Saturday morning at 7:30am found us all parked out front of Armor-Plated MoFo's house, the tempurature a "balmy" 30c already, with a humidex of like 96,000. We got everyone together, kissed our signifcant others goodbye, and after almost running over Tracy as she was trying to get a picture of us leaving, we were off.

Our first stop was to be the Ice House in Campbellville, as that was where we would be picking up Marcel. It was decided we would take Campbellville Road into Campbellville (go figure eh, Campbellville road takes you into Campbellville, imagine that...) so that our first good shot of video would be of the nice jump on Campbellville Road. I guess Captain Insano and JoJo weren't privy to that plan, 'cause as soon as we hit Avenue Road, they took off like their asses were on fire, not to be seen again until we got to the Ice House, but not before they got yanked by a Halton cop, as they passed him doing double the speed limit. Long story short - they got off with a warning. Anyway, the rest of us stopped at the jump, and we got the video camera set up. First I hit the jump at about 160km/h - no air. Fun little bump, but no air. Then The Cook hit the jump - again, no air. So, Armor-Plated MoFo figures "I'll show these guys" and comes at the jump doing about mach-3. Front end comes way up, rear tire leaves ground, bike just about loops, and Armor-Plated MoFo breaks his fall back onto his bike with his nuts slamming into the gas tank, and the chin of his helmet smacking off the top of his gas tank. And yes we got it on video - check the video section.

So we all arrived at the Ice House unharmed - well, except for Armor-Plated MoFo - he rolled in to Campbellville slumped over on his bike, and Marcel was there waiting for us. We had a coffee, a muffin, and we were off. The 401 took us to the 407 - everybody knows how much I like the 407 - and from there it was a ridiculously quick trip to Markham, and I mean ridiculously quick. I can distinctly rememember taking my eyes off the road just long enough to see my speedo roll past 280km/h on a couple of occasions...

So in to Markham we cruise, making our first scheduled fuel, smoke, and drink stop. It is here that we discover our first mechanical problem of the day - it would seem that our "brisk" pace on the 407 has caused a couple of JoJo's exhaust bolts to rattle loose. So, JoJo hops into the chase vehicle and heads over to Canadian Tire, where he proceeds to buy every kind of nut and bolt he can find exept for the metric bolts needed for his exhaust. So Captain Insano gets working at it (damn, he's handy) and with a couple of borrowed bolts from Akbar and Hasibhamamapetulan at the gas station, JoJo is good to go.

Highway 7 led us over to 35/115, and that took us up into Peterborough, our next scheduled stop. We figured Wendys was as good a place as any to eat - actually, it was so hot out by this point, we would have eaten camel shit off of a Turkish homeless guy's ass, so long as it was being served in an air-conditioned establishment. Perhaps the funniest thing overheard at lunch - some young girl saying to her mother after seeing Armor-Plated MoFo - "Mommy, what's wrong with that man's hair?" Anyway, not only did our stop in Peterborough serve the all-important food, water, smoke, and fuel purposes, it was where we stopped to buy our frying pans for frying-pan skiing (more on that later), and it was where we stopped to buy our beer.

As soon as we got out of Peterborough, the roads started to get fun. Traffic was a bit heavy in some spots, but half the fun was picking those cars off and passing them. We got into to Buckhorn, where we made our first wrong turn, and boy was it almost a costly one. Twice. You see at this point we were all following Marcel, and he turns down this road. So we all followed, where we proceeded to wick 'er up to about 180km/h, where we proceeded to blow past an OPP cruiser (yes, all 8 of us, yes, at 180km/h) coming the other way. Needless to say, we didn't stick around to see if he had any concerns about our over-exuberant rate of travel. So we're all cookin' along this road - it was a pretty good set of twisties - when all of the sudden Marcel pulls over. We all follow suit, and pretty soon we realize we've made a wrong turn. No problem, we'll just turn around and head back. However, the only way back to where we need to be is back down the road we just passed Johnny Law on doing a buck-eighty. Now, I've used alot of words to describe us so far, but "smart" has yet to be one of them, because not only do we go back down the same road we just came off of, but we go back down it at 160km/h. Hey, why waste a good set of twisities... So we're about three-quarters of the way down the Johnny-Law road, and no sign of Johnny-Law. We thought for sure he'd be looking for us, or just sitting somewhere waiting for us, but nothing. So we come up and around one of the last bends before you get back into Buckhorn, and WHAM! There's ANOTHER cruiser, only he's already sitting at the side of the road, with some guy leaned in his window talking to him. I'm sure they heard us coming, 'cause the guy leaning in the window stands up, and I see the cop's head come firing out of the cruiser's window just in time to watch us all pass him at double the speed limit. We get into Buckhorn, pull over at the side of the road to get regrouped and figure out where we're going, and not wanting to be the proverbial fish getting shot in the proverbial barrel, we're off like bats out of hell.

Our quick escape out of Buckhorn led us up to the 507 - for those of you who have no idea what the 507 is - let's just say it is God's gift to the sportbike rider. It's about 10km of nothin' but twisties, and 160km/h twisties at that. In our haste to make sure Johnny Law wasn't behind us, we all kind of got split up into pairs, which made for a perfect tear down the 507. Armor-Plated MoFo and I ran together, and our pace was perfect; fast enough to be hanging off the edges of our seats, but not fast enough to end up becoming splatter decorations on the sheer granite-faced walls that line pretty much the entire length of the 507. We all regrouped at the little variety store that marks the end of the 507 - time for some more water, as dehydration was becoming a big factor at this time of the day. So here we were, 8 guys on sportbikes, one of whom had green hair, all standing around with our shirts off, dousing ourselves with water, and consuming gatorade by the kegful. What a sight we were for all of the inbred local yocals up there... 

A 15-minute ride from the store brought us to the entrance to Elephant Lake Road - the sight of the infamous Elephant Lake Road race. This is the one and only spot on the entire ride where we race against each other, and the rules are pretty simple - there are none. It is every man for himself, regardless of what happens, until we reach the end of Elephant Lake Road. Stuffing, cutting off, car-passing sandwiches, and kill-switch slapping are all acceptable practices during the race - even if somebody crashes - as long as he get's up, the race is still on. So we all get to the left-hander that leads onto Elephant Lake Road, with Captain Insano leading the pack. Now everyone knows this is Captain Insano's race - he's won it the last 2 years in a row. So he starts to make the left hander, looks behind him and sees that everyone is going to be able to make the turn, and instead of doing the gentlemanly thing of waiting until everybody can get lined up to start, the cheatin' bastard takes off! Guess he was afraid of us boys on the litre-class bikes, and figured the only way he was gonna win was by getting a head start... Anyway, the traffic on Elephant Lake Road was really heavy, and we got split into little packs trying to pass the groups of cars as we blasted along. It was Captain Insano, Armor-Plated MoFo, and JoJo in the lead pack, and as The Cook and I came around the first big corner, all we could see was dirt and dust billowing through the air. "Oh shit..." I thought to myself, "this can't be good." Sure enough, someone was down - it was Captain Insano, and he wasn't getting back up. For a bunch of hooligans, we handled "Emergency Scene Management" rather well. We all stopped, as did a few cars, one of which was being driven by a nurse, and started tending to Captain Insano. To make a long story short, we were able to get him up and into the chase vehicle, so we could get him to the hospital. Brad did a fine a job as traffic director, with instructions like "yeah, yeah, just keep fuckin' moving", and he I think he scared the shit out of some guy in a Honda who had slowed right down to be nosy fuck and have a look by running right up to, and almost smashing the driver's door window out of said Honda. Even I, Mr. Hair-trigger violent temper was surprisingly diplomatic - when the nurse who had helped us tend to Captain Insano said in her most bitchy tone "you know, all you guys were going way to fast", I simply said to her in my most quiet and menacing tone, "look lady, thank you for stopping and helping us, but the last thing we need right now is to be preached to." The end result of the crash - Captain Insano faired far worse than his bike did - while he ended up with a broken collarbone, some cracked ribs, and a collapsed lung, the only thing on his bike that actually was damaged (well, other than a couple of fairing pieces, but that shit is always falling off his bike anyway...) was his windscreen. Not bad for a high-side. Far be it for me to be preachy, so all I'll say is Captain Insano knows he got greedy... While there was no "official winner" of the Elephant Lake Road race due to the crash, JoJo and Marcel went and ran the rest of it anyway, and while Marcel led JoJo for a good part of their run, JoJo pulled a little two-wheeled magic on the last corner , passing Marcel with about 50 feet to go to the stop sign. So, mad props to JoJo for being the unofficial winner.

So now we had to deal with the unfortunate unscheduled event of bringing Captain Insano to the hospital. We were about 20 minutes north of Bancroft, which had the closest hospital, so off raced the chase vehicle with the injured Captain Insano in it. The rest of us stopped in Maynooth where it was decided we would all wait for Brad to come back and let us know how Captain Insano was. We all grabbed some shade in the parking lot of The Arlington Hotel - the place which turned out to be our saviour for the night - but more on that later. So Brad came back from Bancroft, let us know that Johnny was hurt pretty bad, and he was probably going to be at the hospital for a while, so we decided we'd all head down to Bancroft and wait together at the hospital. So with a marvelous feat of engineering (actually, we just backed the chase vehicle up to a steep grass hill and rode the bike into the back of the truck...) we got Captain Insano's injured steed into the truck, and we all took off for Bancroft. Our wait in the parking lot of the hospital was full of fun and exciting events - not only did we get to watch to Guy try and pick up a couple of Bancroft's finest cougars (ewwww...), we also had a couple of unconfirmed sightings of the elusive Bancroft Fat-Squatch. See the video section for the horrifying footage we managed to get on camera. As an hour turned into two, and the doctor had still not yet seen Captain Insano, we realized that we weren't going to make Calabogie before it got dark, and we were all pretty beat anyway, so it was time to put together a contingency plan. We called damn near every hotel in Bancroft (all 3 of them...) and they were all booked solid - probably due to the "YEEE-HAW, I married my cousin" convention that was in town... Then we realized the Arlington was a hotel, or at least they were calling it a hotel, so maybe they might have a few rooms we could share. Well, The Arlington Hotel turned out to be our diamond in the rough, because not only did they have a couple of barrack-style rooms we could share for fifteen bucks a piece, they had restaurant, and they had a live band playing there that night. Oh yeah, and they had a bar...

So we all got back up to the Arlington, got cleaned up, and had supper. With our bellies full, and our motorcycles parked for the night, there was really only one thing left to do - drink. And drink we did... We started the evening by hanging out with the band on the back deck of the Arlington, drinking beer and swapping stories. They were particularily enthralled with the idea that we were soon going be frying-pan skiing, hell, they even told the crowd at the bar about it by working it into one of their songs. Our newly-invented sport of frying-pan skiing had a simple theory - all one was to do was to stand in the frying pans we had bought earlier in the day, and be dragged up and down the street behind a motorized vehicle - more specifically The Cook's R1, as he was to be one of the only sober Reservoir Dogs by that point. Well, doubles of one's favourite poison was the call of the night, and pretty soon we were all out back watching The Cook wheelie his R1 up and down the quiet street behind the Arlington, ready to either participate in, or to just observe some olympic-calibre frying-pan skiing. What a hoot. We got some of it on video - check the video section. I can't remember how many passes we made up and down that street, frying pans a sparkin' as they slid along the pavement. Some were even brave enough (or drunk enough) to try slalom frying-pan skiing, until the realization was made that slalom frying-pan skiing could quickly equal major trauma to one's body. We must have been out there for damn near a half-hour, when around the corner comes Mr. OPP cruiser, with 3 cops in it. So we're all standing there trying to look innocent - well, as innocent as a group of hooligans can look standing around an R1 with a pair of now very warm and very scratched up frying pans. The look on the one cop's face was priceless - he was just dumbfounded at the fact that we were out back of this little piss-hole hotel in Maynooth, dragging drunk guys around on frying pans behind a $ 14000.00 motorcycle. All in all, the cops were pretty cool - we all had a good laugh over the one cop saying something to the effect of "Well, I'd charge you all with something, but I'll be damned if I can figure out which law it is you're breaking..." So with that, frying-pan skiing was done for the night, so back to the bar we went. The band was still rockin', and the drinks, well, they were still a flowin'. Perhaps the funniest thing heard all night, and how I earned the dubious "Captain Kahlua" nickname - the waitress comes around for last call, and asks me if I want one more drink. I had been drinking double white russians all night, so I figured sure, I'll have one more. She comes back to me with this concerned look on her face and says to me "I'm sorry, but I can't make you another white russian." I looked at her and said "well why the hell not?" She looks at me and says "well, because we don't have any more Kahlua - you drank the whole bottle." I figured that was as good a sign as any that it was time for bed...

Unfortunately, Sunday was no where near as an event-filled day as Saturday. Most of us awoke with hangovers of catastrophic proportions - Armor-Plated MoFo even took my last two asprin, and then proceeded to puke them back up about 20 seconds later. We needed grease, and we needed it fast, so it was off to McDonald's in Bancroft for breakfast. While greasy food offered some relief (although Armor-Plated MoFo wouldn't know, as he took only one bite of his hotcakes, and decided that was enough, and went to lay down in the parking lot to die), us of the hungover brethren knew it was going to be an awful day, and opted to take the straightest and most direct way home. The Cook and Marcel don't drink, so they were all set to go, and decided they'd go run the 507 again, and meet back up with us in Peterborough. Bastards. Again, not much to be said about the ride home Sunday, other than the fact that it was much longer and much more painful than it needed to be... The video highlight of the day - a shot of me having a piss at the side of the 35/115 - 401 junction. Great job boys...

Sunday night found us all back at JoJo's place, enjoying the obligatory Calabogie Sunday barbeque with the ladies. We had a few more drinks (yeah, just we needed...), had some great food, and told some great stories. We even introduced JoJo's neighbours to the fine art and sweet sounds of frying-pan skiing. We watched our video, we handed out the trpohies, and then we all pretty much went home to die...