Kim rode along on her big ol' '89 Virago 1100.

Eileen and MC (that's me!) rode the Big Green KZ 1300. This is the same bike we'd bought in Portland Oregon in 1998 and ridden to Portland Maine; shipped it to Germany and rode it all over D-Land and Austria then shipped it back and rode it to Key West and back in three days.

The trip "as far north as we can get" just didn't seem like it should have been such a big deal compared to the other trips, but little did we know about the "roads" in Labrador!

We left at 10:27 AM on Friday, the 22nd of August from Charlie Brown's Family Restaurant, 495 Goodman Street, Rochester, NY, where MC likes to spend Saturday mornings enjoying Charlie's great #7 Fritatta (with extra jalapeños!) discussing things that matter with Big Paul.

MC was catching his breath, having just returned from a fine month in at the Herder Institut at the University of Leipzig (Germany), when Frau Call (Eileen) lamented that we hadn't done a suitably big trip on the motorcycle that summer.

Long suffering that he is, MC proceded to plan a nice long trip . . .

Originally we had mind of trying to qualify for the Iron Butt Association's Saddle Sore 1000 -- 1,000 miles in 24 hours so MC plotted a route from Rochester to Lab City.

There was some initial difficulty finding maps of the last stretch, but in the end, the American Automibile Association (AAA) came through and everything looked OK. Now we know why it proved to difficult getting maps!

Frau Braun consented to watch the Dawg and Kim's kitties for the three days we thought we'd be gong . . . three days, yeah!

(It turned into 11 days -- woops! -- thanks, Frau Braun for hanging in there with the Dawg and kitties!)

After a great breakfast, we started out at 10:27 AM from Charlie Brown's, travelling I-490 to I-90 and took the I-81 north from Syracuse to Canada.

Once in the province of Quebec, we stopped at the first Information Center to get a more detailed map of the stretch from Baie-comeau, up to Lab City.

The French-Canadian manager of the Info Center was more French than Canadian that day and insisted that there were by gawd no roads to Labrador City which, she also insisted pedantically, was not part of Newfoundland, as AAA, Yahoo and I thought, but was actually in a completely different province called Labrador.

This should have sent up a flag -- when Kannucks don't know their own geography, but MC just wrote it off as the French influence, jumped back on the bike and roared off.

Quebec City and Montreal both served up a certain volume of traffic which served to slow progress to the point that we finally had to call it a night at Chez Pierre in Boul Not (?) -- some miles from our "big left turn" at Baie Cuomo. Yes, we lost some $88 on our reservation . . .

Woke up the next day and headed to Baie Comeau, with a fantastic ferry crossing at Baie St. Catharines.

Here's a shot just before the ferry:

That should have told me something.

After talking with George and another young man with a strong French accent, we decided to go ahead and continue (not recommended!)

We made it to Gagnon -- an outpost halfway between Manic Cinq and Lab City.

Woke up the Inn keeper, got a nice room and some gasoline, some adult beverages and some much-needed sleep.

Next day we fought on along steadily worsening roads, finally arriving in Lab City about 4:00 PM.

Kim kissed the road when the pavement appeared again just outside the iron pits outside Labrador City.

MC would have kissed the road, but he was too dadgum tired.

As we checked in, we noticed the two "moto-cross" bikes which had passed us up -- they were BMW GS1150's belonging to Pierre Thibaudeau of Moto Internationale Montreal and his buddy Duc Dufour of Harley Davidson Montreal.

Pierre is a bona-fide hard-ass. When he retired from the Mounties, hed packed up his bike and took his wife to the four corners of North America: Key West, Baja, the Yukon and Labrador.

When he got done with that, he still wasn't satisfied, so he biked all the way through South America to Tierra Del Fuego.

Pierre and Duc abuse themselves on a regular basis with such rides -- here's some pictures of their trip to Baja the next year!

More on those guys later . . .

We swore we would never go back on that road from Manic Cinq to Lab City, so we asked about a train.

Next day we found out that although we could get on the passenger train the next day, our bikes couldn't go out for another couple dys -- and then only if the mine decided to send out a shipment -- something no-one could guarantee.

We considered the options and set out for Goose Bay.

Next time, we'll wait for the train!!

Like the road from Manic Cinq, the road out of Lab City was dirt, but pretty smooth.

After eight hours of hard riding, we made it to Churchill Falls -- stayed overnight at the Churchill Falls Inn, taking the tour of the hydro project there (highly recommended). Here are some links to the Trans Labrador Highway

Here's a stretch of the Trans-Labrador Highway (a more accurate description would be "Trans-Labrador Driveway") between Lab City and Churchill Falls. The surface alternated between hard packed soil to washboard, light gravel, heavy gravel and sand for nearly 600 km -- that's over 350 miles on "ball bearings!"

Not recommended for anything -- let alone something with less than four wheels!

On the positive side, Eileen was perfectly distracted by the stones along the sides of the road and we had to stop from time to time for her to find a nice specimen to bring home!