Nova Scotia

Days 18-25 June 28-July 5, 2009

Woot and family have been beyond kind and taken me in for the duration of my bike troubles. They have been simply amazing.

Over this week I spent a good deal of time trying to find a replacement engine locally. I called shop after shop, salvage yard after salvage yard, and searched the local online listings with no luck. A couple of shops had the top ends available should I choose to rebuild my engine and one shop even found a whole engine. The problem with that was the engine was in Quebec and they wanted $1000 for it. Even in Canadian money that’s overpriced.

Friends from the forums even started looking in their areas for engines. There were a couple at a salvage yard near Toronto but they were almost as expensive as the one in Quebec once you factored in shipping. I found a couple in the US that were priced reasonably but shipping became an issue. Finally, an engine was located just outside of Toronto from a parts bike that someone was trying to get rid of. Through a collaboration of motorcyclists this engine was secured and shipped out. Thanks to Wes, Andy, and Greg for helping in this!

Again, being the extremely gracious host that Woot is, he let me use his bike (Honda CBR F4) to tool around the area. One day I went down to Peggy’s Cove to sight see. The area is gorgeous and it wasn’t crowded at all. Unfortunately, I forgot to put the memory card in the camera that day so I only got a couple of pictures on the camera’s internal memory and, without the correct cable, I have no way of getting the images off until I get home. Once I knew the engine was on its way I rode down to the local motorcycle shop to order parts.

One benefit of being in Nova Scotia for a few extra days was that I got to partake in Canada Day festivities (July 1st). It’s basically Canada’s Independence Day so there were fireworks and everything that I associate with July 4th. We walked down to the lake and watched the fireworks being launched from a barge of some sort. The show was pretty good. On the 4th we went over to one of their friend’s house to hang out and it turns out that they were American so they were celebrating the 4th as well.

We also walked around downtown Halifax and the waterfront. This was a really neat area that was filled with cool little shops, pubs, historical attractions, and great views of the Halifax harbor. We passed through the infamous Lower Deck pub, had “the world’s best ice cream” and saw some extremely big ships. There were of course tug boats including the famous Theodore (sort of like Thomas the train). Walking down at Pleasant Point Park (?) was nice and I found the clash of industrial equipment and nature/history preserve to be oddly amusing. At the park were remnants of old armaments and defensive military posts in various states of aging. Then there was the fun rock throwing session to alleviate stress :)

Then there's the food. Almost from the time that we in that Staples parking lot Woot had insisted that I try some of the local delicacies: Poutine and Donair. (*Warning* - The following descriptions may sound disgusting but the food is better than that) Poutine is a simple dish comprised of french fries covered in gravy and cheese curds. Think of it as chili fries with gravy... This dish was really pretty good. The restaraunt that we went to used pizza cheese instead of curds but it was still good. I may try and find a place that uses curds...

Donair is very similar to gyros and because of this I was leery of trying it with my recent string of broken collarbones and their proximity to me eating gyros. Having been assured that this is very different than gyros I went ahead and tried it. The donair meat is similar to gyros in that it's cooked on a spit and sliced from that. The meat is prepared a little differently and it has an oniony kick to it. A donair meal is served with the meat and diced tomatoes and onions, covered in special donair sauce and wrapped in flat bread. Being the hard working hungry men that we are, Woot and I ordered two large Donairs. This size has so much meat that the flat bread can no longer wrap around the meat and had to be eaten with a knife and fork.

I still need to get a fresh lobster but the Woot family doesn't like seafood... Maybe I'll cook for myself one night.


Pictures will be posted tomorrow.