Trip Stats:
Total Days: 31
Total Miles Traveled: ~878 miles
Breakdowns (*Mechanical*): 0
Gallons of Gas Purchased: ~8 gallons
Wolfe Island, ON
I stayed on Wolfe Island for two weeks with Janette. I met Janette through workaway, a website that allows people to volunteer in exchange for accomodations (housing + food). The volunteer work depends on the host but could be eco projects, farms, off grid projects or general help. Janette had a farm with a market garden and horses. I helped out during the weekdays and had the weekends off. The work was mainly on the market garden, harvesting, planting, weeding and some other projects here and there. Janette is also working on a program to help teach people about sustainable farming practices which is super cool (and also getting her PhD from Queens University). I learned quite a bit about farming and sustainable practices during my stay and had a really great time. I met a lot of really cool people on Wolfe Island and in the surrounding Kingston area. Mark and Dhyani worked on the farm fulltime and made working on the farm a lot of fun. I met Mavis, the daughter of one of Janette's friends, Tracey. We went kayaking with her friend Jamie and also did some hiking on one of the beaches on the island.
I met Mikayla, a student from Queens who was volunteering on the farm. Mikayla showed me around Kingston, we went out to some clubs/bars in the area with her roommates. It's crazy how Kingston college nightlife in the summer was still
busier than normal school year night life at Case (well, not that surprising).
Overall Canada was pretty similar to the US, besides university being cheaper for the most part and the "free-ish" healthcare.
Wolfe Island, ON to Tupper Lake, NY
I left Wolfe Island and took the ferry to Cape Vincent, NY heading towards the Adirondacks. I made good time and was in Cranberry Lake in no time. I stopped at a random convenience/grocery store in Cranberry lake to grab some food for lunch and there two guys waiting for food started asking me questions about where I was going. My setup does look pretty ridiculous. I told them where I was headed and then I asked if either of them had a place I could crash at. One of the guys Jon said he had a garage I could crash at in Tupper Lake. I met him at his garage around 5 PM and left my stuff. During my trip over, I somehow lost my riding gloves...I don't know how it happened and I'm still mad about it. I may have spent almost an hour combing a patch of brush looking for them. I told Jon what happened and he said he had an extra pair of gloves that I could have (thank you so much Jon, honestly a life saver. Made riding in VT much more comfortable). Jon actually rode motorcycles, he had a KTM 500 and an African Twin. Jon had to run to his daughters softball game so I headed to the local brewery to grab some food and plan my route for the next day.
Tupper Lake, NY to Burlington, VT
The Adriondacks were pretty rough, my moped could not keep up on most of the hills. Many times I went down to 5 MPH and had to pedal to maintain speed up hills. I passed through Lake Placid and was excited to get out of the Adirondacks. The roads were too busy and the hills were too steep. I stopped at a visitor station to eat some breakfast and I met Eliot, a seasonal worker at the park. We talked for a bit and I asked him what the roads were like the rest of the way out of the park. He said there were some large hills and boy was he right. I got up to almost 45 mph going down some of these hills, the cyclists were also flying and would catch up to me on the up hill sections :(. I took a ferry in Essex, NY to cross into Vermont. I drove north towards Burlington, VT to meet another stranger, Benny. Benny reached out to me after seeing a post on a moped forum asking if anyone wanted to join me on my stupid adventure. He said he ran a moped club (The Holy Smokes Moped Club) in Burlington and that I should stop by and crash. I made it to Burlington quite early, so I went to a random park to cook some lunch. I met a lot of tweakers in the park, had some very interesting conversations. One guy said he was a felon, went to prison at 14 for lighting someone on fire. I also met a guy from France who biked down from Montreal the day before (our conversation was interrupted twice by tweakers).
After lunch I met up with Benny at the shop. The shop was pretty crazy, tons of mopeds everywhere, a moped heaven. I met Tyler, Keegan and a few other members of the club. We went for a ride to a gas station burger place and drove down to the riverfront to eat. We hung out for the rest of the night and did some trouble shooting on my moped. Benny also gave me some different springs for my clutches to help with the shifting issues I was having as well as a spare turn signal cover (the bike may have fallen over again from all the weight and broke my turn signal again). I crashed the night on couches in the garage and headed out in the morning.
Burlington, VT to Hanover, NH
Vermont is amazing. I used google maps to route a bike route and then transferred it over to my offline GPS. The roads I went on were nice rolling hills through completely forested areas. I definitely will be back in Vermont with a dirt bike or sports bike tearing up the backroads. The roads did turn to unpaved dirt/gravel roads which the moped handled surprisingly well. There was almost no traffic the entire trip in Vermont. There may have been a bit of oversight to my route planning. For some reason I got put on some crazy roads that were more meant for ATVs or dirt bikes. I summited one "mountain" and for about an hour I was full throttle and pedaling to get up this hill.
The picture above is the terrain on this entire stretch of the route. The moped was severely underpowered and did not have proper tires at all. A fun fact about vehicle dynamics, if you put ~80% of your weight on the rear axle, the front tire has zero traction for braking (especially on street tires). Going uphill was slow and hard work, but downhill was terrifying because braking just resulted in sliding.
There were quite a few puddles of unknown depth that I had to scoot around the edges of. I'm surprised that I didn't hydrolock the engine or crack the engine casing with a massive rock. The picture below is a nice rock garden that I had to walk the moped through, and then could barely get up the other side. For all the crazy terrain, I only fell over 3 times and maintained decent speed. The moped handled much better than I expected and gave me some new confidence in my off-roading ability.
I made it to Hanover safely where I'll be for a week or so.