in which to store all my clothes etc. This new tent has a small porch, which is important, as it is an area in which you should be able to keep items dry. The porch does , however, have one very important design flaw as I am about to find out. It is missing an integrated floor like the rest of the tent. This in turn means that water can run into this area. I only realise this at 04h00 in the morning. Not when I bought it on the sale. My experience of over 40 years ago jars me into action. I scoop up all my bike gear and other items in this area and toss them into the sleeping area.

Then the rain arrives and the hail and then the lightening. I am lying in the tent with Jehuda throwing everything at us. Thor, Hades, Poseidon’s missiles and a few hand grenades as well. I lie in thought. Pray will not help. It is clearly the lack thereof that has placed me in this predicament.

I try to remember whether or not tents are safe in lightening storms. I am on a rubber inflatable mattress. This is insulated and my tent poles to not protrude. Does this make it safe? Were the girls from St Mary’s who were killed on a school camping trip in a tent?  Do I make a run for the toilet block and shelter in Harrods Perfumery? Do I ask the Professors if I can jump in their car with them? Or do I just die like a man? It will be very quick, at least!

So back to sleep I go. I am dry. My tent does not leak. One less thing to worry about!  So this is not the reason it was on the sale. The design is poor and it is difficult to erect and, as I am going to find out, even harder to take down. A Viagra tent! In fact this tent is going to give me all the side effects of Viagra, as by the time I am finished it will not want to come down and I will also have a headache.

I wake up to peace and relative calm around 8am. Still raining but lightly. I struggle out of the tent. Why is it so difficult? The reason becomes immediately clear. My integral floor in the sleeping area is keeping a pool of water from flooding into my area. The tent is almost floating. What a dick! Why did I not see this when I erected it? My site is in a slight hollow and three inches of rain over the campsite has come careering into my area.

So now, it is really interesting and a challenge to

• Get out to the toilets
• Get back in to get dressed
• To drop the tent and pack it all up.
• Whilst keeping everything reasonably dry.

An hour later I am very happy with myself. A bit of hopping on one leg, use of the camping chair (thank you Harold again) and my waterproof riding boots and I am almost there. Only the tent to go. To do this on my own would be impossible due to the design.

So I enlisted the help of two Canadian Couples. All four, men and girls on their own BMW motorbikes, the girls too. They had arrived after I had gone to sleep the previous evening. So we dropped the tent and sort of packed it.

Thanks guys much appreciated!

All packed by 10. About to leave and a Ranger arrived. Announced to all of us that the US Weather Bureau had issued an extreme (not a heavy weather warning but extreme) weather warning for the area. Hail and lightening expected in the next 20 minutes. Not again! Now only the Harrods perfumery available!

Fast thinking and I was on the way to the lodge and into their restaurant for breakfast and to sit out the storm, What arrived made the previous evening’s donner and blitzen look like the dress rehearsal. This was the biker’s coupe d’ grace. Fortunately this biker was eating bacon and eggs.

At 12 it all looked over so off I set. Another mistake. A few miles down the road and it was clear that the lull was a sucker punch. The man meant to get me. I had no shelter and no options. This was undoubtedly the toughest riding I have experienced. Rain in torrents. Gusts of wind as he tried to take me off the road. Cold 48 F.  The Jake’s Lady in Ashland wasn’t joking when she said that she and her husband had been snowed on when they rode the road the previous year. For sure it would be snowing on the pass with these sort of temperatures at the bottom.

I get to Columbia Falls and call ahead to the Hilton in Kalispell. They have accommodation. I ask them to hold a room for me.  I feel comfortable in these hotels. In true US style they are all the same and good value. A big room, great beds, fridge, microwave, fast Internet and safe bike parking.

30 Minutes later I walk through the front door, looking like I have come out of Afghanistan. There are bikers queuing up for rooms and all are full. They have to look elsewhere.

It is not biking weather!

A few chores to take care of. I call home to tell Eveanne I am safe. I give her a brief version of the events. I am expecting a hero’s welcome. Ever practical, she instructs me to dry the tent out failing which it will get moldy. So the tent is now standing in the passage outside my room drying.

Outside my window is Kalispell airport. Scully, especially for you, an Extra painted with a Russian star on it.

Music in my room. Sheryl Crow, Al Green, Jack Johnson, Cat Stevens –I started a joke!

And that is that. Enough for two days. My sniffs have vanished and I have decided that camping will only be an absolute necessity which I believe it will be on the way up to Alaska through British Columbia.

Maybe a new tent in Portland or Vancouver. A grandpa’s tent. One that comes down more easily than it goes up!