The Canada trip was bittersweet. I saw a lot of cool things and actually rode my bike to a foreign country, but 70% of it was ridden in really cold rain. It rained the entire way to Minneapolis, it rained on the way to Duluth, it rained (a little) on the way to Thunder Bay, it rained (a little) on the way to White River, it rained the entire way from White River to the US border, it did not rain from St. Ignace to Flint, but did rain halfway from Flint to Chicago. And then it rained the entire way from Chicago back to Iowa.
So we started off heading up towards Dubuque. We crossed the border into Wisconsin and followed the border a bit and then crossed back into Iowa because my dad got lost. As soon as we crossed back into Iowa it started pouring, but it was okay because we had our rain gear on for warmth earlier anyway. At about 3pm 60 miles south of Rochester, MN the CX had a major meltdown.
During the hardest rainfall I had ever ridden in, I experienced a feeling that was similar to running out of gas when I forget to put it on reserve. The bike loses power, falls behind and sputters as I move into the slow lane to turn on the reserve and speed up. It takes about 30 seconds to kick in and bring me back up to speed, but this time doing so didn't help. I had ridden about 70 miles already, which (dependi
ng on the conditions) is when I should usually switch over to reserve anyway. It was still sputtering and revving and demanded that I quickly downshift and turn it off. I did that and sat there for a minute, and then I started the bike back up again. It hesitated but eventually started and idled fine. My dad was about 7 miles ahead of me before he realized I had pulled over (despite my honking and light flickering) and had no remedy for the situation so I got back on and rode it for another 20 miles until it did it again. The rain was coming down in sheets now and was starting to collect on roads in every small town we pulled into, but as soon as the heavy rain subsided, the bike ran fine. When we got to Rochester we pulled the fuel line and put an entire new tank of gas in it (thinking water got into the fuel and fouled it) and then it ran like usual all the way through the busy Minneapolis traffic to our destination.
The next day we departed Minneapolis and headed towards Duluth in partly cloudy skies. It eventually started to rain 100 miles out but after a really boring ride up north we arrived in Duluth where it was nice and sunny. Duluth is pretty scenic and seems like a fun town, but there's a lot of homeless people and nomads with backpacks running around because its pretty much the end of the line for Minnesota. After visiting the cool locomotive station there, we headed up to Hibbing, MN where my next problem arose.
The Duluth area has some of the crappiest roads I've ever ridden on. Super bumpy with tons of potholes. We took a really bad side road to get to Hibbing, where I lost my luggage.
Losing something that's been sitting behind you and providing you with a back rest for the last 400 miles is a surreal feeling. It was a brand new expensive waterproof duffel bag that had all of my clothes and electronics accessories stuffed in it. It had been wrapped down nicely with about 4 bungee cords so I thought it would have been fine, but as soon as I heard the bungees banging against the side of the bike and scratching my sidecovers (and potentially getting into the spokes of my rear wheel) I freaked out and cautiously pulled over immediately. After meeting back up with my dad, we combed a 30 mile stretch of road for an hour and a half, burning daylight and looking for my missing bag. In that hour and a half about 5 cars went down that road coming from Hibbing like us, and I'm sure one of those cars stole my bag. I went back looking for it right away and still couldn't find it. I called the local Sheriffs office (where they didn't do anything about it, of course) and went to Wal Mart (ugh) and blew $100 replacing everything I lost.
Lessons learned: Be more obsessive-compulsive about your bungee cords. Pull over when you rode through a bumpy road and re-tighten everything. Put a card in your luggage with your name and address on it. Make your luggage visible in case it gets thrown into a ditch.
After that and spending a night creeping the NE MN "lost and found" section on CraigsList and talking to local authorities, we left for International Falls for the monumental border crossing.
It was possibly the easiest border crossing ever. My dad went in first and handed the officer his passport and told him I was with him on a trip and the guy waved me through and didn't even ask for my passport. I stopped at the window anyway to hand it to him just to be sure but he just shook his head and told me to have fun. I had my first taste of Vietnamese food in town (A+) in town there and then crossed a series of bridges from island-to-island to get on the main road to start going across Canada.Continued in Part II.
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