Saturday morning at 7:30am found us once again gathered out front of Cannon's place - well most of us anyway... After we finally managed to get a hold of SuperDave (dude, they're called alarm clocks) and get his late ass out of bed, we were almost ready to roll. Almost, because Captain Insano decided he would lose the map we had all marked out for the ride, and even after a trip home to see of he could find it, we were still sans map. No big deal really, as we just grabbed another map, had a quick look, and all decided "yep, that looks good." We all figured that with both Brucey's and Jon's stupendous sense of direction and incredible navigational abilities we were going to get lost anyway, so what the hell, let's just go. So we did. Our destination: The Arlington in Maynooth.
This year's Calalbogie Run not only saw the return of Mr. Pipe after a two-year hiatus, but the welcoming of three new Dogs to the debauchery. Kaptain "Not My Truck" Kev, in charge of driving (or should that be driving the absolute shit out of...) Jon's relatively new Big Black, The Gunslinger, who had the ominous fate of riding with Kaptain Kev in said support vehicle, and K-Dawg, on his much-slower-than-my-ZX-12 Honda BlackBird. Welcome to the show...
We headed north through Guelph, our first twisty-road destination being The Forks of the Credit and Hockley Valley road. From there we proceeded north for Barrie, only to end up at the guard-shack at CFB Borden. CFB Borden?? Brucey must have been leading at this point... Getting into Barrie to get fuel ended up proving to be no small task either - we figure someone probably got themselves killed, as every road we turned onto was road-blocked by the cops. After playing ring-around-the-Barrie for almost an hour, we finally managed to get to the 400 and stop for some much-needed-by-this-point fuel.
From Barrie we split off the 400 and took 11 up into Orillia, Fuelman deciding to lead the way in his Ford Focus. At 150 km/h. At 150 km/h, passing cars on the outside lane. We stopped in Orillia for lunch, then continued to head north for the really good twisty roads. We grabbed the 503, and headed for Elephant Lake road.
Ahhh yes, Elephant Lake road. There was a lot of talk this year as to whether or not there would actually be a race, due most in part to the unfortunate events that took place on last year's Elephant Lake road race. As it turned out, there was a race. Well kind of. As we rounded the corner, Cannon took off like his ass was on fire, and Brucey chased after him. Insano, myself, SuperDave, and Kerry decided we'd run it at a brisk but well-controlled pace, quite happy to follow Captain Insano as he enjoyed Elephant Lake road this year, rather than crashing on it. The last thing I remember seeing / hearing was Brucey go screaming past Cannon on the first part of the run, and such is how the race ended; Brucey coming in first, with Cannon not far behind. We all had the pleasure of meeting one of the ELR locals as he came running out his driveway yelling "SLOW DOWN!!" when Brucey passed his house, then again as Cannon passed his house, and a third time as our pack of four passed his house. I betcha' he was impressed...
Elephant Lake road ends at Hwy 62. A left turn, and a two minute ride, you are at the Arlington - our destination for the evening. But the day was still young, so what was a bunch of hooligans on motorcycles to do? That's right. Make a quick right turn, head south for Bancroft, and harass the locals. And so begins the story of this year's newest star: Captain Amazing.
We all roll in to the Tim Hortons in Bancroft, and not two minutes later, in rolls Captain Amazing. Captain Amazing's uniform consisted of the following: boxer shorts, a pair of red boots, a '70's style CHiPs helmet with blue flames all over it, and pair of $1.99 pool goggles. That's it, that's all. Captain Amazing thrilled the locals with his presence, perhaps even more so when Kaptain Kev kept driving the truck further and further away from Captain Amazing, so that Captain Amazing could not retrieve his clothes. Poor Jonny Cannon. He never got to meet Captain Amazing... Funny, whenever Captain Amazing showed up, Jonny Cannon was nowhere to be found. Hmmm...
A ten-minute ride north brought us back up to Maynooth - more specifically back up to The Arlington. With the bikes safely parked for the night, out came the beer. Then we had some more beer. And then some more. A word to the wise: if you are going to grab a quick shower before dinner, don't let anyone know about it. I was the first to fall victim to "let's keep flushing the toilet while he's in the shower" - but that's okay, 'cause they got Cannon too... As fate would have it, we soon discovered that the kick-ass band that played at The Arlington last year - yes the same band we partied with and frying-pan skied with - was back again this year. Perfect. We all had dinner together, and then sat out on the back deck drinking more beer, relishing in stories about what had happened the year before, and how we were going to top that this year. It was about this time that Brucey and Kerry (the only sober ones) decided they were going to go for an early evening ride, so I let Brucey take my beloved ZX-12. And so begins the story of this year's theme song: "Brucey stole my ZX-12." It's a quick story really, because you had to be there to enjoy it, but let's just say it ended with me coming up with the perfect chorus to the new song, which was immediately followed by Cannon shooting beer out of his nose and falling to the ground in a fit of uncontrollable laughter...
It was at this time that we also found out that we had pretty much achieved legendary status with the people of Maynooth. The guys from the band informed us that many of the locals had already been asking them if "those crazy bastards on the motorcycles" were going to be making a return appearance this year. Apparently frying-pan skiing was now something of biblical proportions in this small town, and being the clowns that we are, of course we could not disappoint our public... But to truly understand just what kind of monster we had created, lets go back to a month before this year's Calabogie run, when Cannon called The Arlington to make our reservations. The conversation went something like this:
Cannon: "Yes, I'd just like to reserve a couple of your rooms for the Saturday night of the August long weekend."
Guy who owns The Arlington: "Okay, how many will there be in your party?"
Cannon: "There's ten of us, and we'd like the two bunk-style rooms we had last year."
Guy who owns The Arlington: "Okay then. Hey wait a minute, were you the guys that were here on the motorcycles last year?"
Cannon: "Umm, err, yeah, that could have been us."
Guy who owns The Arlington: "Hmmm. Okay, do me a favour. Leave the frying pans at home this year."
Cannon: speechless.
And sure enough, when we arrived this year, the owner kindly reminded us that if we could refrain from frying-pan skiing on the street out back of his establishment, it would be greatly appreciated. Fair enough. But he didn't say anything about frying-pan skiing on the street out front of his establishment. It mattered not to us that this "street" was actually a provincial highway - the people wanted frying-pan skiing, so the people were going to get frying-pan skiing...
So we're all at the bar, the drinks are aplenty, the band is rockin' (already having warmed up with another fine rendition of "Brucey stole my ZX-12"), and the band decides they are going to take their first break. What better time than now for our first Calabogie '02 frying-pan ski we all thought, and proceeded to get our shit together. Well no sooner did we get out onto Hwy 62, when the entire bar empties out onto the street to watch. Yes, EVERYONE in the bar was now standing out front of it, ready for the show. And we did not disappoint. Cannon made several passes up and down Hwy 62, even some while shooting off roman candles. We even got the lead singer of the band out on the frying-pans this year...
The above situation repeated itself, in it's entirety, when the band took it's second break of the night. It should also be noted that shortly after this we were informed by the owner of The Arlington that we would not be welcomed back next year... It was after midnight by this point, and in having vowed to not have another repeat performance of last year's Calabogie Sunday morning (hey Cannon, remember the tylenol incident and the McDonalds parking-lot incident...?), most of us headed for bed so that we could actually do some riding on Sunday...
And ride we did. What a fantastic day of balls-out, twisty-blasting, police-evading, high-speed hooliganism. A few of the highlights: stopping in Griffith where Count Poopenstein proceeded to attack each of us one by one, locking SuperDave in the bathroom at said site of the Count's attack, riding kilometres and kilometres of roads that were never straight, blasting the entire length of Hwy 41 (137km) at constant speeds of just under 200km/h, and my two attempted runs to break 300km/h on the GPS, both of which were thwarted due to traffic. We also managed to make it to Centennial Lake road this year, where we stopped to pay our respects to Big Daddy Cool. RIP Ludi.
As per usual, our triumphant return home was signaled by Cannon's mad-max burnout, out front of his house, so all of his new neighbours could enjoy it... We followed that up with a great barbecue, much, much, much booze, and celebration of the fact that we had all returned home safe from a great weekend of riding.
Hmmm, only ten more months 'til Calabogie '03...