9. day 3

The next day started a few funny obsessions that occurred during the trip that I found constantly amusing, and which continually popped up. One was that we stole the “do not disturb/ service this room immediately” signs from everywhere we stopped. The first day I put on the back of my dads bike (you can see it sticking out from under my seat where I was hiding it) without him knowing and he never saw it till our first gas stop of the day, I even got a picture of him heading into the gas station without him knowing. We ended up keeping these on our bikes the entire trip. Of course my said “please service immediately” and the funny thing is that later on just outside of whistler some guy asked me if the sign had brought me any luck yet…I knew they were a good idea.

The second thing was that every time my dad went to take a picture I could not help but take a picture of him. There was something so endearing or entertaining about him using the digital camera. Looking back on it now it’s pretty obnoxious that I keep taking pictures of him taking pictures of me and he’s probably pissed because I ruined all his pictures but I just could not miss an episode of him wielding the digital. Hopefully he understands my excitement.

We headed north and crossed the border into Canada this morning. It was pretty uneventful, or should I say, without episode. I don’t get it? Why is Canada, by shear virtue of geography so much cooler the U.S.? The second we crossed into Canada it was like this feeling that we had crossed a line into something really cool, like we were exploring or going where few dared to venture. I don’t care…it was cool! We just kept heading north on Highway 93 and ascending until we hit the Continental divide. It probably wasn’t a great idea to stop because the second we did we looked back at the sky. Dark, dark clouds. The kinds that bring rain. It was probably time to hightail it to Banff in order to avoid too much riding in the rain, but not before getting a picture at the continental divide sign. Incidentally, I will also say that on average Canadians, seem to be a much warmer, welcoming, and ready to converse lot than their American counterparts. We met a guy about my age at the continental divide that was on a big crotch rocket cruising across Alberta and British Columbia with only the clothes on his back. We all stood around bantering about motorcycles and taking pictures for each other. My dad gave him a water and he chugged it quickly announcing that it was the best water he had ever had. I guess he was having so much fun riding his new bike that he forgot to stop for water, unlike us who could not ride more than 50 miles without a water stop. He left and was doing well past 60 before ever switching to 3^rd gear…cool, just cool.

Coming into Banff it was immediately and undeniably clear why this stretch of a couple hundred miles or so of valleys is a national park. Each and every feature is on the grandest of scales. The mountains are not so much mountains but huge pieces of granite that were broken over the knee of God and propped up, jutting into the sky. The town of Banff was completely overrun by tour busses and each tour bus opened to spill tiny tourists holding hands with big open eyes searching for the closest chachka store, after which the shuffled right on back in and headed to their hotel, where they spilled out again. The town was a place to avoid however leaving town and the magic really happened. We decided the next morning to head over to Banff international airport. I hope you can appreciate the term “green design” when you look the airport. the sign on the left (in case you can't read it) states "caution, Low Flying Aircraft"...i hope that you can appreciate the fact that the entire runway is grass, I love it. While we were there a lady was walking her dog on it, I guess she wasn't worried about planes landing and there sure wasn't any runway manager telling her to leave. I guess something had triggered my dads memory because our of the blue he said. “Hey, when you go to pull over make sure you stake an area out to make sure there are no bears around.” He said this for good reason. They were everywhere...so we heard.

Heading north out of Banff toward Jasper would begin a day of absolute endurance on our parts. They day started off with rain, heavy rain which only cleared long enough for us to get a bit out of town but came again as soon as we were really under way. I had every piece of rain gear I owned on; Long underwear, motorcycle riding jacket, rain shell over the riding jacket, carhartt pants with rain shell over them and my gore-tex outdoor research gaiters on over them. The cold and rain came in a combination that seemed to laugh at each piece of dry warm clothing I employed. 40 something degrees with rain and riding 50 mph is a painful combination, I mean painful. My fingers were literally numb in the first 20 minutes. I didn’t want to stop or slow down because I didn’t know how I was going to let go of the throttle in order to do so, my fingers were locked into position. It seemed there would be no way i could pull on the clutch to down shift. We finally pulled over at a camp ground in order for me to find another pair of gloves that were dry, and to smoke in a feeble attempt to warm ourselves from the inside out. We hid out under the reservation kiosk sign in order to shield ourselves from the rain. Really the only way to warm my hands even somewhat effectively was to put both my hands down my pants. I didn’t look real cool when an entire family showed up in rain ponchos in order to fill out the ticket stub for their campsite, but I didn't care either. I stood in total seriousness, hands in my pants talking with them about the rain and our ride that day. I found surgical gloves I had brought to work on the bikes with but my dad and I decided we should use these to keep out hands a little drier and to cut down on wind chill, so we put those on under our riding gloves. It actually seemed to work a bit.

Even in the rain, the scenery and mountains were amazing and seemed to take on a Twinpeaks-ish quality as the mist and fog hung over the valley we were riding north through. Toward jasper we found the Athabasca glacier. As you can see it is still wet, raining and cold but it didn’t stop the Brawley’s from stopping and taking our mandatory photo op. Nothing, I mean nothing can stop the photo op!!!!!

At lunch we decided that it would be a good idea to break out the lonely planet as someone heading south told us that everything in jasper was booked for the night. It seemed that everymotorcyclist we passed was wet and worn, optomism of a summer motorcycle trip seemed a bit beat down by cold and rain. Each group of bikers were scrambling to find rooms for the night, Passing knowledge from one table to the next about which hotels, motels, or hostels in the next or previous towns were booked or not. Lonely planet publications combined with Brawley team ingenuity sent us calling ahead ahead to Jasper and booking a room in the Takara Lodge, which was listed as midpriced and a cool location. We’ll find out soon… This really took some of the franticness out of the rest of the day because we knew we wouldn't have to find a place later that night. (on a side note, my birdie finger on my left had is completely numb from getting stitches and I was staring out the window for a while only to return to the screen to see an entire paragraph of DDDD printer...oops.)

In the afternoon the rain started to subside, it was truly a godsend after a brutal morning and early afternoon of riding. We hung out by a river and got warm for a while before heading into Jasper. Incidentally, we were looking up at some mountain s and noticed that a sign stated that some early explorers or mountaineers had climbed them(see picture) in 1926. It’s really hard to fathom anyone ascending these mountains especially in 1926, that’s pretty inspiring. Suddenly I feel a bit meager only riding my motorcycle around in the cold rain all day, it just seems to easy compared to what they did.

We pulled in to Jasper after an enduring day of rain and cold to a dry warm afternoon. Like god finally felt sorry for us and gave us exactly what we wanted. The Lodge we found was quite possibly the most ideal place we could have hoped for. My dad likes the old lodges and wpa labor cabins build in the hayday of American construction. WPA stands for work program administration. it provided work for 8 million Americans and constructed or repaired schools, hospitals, airfields and stuff like that. Any way there a usually little cabins you find in national parks and out in the middle of nowhere, which the workers lived in.
We lit up a smoke in order to begin our ritual of parking the bikes, unloading our stuff and inspecting the area. The Takara lodge was a super quaint place perched on a shore high above confluence of the Athabasca and Miette River. They had place Adirondackchairs above the river so you could sit all day and enjoy the area. I found out from the front desk girl that Marilyn Monroe stayed there in 1956 during the filming of Road to nowhere, or something like that. I also found out that during the shooting of the film Joe DiMaggio visited daily and brought her flowers. I always love getting the inside scoop, see, it pays to be nosey. It turns out that it was a good find and we were practically on the set of lifestyles of the rich and famous.

I think Jasper was quite possibly my favorite town on the our journey. It seemed real, uncontrived, un manufactured. It was the first time my dad and I walked together on a trail. We found hobo marking on a train track inscribed “move to Jasper” and I had to wonder if it really was hobo markings. Maybe it meant something cryptic. Maybe it was some other kind of message like the others hobos left in towns to warn other hobos that were travelling through after them.

I like to think it’s some sort of hobo signal, like I was just reading about in the 2006 Harris’ Almanac. Harris’ Farmer’s almanac describes the difference between hobos, bums and tramps. A Hobo works and wanders. Tramps dreams of better times and places and hunt for new ones, while bums drink and rove the country. A hobo never steals. Well, the orgin of the word hobo is uncertain, but Godfrey Irwin proposed (in some unknown publication) that it was derived from the latin homo bonus, or good man. The word was first used in the united states after the civil war. It referred to soldiers walking home who answered “homeward bound” when questioned about their destination, and to men who had left their farms and sought work as “hoe boys”. Strangely enough there is a national hobo convention held in Britt, Iowa, each year. Its been held there nearly every august since 1900. I think we should use Jasper as an inspirational launching point in order to travel to the hobo convention next year!