Concord, New Hampshire

So beautiful...

When leaving Montpelier, I thought it'd be a great idea to get a traditional breakfast from some boutique café in town. Unfortunately for me, each café as jam-packed full of "leafers" (like myself, regrettably) and the table wait times were very long. So instead I thought I'd head out to the nearest town and find a place to eat on the way.

As I rode inside the next town the only place that seemed to be open was Dunkin' Donuts. What the hell, how bad could it be? I got myself a "Big N' Toasted" sandwich... which was pretty fucking disgusting. Why is there so much oil on the outside of the bread? Who makes a sandwich and butters the outside? I guess it was fried but eww. However, I did manage to get talking to a motorcyclist who suggested I head to a particular small town (whose name I've since forgotten) to get some good scenery, so a successful breakfast nonetheless.

Vermont and the typical house architecture.

The rain had cleared up and it was a beautiful day for riding. Lots of windy backroads and red, orange and yellow foliage. I eventually made it to my target town and stopped in a local bar for some wood-fired pizza. Damn I was hungry.

Here I got talking to Dino, a fellow motorcyclist who lived (from memory) in New York state. He owned a beautiful vintage Triumph Bonneville, and was riding around with some of his mates up in here Vermont. We talked bikes and I told him about by tour so far.

It was kind of funny because initially he had a misconception of me due to my helmet sitting on the chair next to me. My helmet is very sports-bikey; a bit flashy, modern and of course full-face (open face helmets kind of scare me, my face is as important as my head!). Apparently sports-bike people kind of insufferable in America, and don't like associating to tourers or cruiser riders. Funny because I technically would be a sports-bike rider back in Australia. But once he worked out that I was touring not some sort of weekend race boy we got along fine. He introduced me to his friends and they let me tag along with their group for the rest of the day.

"One stuffed moose please"

One of the members of the group either worked for or contributed to the American Motorcycle Association (AMA) magazine. To which I'm a member by the way! I've got the card and everything. He seemed to know some good routes through the area, and took photos of us one handed as we rode in the pack. Something I wish I could do but my SLR is way too bulky - this is what the GoPro was for. But who knows, I might be in an issue of the AMA magazine!

The AMA guy took us to this crazy little store in Glover that sold an eclectic plethora of items. What was particularly peculiar was the stuffed animals strewn around the store. There was an awesome stuffed moose in the middle where you could just see where it had been shot in the fur.

We all rode together and I took lots of photos and video. Eventually we ended up at a brewery that was unfortunately closed. Eventually we all parted ways, but it was fantastic to spend some time with some fellow riders. Some of images of the ride follow.

Dino stands next to me on the right.

Later that afternoon I had to head down to Concord, New Hampshire to stay with my new couch surfing host, Heidi. It was getting pretty cold, and I was still using my ultra-cool summer jacket, so I didn't want to hang around too long before dark. Heidi was a middle-aged teacher who lived in a beautiful old house in Concord. Since I arrived a bit after dinner, she gave me some great corn chowder and I headed to bed pretty early. This was a rare occasion where I got my own room and bed from a couch surfing host!

Montpelier, Vermont

Somewhere in Vermont.

Despite the apparent meandering nature of my motorcycle route there was a general plan: Hit the top of the US while it was not snowing and then be down south to miss the cold. As part of that, I had planned to see Vermont in the Autumn (fall as Americans call it) to see the leaves turning colour. This is when it was supposed to be the most beautiful  and will attract tourists from surrounding states (called "leafers" by the locals with a little resentment). I originally wanted get to Maine as well, but that was going to suck up a little too much time. In the end it would have just been too rushed, meaning I'd only hit Maine to knock it off of my US 'visited states' list. And while seeing the most of the lower 48 states was awesome, it wasn't the main goal of this trip.

The problem now was that it was starting to get a little too cold in the northern states. This explains my haste during this leg of the trip. To spend a good amount of time in Boston and NYC I'd have to move pretty quickly before I could head south to warmer weather. NYC especially was a huge draw card, so I sacrificed a bit of time up in New England and Canada to get more NYC action.

Taken from Montpelier.

I passed from Canada to the US without too much trouble, although the US border patrol was a little more strict than the Canadian one. First I had to take my helmet off, no surprise there. Then I got all the questions I had to answer back at my visa interview in Australia. How are you able to afford this? What's your job? Why are they letting you take so much time off? What's the plan from here on out? When do you go back home? 

Then I got some questions on what I was doing in Canada which were a little weird at first. For example: Did I see the fireworks in Ottawa? There were supposed to be some fireworks on at the time I was there and I think he was trying to figure out if my Canadian story checked out. But after 10 minutes or so of grilling they finally let me through.

Vermont - but this is what up-state New York looks like.

I tell you what, it was a bit of a relief to be back in the US. It felt like arriving home again. My phone now could do data, back to MPH, cheaper food, familiar business chains and I knew that my motorcycle insurance was valid (I wasn't too sure about it when I went into Canada).

There are many moments when I had not attached the GoPro when I really wish I did. This was one of them: Up-State New York was beautiful. Extremely picturesque with vivid green pastures and old-style farmhouses. You don't get that shit anywhere in Australia, it just looks so... American. 

Usually out of time constraints or bad weather I would sometimes leave the GoPro off. It was raining in Montreal when I left, plus I didn't think the border patrol wanted to be filmed so it wasn't on that day. Note: Due to my lack of photography motivation on this day, the images in this post are actually from the next day (when I took a lot more photos)!

I like sky.

I passed through the quaint little town of Burlington, then headed straight down to Montpelier. When I arrived I still had no accommodation booked. Before I left Montreal I looked at Hotwire (a hotel booking website) to see if anything was available in the town. There were quite a few results, so I thought I'd easily be able to book a hotel when I arrived. 

Turns out I was looking at the wrong Montpelier - I had accidentally searched for Montpelier, VA (Virginia) rather than Montpelier, VT (Vermont). So when I pulled over to the main street and looked at Hotwire again, there was only one hotel available for $275 a night. Shit. Other sites such as Priceline were not getting me anything better.

I had inadvertently parked outside a fancy-pants-looking hotel, so I went inside and asked them where I could find cheap accommodation as there was no way I wanted to fork out the money for this hotel. Turns out they had a room that was hard to get rid off as it was too small for most people. And they gave it to me for a very good rate. That night I was glad to be out of the cold and in a room, which was one of the nicer places I stayed in so far.

Not that I think I was in too much trouble, I probably could have ridden to the next town to find more rooms. But I still had no tent, so my options were pretty limited, I needed to find a hotel room otherwise I was a little fucked. Compounding the issue, it was starting to snow in some of the higher areas of Vermont.

The pulled pork beast.

That night I went to a bar recommended by the hotel staff for beer and a burger. I had one of the biggest burgers I've ever eaten. The burger contained a huge beef patty topped with pulled pork. Kind of like a cardiac arrest double whammy. Fucking delicious though, and the local Vermont beer was fantastic.

I talked to the locals and the bartender, apparently some Aussies were at this bar a week ago and were challenged to a drinking contest with one of the staff. Typical Aussies. They lost pretty badly, turns out the staff member was some sort of competitive drinker, whatever the hell that is. Guess there isn't much to do up here in the winter months?

The next day I head down to New Hampshire to meetup with a couch surfing host in Concord. But I got a fair bit of good Vermont riding in on the way!

Montreal, Canada

A house in Emilie's street.

Riding into Quebec was an experience, since this is the French-Canadian state all the road signs do not legally require English translations. My GPS had quite a bit of difficulty pronouncing the French street names, but I managed to the correct address in the early evening.

I wasn't sure what to expect from my host, as there are definitely French Canadians who do not speak English at all, which could make conversation a little stunted. However my host, Emilie, spoke fairly good English and only had trouble with a few more obscure English words. It was obvious that she didn't get the opportunity to speak English very often, and seemed pretty excited to be able to have the chance now.

Emilie lived in a beautiful looking street with row after row of old-style townhouses. The trees were mature and vines were growing up the walls of many of the houses, it looked very European  She shared the apartment with 3 other housemates, all of whom seemed musically talented  Emilie herself played the piano.

After dicking around with my bike trying to get a park (there were lots of parked cars and tricky time-dependant loading zones on the street), Emilie, one of her housemates and I walked down to the local store to get some beer. We then drank and talked up on her balcony. I learnt a fair bit about the French-Canadians and their relationship with the Canada and France. Apparently the French-Canadians find French people kind of uppity and pretentious - terms that an English-Canadian person might use to describe their French countrymen. Also they told me that the Canadian government has to spend around 15% of the budget to translate between French and English for legal documents and court transcribings.

Emilie and her piano.

Both Emilie and her housemate were lovely people, very curious and interested in Australia and Australian culture.

After everyone had go to bed, I settled in on my couch for the night. After 10 minutes or so on the iPad, I heard a knocking at the door - the rear door with no stair access. I got up to investigate. Their were two early-20 year old guys on the balcony; they must have climbed up or down from their apartment. I opened the door with a little confusion and they spewed French at me, obviously everyone assumes you speak French in Montreal. After apologising that I can only speak English, they looked at me very confused, probably from the accent. It took them a moment to get the English right, but they indicated that there was a party in their apartment and everyone was invited. Wouldn't have been an awesome adventure to go to these guy's party? I did think about going, but it I was really damn tired. Can't drink heavily every night for 5 months.

The next day I said my goodbyes and headed up to Mount Royal - the mountain situated in the middle of Montreal. From here you are supposed to get a good view of the city, and since I didn't have much time to spend in Montreal, I thought it would be the best attraction to see as I could only get one in. So I set off on a pretty wet day to the top of the mountain. After getting the obligatory photo, I headed down south back to the USA.

Obligatory Montreal and I photo.

Getting out of Montreal was a little tricky, I found it tough to find a petrol station and I really needed fuel. I eventually found one in the outskirts of town. It is a beautiful city though, I'd love to come back and spend a bit more time there.

Ottawa, Canada

View of Ottawa.

My time in Ottawa was a great example of how a great couch surfing host can vastly improve your travel experience. When travelling solo for such a long time it can be difficult to find the motivation to get out and explore, ending in lots of procrastination and time-wasting. Also because the amount of time ahead of me in the trip was so vast, everything seems a little daunting. Not to mention how difficult it is to meet people, but to be constantly having to meet people "cold" - that is, starting conversations with complete strangers.

This is where couch surfing is amazing, and despite all its difficulties for a trip like this (locks you in to a bit of a schedule, making touring a bit less opportunistic and spontaneous), the benefits of being able to meet interesting people far outweighs the downsides. Ottawa wasn't the most interesting city I went to in North America, but I had a great time due to the people I hung out with. If I hadn't managed to find a couch surfing host I would have stayed at a hotel, gone out drinking, maybe talked to a few Canadians at the bar, then spend the next day walking around the city by myself taking photos.

Ottawa's parliament building.

Because I stayed with these lovely Canadians - Paige and Matt - I got to meet interesting people (people on Couch Surfing are generally very engaging, interesting and fun) and see Ottawa from an local's perspective which is far more fascinating than a tour guide's view. I think without this human connection travelling can turn into some sort of scavenger hunt, where you look up "best things to do in X" on trip advisor, wander to each sight/monument/attraction, take the obligatory photos and then go back to you hotel room that looks the same as every other one.

My situation for couch surfing was a little unique, I needed to find lots of hosts and stay for a relatively short amount of time. So to improve my changes, I'd find a few (3-5) profiles that I'd like the look of and write messages to each one. Hosts generally want more personalised messages - which is fair - so I always tried to pick out bits of their profile that we had in common or ask them questions. Sometimes this could be rather difficult.

Awesome looking spider sculpture in Ottawa.

A small number of hosts would have strange little games in their profiles like "mention my dog's name in your response", or "the first word of your response should be the 3rd word of my description". Once I'd see something like this I'd generally move on to the next profile. I didn't have the time for these shenanigans

Even if I jumped through all those hoops, who's to say the person was going to be free to host anyway? Hey hosts, CS recommends writing 5 requests per travel destination, which means I have to:

1. Find suitable profiles
2. Read your long-ass profile
3. Gauge whether or not you're a psychopath (believe me, there are some weird-as-fuck people on CS)
4. Workout if we'd get along
5. Respond with a personal message, using my comprehension skills to try and relate bits in the profile to me or my profile.
6. Rinse, repeat x4

A completely unstaged scene.
Left to Right: Dale, Matt and Paige.

This takes a significant amount of time - time spent on a tiny laptop where I could be seeing the sights. Or drinking!

Plus there was some push by CS to find something in common with my hosts. Why do I want to meet people like me? Yeah let's go find some boring system engineers so we can talk design methodologies and argue what programming languages are better. I want to meet all sorts of people, that's what makes travelling interesting. I don't want to hang out with me all the time. I already do that every day!

Ultimately I did achieve the diverseness I wanted through couch surfing: From pot-heads to police officers, hippies to enlisted air force personnel - I was damn happy with the result!

Paige and I in Gatineau Park.

Paige's couch surfing profile was very refreshing. It basically just said (apart from her interests etc.), "no games, just send me a message and let me know what's up". Paige was a hardcore traveller though, so I think she could better relate to people in my situation. Paige and her husband Matt were planning to take an entire year off to go travel through Asia, and both seemed to work with a purpose of saving up for the trip. Paige herself had travelled for very long periods of time on her own.

Gatineau Park, Quebec.

When I arrived in Ottawa, I met Paige at her home; A nice little apartment made out of the basement of a suburban house. When Matt arrived home we all hoped in the car and headed downtown to meetup with Dale; the other couch surfer. Dale was an Australian (Melbournian, which make up 90% of the Aussies I met in the US) who was also on a very North America long tour such as myself. He was travelling across the US with a friend in a van, and had parted temporarily so he could head up to see America's Hat. 

We all drove around some famous parts of Ottawa we saw the parliament building, eternal flame monument and other historical landmarks. Then we all got a beer at a Russian-themed bar. The bar's back room had an awesome collection of Russian propaganda posters from WWII right through to the cold war. It also had some dude sleeping back there who didn't seem too pleased when we turned the lights on.

Gatineau Park, Quebec.

For dinner we all went to the best kebab place in Ottawa (according to Matt). The kebabs in Canada seem almost exactly the same as the Australian ones, except they have more pickled vegetables in them. It was like pickled turnip or something? Can't quite remember.

That night I saw first hand the weird North American activity of feeding your cats catnip - basically cocaine for cats. I've never seen anyone do this in Australia where you give your pets a "recreational" substance to make them more entertaining  It made Paige's cats go kind of mental, but they loved it - the fat one would push the other cat out of the way if it got into the way of his drug hit. Dale and I were very fascinated by the whole thing.

The next day Paige did not have to work, so she drove Dale and I through Gatineau Park, which was beautiful this time of year. The leaves on the maples were all changing, I would have loved to ride through the park but did not have time.

Later that day I set off for Montreal, French Canadian country!

Toronto, Canada

The ride into Toronto was pretty uneventful, just long, slow freeway. Lot's of traffic as I got closer to my hotel. The view of downtown Toronto as I passed over the top was pretty spectacular though, for me the city looked modern and... what's the word... clinical?

When I arrived at the Day's Inn, I had the most unenthusiastic front desk girl I've ever met. She seemed to have given up on life, despite my earnest friendliness. I wanted to try and get to downtown the next day, and she informed me that it would be at least about an hour of commuting and 2 bus rides.

This is my only photo of Toronto.

That night I also found out that my hotel was nowhere near any bar or decent food place, so I just settled on some schnitzel burger place.

I'm ashamed to say that the next day (my full day in Toronto) I didn't get to downtown. Not that I wasn't busy, I spent half the day responding to selection criteria, as the time had come for me to start looking for a job back home. Also the day looked pretty miserable weather-wise, which drained my motivation somewhat. Before this day I'd never seen fog still hanging around at 3 in the afternoon.

That night I did something very Canadian and got dinner at Tim Horton's. Apparently it's the place to be for local riff raff and douche bags.

Here's hoping I get more motivated in Ottawa!

Niagara Falls, Canada

Stopping at a very well respected Canadian coffee chain.

Originally I was going to stay the night in Buffalo, head up to the Canadian side of the falls for a day, then continue my journey through the US. However I thought that while I was so close to the Canadian border, it was probably worthwhile doing a quick trip through East Canada. So I booked a hotel for Niagara Falls and Toronto then put in couch surfing requests for Ottawa and Montreal.

Crossing the Canadian border was relatively straight-forward. I remembered to take my passport out of my pannier and put it in my glove box so I could pass easily through. The Canadian border patrol were pretty chill, asked me a few questions about my trip and I didn't even have to take my helmet off! Passed through the inspection, paid 3 American dollars at the toll both and then I was through.

Riding through Niagara Falls (the city).

It was a little weird to get used to being back on the metric system again, obviously all the speed limits were now in KM/H. Thankfully my speedometer showed both metric and imperial units.

By the time I arrived in Niagara Falls it was getting dark, so I headed down to a local brewery for dinner. Since they brewed in-house I got to try real Canadian beer. According to the bartender, many Canadian breweries have now been bought out by American ones, so getting a real "Canadian" beer could be a little difficult at the regular drinking holes.

I noticed that not much had changed from the time I left the US, the culture seemed to be about the same. Replace Starbucks with Tim Horton's and that's about it. Mind you I was very close the the US border, so the American influence may have been creeping in a bit.

The falls from behind.

The next day was kind of miserable, cold, wet and rainy. A perfect day to go see a giant waterfall. I packed all my stuff up and headed down towards the falls. 

From just the ride down from the hotel to the falls I got fairly wet - at the time I left the hotel it was clear but it started raining almost as soon as I set off. The weather trickery meant I did not bother with the wet-weather gear (I didn't have wet weather pants by this stage in the journey anyway). 

What I found a little puzzling is that it's not that clear how to get to the falls, or good places to park. There were these massive empty car parks (presumably due to it being off-season), but the were quite a distance away from the waterfall. And I thought there'd be signs everywhere saying "Falls this Way", surely this would be the only reason people are in this town. 

However at some point I was able to see a massive spray of water rising off in the distance, which put me in the right direction. I found a car park for $8 an hour, got my SLR out and walked down to the falls. 

Looking a little uncomfortable. But proof that I was there!

I got pretty fucking soaked. I don't think it was even raining then, but the spray coming off the falls was very heavy. Many tourists were wearing ponchos, but I just had my light weatherproof jacket on, which was really good at deflecting the water off my torso and onto my jeans. These were the Kevlar jeans too, so they get really heavy when they're wet.

Needless to say I was pretty uncomfortable, but I managed to get a few shots of the falls. Honestly I was a little worried about my SLR getting damaged by the water, so I didn't take that many photos. The water spray would almost instantly put drops all over the lens, meaning I had to keep wiping it with a damp cloth - not very effective. 

The falls without a cold wet man in front.

One thing that was pretty amazing is how close you could get to the falls. The edge of it only seemed to be a couple of feet away. I wonder how they deal with the erosion? The falls are constantly eroding back the edge causing the horseshoe shape to be noticeably different every decade or so.

Despite all my problems, it was fantastic to see the falls. They are immense - the volume of water that comes off them is staggering. It might be nice to see them in the summer though, I may have done the boat tour if it was a little warmer.

I eventually took refuge in the close-by tourist centre  where I dripped and pondered how my 5 hour ride to Toronto later on was going to go in cold, wet jeans.

The tour ship approaching the falls.

The "American" falls on the other side.

In the end I decided to ride to a local Tim Horton's and dry off for a bit. After a few hours I set off on the freeway to Toronto.

Cleveland, Ohio

Cleveland! All I knew about Cleveland was this video:

But Cleveland was also my Can't-Believe-it's-not-Detroit - a city also part of America's Rust Belt so I could experience the ugliness of America to balance out the beauty. It all can't be Yellowstone and the Rocky Mountains!

The ugly side of Cleveland.

Fortunately for me my hosts in Cleveland were fucking awesome, two chill dudes living in a nice area just outside of Cleveland Proper. Nathan and Nick were part of a fraternity during their university years (which I had lots of questions about), one played ice hockey semi-seriously and both were into fantasy football. 

Both were some of the nicest people I met in America and definitely some the easiest people to get along with I'd ever meet in the country. Nathan was also into RJD2, one of my favourite artists, which is significant to me seeing how obscure that DJ is. Nick had the most hilarious "Thug Life" tattoo on his arm, a running dare from one of his friends that went too far.

The pretty side of Cleveland.

They obviously had a big night out the previous night, so we just chilled for a while watching the NFL. I quite enjoy the NFL, sure it's pretty stop-start and nowhere near as brutal as the Rugby Union, Rugby League and AFL in Australia, but it has interesting tactics to watch. It's also so damn well produced, the camera angles and commentators can make it pretty fun.

Next we all hoped in the car to go and see the city of Cleveland. As you drive across the elevated freeways towards the city you can definitely see how ugly the place can look. It just looks run-down and industrial. But when we arrived in the park near the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, the city did seem to look a lot prettier. 

We looked at the guitar sculptures outside of the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame, and walked up to see the giant stamp featured in the video above. I actually quite like it, mind you I'm pretty fond of a lot of sculptures around Canberra that are unpopular to the general public

Guitar sculptures outside the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame.

The (in)famous sculpture from the video.

Much to my host's confusion, I requested that we drive out to the "dodgy" areas of Cleveland so I could see some real American ghettos. I had to take this opportunity to exploit the use of a car, as there was no way I was going to do this on a motorcycle.

Yeah the ghettos look pretty bad, lots of abandoned buildings and shady looking people. Since it was unwise to stop most of my photos were from the moving car - so a lot of them didn't turn out too well. However I managed to get some  photos that weren't too blurry. Plus I really didn't want to take photos of the people, I'd have no idea what their reaction would be like.

As the car progressed down this road heading away from the City, the neighbourhood got worse and worse. When we reached a point where my hosts did not feel safe to go any further, we turned around and headed back for dinner.

We headed back through quite a nice park which had little sections for each country cordoned off. In these sections, representatives from the respective countries could layout the gardens to their cultural taste. There was no garden for Australia though, which makes me think how would an "Australian" garden look? Probably dead grass and a gum tree.

Nathan, Nick and I had dinner at a famous grilled cheese place featured on Man vs Food. I ate one of the largest sandwiches I've ever seen and drank some very good local beer. It was fucking amazing food, highly recommended if you pass through Cleveland.

This was Nick's grilled cheese, looked way more epic than mine.

Nick, Me and Nathan.

Afterwards we all had a semi-early night as Nathan and Nick had to work the next day. Nick was also starting his new job.

In the morning dicked around working out where I was going to stay for the next few nights. I hadn't had anything booked. Originally I was going to stay in Buffalo and then drive up to Niagara Falls the next day, but in the end I decided to head straight there and stay in a hotel. In the early afternoon I headed up to Canada.