After arriving in Ottawa in the darkness the night before, Chris, and I had to get up bright and early to start our respective workdays. We let The Captain sleep in as we took Wiley, the dog, for his usual first-thing-in-the-morning walk. Luckily, both Chris and I work remote from home, so there was no commute for either of us, but we were both still tired from all the riding over the weekend. Coffee couldn’t come soon enough.
Chris and I worked through the day, fighting off drowsiness, and The Captain played homemaker, doing laundry and generally enjoying a day off the bike. He even tried making friends with Wiley, who wasn’t really having much of it. Luckily he’s not a very good bad dog, so despite having some growls and a very unusual occasional bark, by the afternoon, the two were catching up on their missed rest together.
That night, we grabbed dinner with Chris and my folks at a local pub to catch up and we introduced The Captain to a few local craft beers, none of which seemed to meet his “low IBUs of Coors Light” standard, go figure!
By Tuesday, The Captain was getting bored of sitting around while we toiled away on the computer, so he took a ride out into the rural western end of Ottawa, even taking a ferry from there across the river and into Quebec. There he encountered people who preferentially chose to speak French, despite fully understanding English, seemingly to his confusion.
Wednesday being another work day, Chris and I were back at our computers, so we suggested that Chris head across the river again to Chelsea, Quebec to go visit and tour Gatineau Park, a large wilderness park managed by the National Capital Commission, the federal government department in charge of managing parkland and capital-like amenities in and around the National Capital Region. Also, for some folks’ edification, he did try McDonald’s Canada’s Big Arch burger, also known as “le Grand M” in Quebec — apparently, it’s fine. While he complained about getting turned around by his GPS, he said he did find some of the lookouts and nice roads in the park and seemed to have a good ride, aside from hitting nearly every red light on his way back along Woodroffe Ave. on his way back.
In the evening, I met up with a long-time friend and former roommate, Naps, for dinner. Turns out he’d also gotten into motorcycling, and had apparently gone to Sturgis this year, making his way back to Ottawa in only three days, covering over 1000 km (625 miles) on two of the days! That’s a lot of saddle time!
For Thursday, I suggested that The Captain try heading south from Ottawa about 80 km (50 miles) toward the Thousand Islands region of the St. Lawrence river, since there were lots of historical sites to see down there from Canada’s colonial and United Empire Loyalist days, as well as to avoid having to traverse the entire city to get north to cross into Quebec. He didn’t get that far, as he visited the local BMW dealer for some new brake pads in the morning, and only made it about halfway south, he did get a chance to see some more charming, small Ontario towns along the way. For dinner, we met up with my folks for dinner for one of Ottawa’s premier foods, Lebanese shawarma at Shawarma Palace. Even The Captain was blown away by their portion sizes and couldn’t eat half his plate!
On Friday, Chris had the day off due to his company generously offering Friday as part of the Labour Day long weekend, so he joined The Captain on the day’s ride out to check out the Diefenbunker Museum. For those not familiar with the little-known Diefenbunker, it was built as the Canadian federal government’s Cold War nuclear fallout bunker and shelter, complete with emergency broadcast facilities for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Bank of Canada secure gold vault and living accommodations for bureaucrats and other government officials in case of a Soviet nuclear attack back in the 1960s. Located about 50 km (30 miles) from the city in Carp, Ontario, it was decommissioned in the 1990s, and turned into a museum in the 2000s.
After they returned and I finished up work, we made our way over for dinner at a friends’ home with their two boys, one 3 and one 2 months for some delicious homemade pizza and soup. Yum!
So many of the friends I tried to coordinate with are now dads that it was really hard to find time to get together with. In the case of two long-time friends from my first job out of university, that time was Friday night. The Captain joined us on the ride, and my friends were suitably impressed that he’d made it out on the ride from California. Unfortunately, at our first rest stop on the ride, The Captain tweaked his back moving his motorcycle by hand out of a no parking zone. When we later tried to find a pub to stop in at for a drink and chat, he was having a hard time, and decided to make an early night of it to take some Aleve and rest. I had a great time catching up with my friends, and we stayed out until after midnight before calling it.
On Saturday, we had a pretty slow day. The Captain and I made plans to meet up with my mom for brunch, but I was on-call for the weekend and was forced to spend a few hours trying to stop a password breaching attack against my company’s website. My fight with the hackers caused us to miss our restaurant’s closing, and so instead we decided to head to The Britannia Coffeehouse, a very cozy, locally-owned coffee shop, just off the bike path next to Britannia beach. My mom rode on the back of my bike and we had a lovely lunch. Afterward, my mom and I had to try some of the ice cream at the tandem Beachconer’s Microcreamery next door. As we ate our ice cream however, the skies got darker and darker and before we knew it, it was raining cats and dogs on us as we scrambled to get our gear on and ourselves on the bikes. By the time we’d ridden the 15 minutes back to my folks’ place to drop off my mom, we were all completely soaked through!
Sunday, we made plans to meet up with some long-time friends out at Maker Feed Co., a local fine-dining establishment way out in the east end of Ottawa in Cumberland. The place didn’t open until 10:30, so we had a nice leisurely morning before getting on the bikes and departing by around 9:45. The roads were clear and we rode all across the city past the freeway’s end and into Cumberland. We had a lovely breakfast and chance to catch up with my friends Alex and Ashley.
We’d planned to head to the of the Governor General’s residence at Rideau Hall for their long weekend open house after breakfast, so by noon, with breakfast finished, we said our goodbyes to Alex and Ashley to head back into the city.
As we lined up to make a left onto the two-lane highway, I was leading and waiting for a break in traffic, when for some reason, The Captain took off before it was clear, without me. Luckily, rather than getting out in front of the crossing pickup to be hit by it, he crashed into the side of it as it went by. Regardless, his motorcycle was obliterated, littering thousands of pieces all over the highway, knocking him and the bike over in the process.
My brother and I scrambled off our bikes to make sure he was okay, and with only some help up, he seemed to be alright, apart from a scraped-up knee. How much of this was adrenaline, we’d find out soon enough. After not too much time, the Ontario Provincial Police arrived along with the Ottawa Police, and The Captain regaled the officers with his “Little Johnny Firehat” joke while we waited for the tow truck to arrive. I called Alex back to give The Captain a ride home, while Chris and I followed the tow truck back to the BMW dealership The Captain had bought his new brake pads from only two days previous.
By the time we arrived at the dealership, Alex and The Captain had already had the tow truck come and go, taking the motorcycle to their tow yard. We decided to rendezvous back at Chris’ place to count our blessings and have a glass of whiskey while we did it. We’d really dodged a bullet with how Chris had crashed. While his knee was scraped and blood was slightly coming through his pants, his ankle hurt and his hand had swollen, he didn’t have any broken bones. He started talking about trying to buy another bike in Ottawa to ride for the return trip. Alex, Chris and I all discouraged him from doing this, due to the complexity of importing a motorcycle into the United States. Knowing that, he started scouting upstate New York for Craigslist or a BMW dealer. We had very little luck looking in Syracuse, but found a dealer farther away in the outskirts of Albany. It would take some rather intense planning to make it work, since my brother didn’t have a car, and my dad, who did, is a three-time-a-week dialysis patient. Anyway, that was a problem for at least Tuesday, since tomorrow, Monday, was the Labour Day holiday, and both the insurance company, dealership and tow yard would be closed.
On Monday, having settled that today there wouldn’t be any motorcycle recovery to do, Chris and I made plans to meet up with Alex and Ashley again to play a round of disc golf out in Almonte, Ontario. Later on, we’d rendezvous with The Captain and my folks, who’d pick him up, for a family picnic in nearby Smiths Falls, Ontario. The round of disc golf was great, albeit pretty muddy on the course, but the cool, windy weather kept the bugs at bay, which was a great relief.
The ride down to Smiths Falls was also lovely, and when we met up with The Captain and my folks, we had a great picnic dinner by the side of the Rideau Canal. The Captain was starting to feel the effects from his crash-sustained injuries though, and wasn’t getting around well on his hobbled ankle. Luckily, my folks had brought a few lawn chairs with them, so he didn’t have to negotiate sitting at a picnic table with his injured foot and hand. The cool weather turned cold though as the sun started setting, and by the end of dinner, we were all eager to pack up to get in the car, or have all our motorcycle gear on.
Tuesday was then our day of action. The Captain’s insurance asked that we go take photos of the damaged motorcycle, so we took an Uber out to the tow yard, only to find an absolutely enormous, shared tow yard amongst seemingly a dozen different towing companies, with no signage telling us where to find our towing company’s area. A good amount of wandering and exploring ensued, asking random folks around the yard where to go before we found our spot, of course, way in the farthest back corner. The Captain limped across the whole thing and we waited by the gate for someone to let us in. After 30 minutes, someone from our company finally came by, and we got our photos of the bike, looted anything of value off of it and finally left the destroyed bike to its fate. Getting an Uber to pick us up from the back corner of a country mile-sized tow yard was a bit of a feat, but after a couple tries, we finally got a driver who didn’t force The Captain to walk all the way back out to the road to be picked up.
On our way back, The Captain admitted to me that his best option was probably to fly home, and asked how the process of flying back from Ottawa would work. It was at this point that I had to tell him, he couldn’t fly home from Ottawa, since he hadn’t brought his passport, he wouldn’t be let on a plane. Yikes. Once we made it home, we started making plans to arrange a ride for the 3.5 hour trip down to Syracuse, New York for a flight home. It was right around this point that a friend, Ben Margolin, from the Sunday Morning Breakfast Club replied to our email thread suggesting that we try getting in touch with the American Embassy here in Ottawa. The Captain gave them a call at 4:55pm, just five minutes before they closed as a last-ditch effort.
Wednesday started with The Captain’s phone ringing without answer before 8:00am. The Captain was still asleep in his bed. Another call came in less than a half hour later. When The Captain finally awoke from his slumber and limped upstairs, I let him know his phone had rang. It was the embassy! A bit of phone tag, and an email exchange later, and they had The Captain slotted for an appointment the next day in the first time slot at 7:45am sharp and instructions for The Captain to work on a brand new, from-scratch passport application online. It took a good part of the day to help get everything entered on the digital forms, a trip to the Staples copy centre for printing and copying of all of The Captain’s original birth certificates, but by that night we had a ream of documentation all ready for The Captain’s appointment the next day.
In the morning, it was straight out of bed and into an Uber to head downtown. The embassy had a strict security policy, so The Captain even had to leave his lighter with me while he headed in. Luckily, the embassy is in a great location downtown, so while he was in speaking with the officials, my brother and I were able to post up in a lovely coffee shop to get some work done. Within an hour, The Captain called saying he was done and out of the embassy, so we met up to lead him to coffee. Afterward, since we were in downtown Ottawa, we sent The Captain off to do some sightseeing while the two of us continued working away at our day jobs. By noon, the embassy had called back, and told The Captain to come pickup his document, a shiny, new, 1-year emergency passport! What a quick turnaround, and a nice morning playing tourist while we were at it!
After grabbing some lunch, we took Ottawa’s shiny, new Light Rail Train and the bus home. Apparently, The Captain hadn’t been on public transit in over a decade, so you’d have to get his impression of it. I made sure to take a couple pictures to memorialize the occasion. When we got home, I helped The Captain book a flight home for Saturday.
Friday was another work day, but followed by a trip to the Aero Gatineau-Ottawa airshow afterward over in Gatineau, Quebec. This nighttime airshow was a real interesting one. There was an awesome dusk performance by the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) Snowbirds demonstration team, an afterburner-filled show by the RCAF CF-18 demonstration jet and a performance by the Ghostwriter plane that launched fireworks from the plane as it flew through the air. I’d never seen a nighttime air show before, so the whole thing was very impressive to me. Unfortunately, the weather turned wet and the latter part of the show had to be cancelled, so we left a bit early. Just early enough that we were able to stop by one of my favorite fast-food poutine shops on our way home.
Saturday morning, I brought The Captain to the airport to send him safely back to the Bay Area. It was a nice, late morning departure so we had time to reminisce about our trip and say our goodbyes. The rest of my day was a quiet one hanging out with my brother’s dog while he attended a very wet, and muddy full day of rained-out airshow.
Sunday was more air show, this time thankfully much less wet, but no less muddy. This time all the performances went off without much of a hitch, including shows by the USAF Thunderbirds, RAF Red Arrows and RCAF Snowbirds. The Red Arrows really stole the show with their fun, acrobatics, colored smoke and great announcement, but it was really incredible to see the speed and precision of the Thunderbirds in their F-16s and the repeat performance from the Snowbirds in their CT-114 Tutors. I’m running out of time putting this article together, but if you want to see some great footage of some of the festivities between the Red Arrows and Snowbirds, check out this Youtube video.
Unfortunately, I had to skip on my planned third week trip down to Boston and Providence, since I couldn’t leave in time to make the trip over the weekend, but that meant I could spend another week in Ottawa with friends and family.
We had a great dinner with my folks on Wednesday, and another meetup with family friends Mischa and Vera and their two young boys on Friday night.
Tomorrow, Saturday it’s going to be back on the road to begin my return journey. Luckily, I won’t be starting solo, as my brother is going to join me for the first day out to Sudbury, Ontario, before turning back to leave me the rest of the journey to California solo. Here goes!
Captain says ‘accurate’ write-up.