{"id":28645,"date":"2014-01-01T15:19:36","date_gmt":"2014-01-01T20:19:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/motorcyclemojo.com\/?p=28645"},"modified":"2020-04-07T12:13:56","modified_gmt":"2020-04-07T16:13:56","slug":"hudsonbay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/motorcyclemojo.com\/2014\/01\/hudsonbay\/","title":{"rendered":"Just a casual winter ride . . . to Hudson Bay"},"content":{"rendered":"
Pull it together man, sure you\u2019re cold and you might die of exposure. But on the bright side, you\u2019ve still got one good eye.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s August \u2013 the dog days of summer \u2013 and my flesh is cooking beneath rivulets of sweat that sting my bloodshot eyes. I\u2019m cutting firewood under a cloudless sky, it\u2019s 33 degrees, and there isn\u2019t a breath of wind when I hatch the scheme of riding a motorcycle to the farthest northern point in Ontario . . . in winter. My six days in the bush amidst the relentless torment of biting insects and sweltering heat has ignited desire for a crisp, cold, dry ride to a place that has never seen a motorcycle.<\/p>\n
Back home, I poke around the shed, looking at my derelict database of bikes all piled up in a heap, and I cast a forlorn gaze on Agatha. She\u2019s an \u201902 KLR, maybe the only ride I own that has the slightest chance of bringing me back from such a ridiculous endeavour. In just one season, she\u2019s helped me taste New Orleans mint juleps, Mississippi crawdads, Blue Ridge frog jam, Baltimore porter, Georgia peaches, and Tennessee sour mash. She\u2019s run the Dacre rally, gone on a snowy Atikokan moose hunt and served daily commuter duty. I swear to you on a stack of \u201970s Hustlers that I heard a soft, mechanical sigh when she realized that I had chosen her. Taking stock of my woefully inadequate equipment, I began a list to figure out what I was going to need to cover 7000 km on salt brine winter asphalt plus 1000 km of snowpack roads, muskeg and ice.<\/p>\n