A small group of us and my girlfriend driving the support truck planned to ride the sunshine coast and the Vancouver Island this past weekend. Since the weather was looking better on the island we decided to go to Nanaimo first.
Once in Nanaimo it started to get sunny which was great! We stopped for lunch at Mrs Ritchie’s for the Big Mountain Burger! Midway through my ‘you can feed a small village’ sized burger the skys opened up and it rained so hard we wanted to build an ark. We waited awhile until it let up and continue are way to Tofino. Five minutes in our ride the rain came again and with a vengeance. This rain storm can only be compared to a tropical downpour, in seconds we were soaked to the bone, riding through massive puddles, cars splashing us, etc. It was stupid! However, every light we stopped at we could do nothing but look at each other and start smiling. About 20mins of shitty weather the rains stopped and the streets dried up. 3/4s of the way to Tofino, we saw a sign saying gravel on the road for the next 9kms. Ok, that’s fine. We will just slow down and take it easy. What the sign SHOULD have said was ‘no road, 9kms of gravel road’. 4kms into of riding a road only fit for a motard we gave up. Stopping on the side of the road we checked out our bikes to see what they looked like. Well it wasn’t good… Turning around and coming back through this mess we did our best not to dump our bikes. By this time my girlfriend thinks were nuts. Good to get that out of the way now since this is her first motorcycle trip. The sun was finally out now and we enjoying the twisties of highway. We were near the end of the highway when we rounded a corner to a Cadillac flashing his lights at us. Too late, the police car ten cars back nailed us doing 109 in a 80 zone. On came the lights so we pulled over at the next stop. The police came out of his car and I greeted him. The first words out of his mouth were “thanks for stopping!” To his surprise our documents and licenses were all in order and he decided to let us go with a verbal warning. 
Apparently 50% of the people he pulls over here do not have a license or insurance. Before we arrived in Courtenay we were treated to another bout of rain. We were staying with one of the rider’s family and camping out back. Perfect setting for a roaring campfire!
When we woke up the next morning we were relieved to see open blue sky. We took it easy in the morning and hit up Gold River in the afternoon. The Gold River road was light with traffic and cops… giddy. This is a great highway; I remember it well from the last year I did it. The first half is definitely more fun than the last half. For the last half, my girlfriend jumped on the back on we rode the rest of the way. This was only her second time being on a motorcycle so I was anxious to see how she would do. Everything was great, for the next 80kms she knew exactly what to do, I barely noticed her on the back. It was good for her to finally see why I have such a big shit eating grin on after a ride. We slowly made our way back to the campsite and spent the evening laughing, drinking, and roasting any food we could put on a roasting stick.
On the final day we back home via the sunshine coast and boy was it boring. 4 hours of ferry sailing and 3 hours of waiting around, for 90 minutes of riding. Only to arrive in Horseshoe bay for gridlock allllllllllllllllllllllllllllll down the highway #1 to home. Despite all this we all had a blast and will do it again next year with some modifications.
