(now) Goin’ places, Doin’ things

Published by Liane Langlois on

(later) Been there, Done that

by R. Bruce Thomas

Welcome to June.

It’s hard to believe that one of my favorite parts of the riding season has already gone by. For the next four months things will get a little messy. You know what I’m talking about as it happens every summer. No, I’m not talking about construction season. I’m talking about the bugs. Spring and fall are so nice without the constant splatter of bugs on the visor. Even worse if one catches you with the visor half open. Yuck!

Anyhow, bug splatter notwithstanding, it’s time to get some serious riding in and that requires places to go and reasons to ride so we’ve got good memories to get us through next off-season.

Great pizza is on tap at the Derwent Hotel

Cruisin’ the Dub bike nights at Edmonton’s 149th St A&W have returned every Friday until Sept 2. This could be a good place to meet your friends and discuss bigger plans.

The 2022 Go East of Edmonton Travel Guide is now available and it is hard to believe this is the 25th year for this excellent resource. My buddies and I have already made lunch rides to the Derwent Hotel (excellent pizza!) and to The Twisted Fork in St. Paul. Beginning June 4th the Roadtrip Adventure Game begins which provides added incentives to get out and ride and explore. Pick up the guide at over 200 locations and online, go ride, and maybe win some prizes.

Friends, food, and riding are always a great combination

For those in the southern part of the province, or people with a cinematic bent, you’ll want to check out Alberta Southwest for some excellent maps detailing attractions in the area as well as taking you to shooting locations for famous movies and shows such as Unforgiven, Brokeback Mountain, and Legends of the Fall.

On June 25th the first annual For the Love of Motorcycles event will take place at Blackjacks Roadhouse in Nisku. This sounds like an amazing event, but I’ve got plans that will prevent me from attending.

On the other hand, Mary and I are planning to drop in on Two Wheel Sunday in Calgary on June 5th during a visit to our eldest in Calgary.

What a fantastic idea!

In all of our travels, I look for and remember the great riding while Mary will remember the food. Roads and food are actually a great combination and earlier this year Mary forwarded an email she’d gotten from Alberta Food Tours about their blog listing the Top Alberta Spots for Pie. That theme even matches one of my t-shirts so how could it be wrong; other than that, the majority of the locations are in, or near, or south of Calgary.

But don’t let that get you down. There are northern options to ride for great pie.

From 2013 to 2020 Blue Circle Insurance created inspirational themed riding maps including Twenty+ Great Alberta Pie Joints in 2019. These were handed out at the bike shows and were available on the Blue Circle web site.

Great Alberta-themed riding maps are still available, if you know where to look

Blue Circle was a great AMSS supporter, and they have now joined BrokerLink, who is now an AMSS Sponsor, but the links to the Blue Circle Ride Maps have disappeared, which just goes to prove that sometimes the road to great pie joints can get a little Rocky (no Bull-winkle).

If you picked up these maps at the bike shows and saved them you are set. If not, there is still a place to get them all.

We are all here because we have a thing for cool machines, no matter what style of bike we ride. Luckily, the motorcycle world is not the only place retro is in vogue. The internet, if you don’t know, also has a retro shop where old things can still be found and we can use it to get those excellent ride maps.

If you thought my earlier shout-out to Rocky and Bullwinkle seemed a little out of place in a motorcycle story, then maybe you aren’t familiar with the Wayback Machine. Created in 1996, and made available to the public in 2001, this site archives web pages that no longer exist. I see some lights going on.

By entering the web site we want to find, the Wayback Machine will get us to where those Blue Circle Ride Maps are. This is also where you need a little faith in the web.

Scrolling down the page you will notice the headings for the various maps:

Green Getaways

Pie Joints

Museums & History

BBQ Joints

Alberta Landmarks

Rider Destinations

Burger Joints II

Burger Joints I

with a lot of white space in between the headings. The white space is where the maps are. You should also notice that your cursor turns into a little hand in this white space and at the bottom left of the browser window you should see the link address for a PDF file. Clicking on the white space didn’t properly load the PDF’s for me so right click and choose Save Link As…, then save the PDF to your computer. Scroll down the page and do the same for each of the other maps. You should end up with eight maps from the 2013 Burger Rides to the 2020 Great Green Getaways.

Now that we all have plenty of places to be goin’ and things to be doin’, hopefully the bugs won’t get in the way too much.

Categories: News