Life on Two Wheels: A Good Day of Riding and Some Sad News

Yesterday a group of us headed off on what is known as the "Frostbite Run" or "Frozen Nut Ride". The "Frostbite Ride" was originally created by one of my work friends Rob Darrah, and was an annual event held in the fall of the year to close out the bike season. The one condition was, it had to be frosty the day of the ride.

Last year for one reason or another we didn't do the ride, so this year I took the bike by the bars and decided to get organized early and not only invite the lads from work, but get a few others involved. So I sent an email to my friend Dwight and his buddy Tom. Well Dwight was away on another cross-continent adventure and was somewhere in southern Texas…..he was out. Tom stepped up to the plate and was eager to go, and brought along four other friends.

On a cold Saturday morning, -1C was the temp when I got up, and there was a pretty good frost covering the ground. The good news……..it was gonna warm up to 11C and the wind was forecasted to be calm.

Frost on the grass as the sun comes up.

The meeting place was The Big Stop on the highway, and at 0930 we slowly started to assemble. It was a mixed bag of bikes, sport bikes, adventure bikes, and cruisers. We represented the whole gamut of the motorcycle world. No bashing of brands or styles, just a bunch of bikers out for a good days ride.

We headed out from the Big Stop shortly after 0930 headed for St. Martins, then Sussex for a well deserved lunch and warm cup of coffee.

From Sussex we took the back roads towards Cambridge Narrows, stopping at an old house belonging to a friend of Tom's, and then proceeded down the coast of the Bellisle towards the Kingston Peninsula

and finally towards home covering about 220km in total. It was a great late fall day ride, a rare day to be had around northeastern Canada.

This weekend was the annual running of the Tecate/Score Baja 1000 in Mexico, I have been a big fan of this race for a number of years, and it is a dream….really only a dream of competing in it, as well as my dream of doing the Dakar Rally. Dare to dream right.

When I got home from Saturday's ride I went to Advrider to check in on the latest from the Baja, and was gutted to learn that one of my favourite riders Kurt Caselli was killed while leading the race with only 85 miles to go, of the 885 total miles in the race.

Kurt was a racing legend in desert and off road racing even at the young age of 30, and it looked like he was on his way to winning his first Baja 1000 title for KTM when he was involved in what appears to have been a crash involving a large animal. The Baja 1000 is not a closed course and is run through the wilds of the Baja Peninsula.

I never met the man, but he just seemed like a really good guy, everyone spoke very highly of him, and he had mad skills on a bike. He was on the cusp of becoming one of the great Dakar racers after his appearance last year at the Rally.