Old Orchard Beach, 1974

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This article describes motorcycle travel through Old Orchard Beach Main and around Cape Breton Nova Scotia.

Motorcycle Travel in Maine & Cape Breton Nova Scotia

Traveling solo on his dusty Honda 750 Dan was at last on his own and away. Away from crabby H. Away from Poughkeepsie.

Wind in his face in the early morning, he took his brown motorcycle along Route 44 east, stopping from time to time to gaze in silence at the rolling hills and forests of Dutchess County.

Then speeding a bit he turned north up the east coast. His plan was to live on the road and in the woods for a month or more.

Four hours later he sat, stiff, frozen in place on the bike at LL Bean's Flagship Freeport store. He could not lift a leg to get off.

Instead, he simply leaned against his backpack, a Confederate, eyes clouded, staring, ever staring into space, a small bluish hole in the center of his mind.

Dan didn't buy much except for a small brass Svea 123 - a stove that runs on gasoline, kerosene or spit. 

The novice motorcycle traveler, male, young, and stupid, had fantasies: he would wander into a small town where he would get a job as a dishwasher, and like Bronson, he'd solve crimes, right wrongs, and become a hero to the local and beautiful and lonely waitress. And there would be sex. 

Along the Maine coast at Meguntikuk by the Sea the Honda found a quiet beach where Dan spread his tarp and sleeping bag on the rocks. Alone.

Using the heavy Nikon FT he'd bought while on leave in Tokyo he photographed his first campsite.

The cool air and lapping water were a tactile symphony. He slept. Until the tide came in at midnight. He moved uphill to sleep among the roots and rocks of an old cedar tree.

By the time Dan found his way north to Old Orchard Beach he had met with and joined a group of other bikers: Steve Coursey, having left his woman and his Oklahoma job as a petroleum engineer, sold everything he had, bought a motorcycle and a tent, leaving behind a trail of unnecessary gear as he found his way to the minimum. 

The travelers included Stan and Allison Moody from Calais.

Two crazy French Canadians also rode without fairings. "Rode?" They liked to smash into one another side to side at 70 miles an hour while passing an open bottle of vodka back and forth.

The smasher would hold out the bottle at arm's length towards his partner then lurch sideways. Blam! the bikes would smash and wobble, straighten, and with a head tipped back the receiver would tip the bottle skywards. Their yellow rain suits covered up any bruises and gashes while in this photo Ken just smiled.

Dan offered a mild request that they weave just on their side of the road lest the rest of the group lose the pleasure of their company. "Shit no," answered LeCroix. "Guys like us? We're a dime a dozen."

The final couple, Ken and his wife Linda Strout, though also Maniacs, were quite sane in comparison.

Everyone put on their bathing suits and two of the fellows, Dan and Steve dug a hole in the sand into which Allison asked to be buried - just to stay cool for a bit. Stan kept an eye on the excavators and the excavatee.

After relaxing on the beach for a time, the gang dug out Allison and the eight motorcycles and their riders rumbled slowly into Old Orchard Beach. Thinking to enjoy the amusement park, they began looking for a safe place to park.

The bikers rumbled to a halt in the center of a wide street across from the OOB amusement park.

An OOBcop walked over to size up the gang. None of the bikers had been on the road that long, except for Steve, so they were still pretty clean and beards weren't too long.

A motorcycle admirer himself, the cop offered:

"Hey fellows just leave your bikes right here if you like. I'll keep an eye on them for you." 

Dan's new friends as of 1974 heard that he did not go on roller coasters and immediately opined that a turn or two on the looping tracks would be just the thing he needed.

Physically overpowered by the rest of the gang Dan, Stan and the rest made roller-coaster circuits up and down, lurching and twisting side to side.

Vomit was in Dan's throat and his eyes grew foggy. At the end of the ride Dan lurched and swayed across the roadway.

His fellows looked at Dan's face more closely and Stan's voice was really contrite:

"Geez Dan, you are actually literally green. We had no idea you'd be so sick. We're so sorry."

Dan leaned away from his new friends and stumbled towards the motorcycles hoping to sit still on the ground, leaning against his bike for a time before the rest joined him there. He sat instead on the Honda, slumped over the handlebars, waiting for the dizziness to fade.

He was too sick to think of revenge, but indeed the last wooden roller coaster in Old Orchard Beach had burned in 1948 when he was just five.

[The following has been edited to avoid triggering a certain famous search engine's folks from misunderstanding the material as prurient. It's not. But it's true.]

Dan was slumped and green over his Honda when a voice purred in his ear.

"Wowww. I really really dig motorcycles. Would you take me for a ride?" 

He turned to the young woman. Short-shorts, a tiny halter top and other features [now edited out] all conspired to clear away the dark nausea.

Dan's green faded: Chippie's lips slightly opened. Her tiny nose sniffed, and her misty green eyes began to sparkle.

Chippie shook her long curly yellow hair. That the hair was oily and stringy would have informed a wiser man.

Words rose with difficulty. This was the young biker's fantasy come true. Easy love in Old Orchard Beach. 

"Sure," bikerboy muttered, thinking about a different sort of mounting soon to happen. He pushed his little key into the ignition to get things going, and sat upright to make room for Chip.

"Hop on." 

Chippie climbed on and snuggled up close. 

Across the wide roadway, Stan, Allison, Steve, Ken, Linda, and the French Canadians stopped and stared, eyes wide in amazement.

Honda leapt to life and Dan began a steep turn towards the edge of town. Curly chippie held tightly to his waist. Really tightly.

OK! he thought. 

The change began. His biker friends' eyes widened further and jaws dropped lower: Chippie's hands wandered [details omitted] then found a secure place to hold-on around his chest, then back [details omitted].

The Honda wobbled badly, then righted itself

and made the first possible right turn!

In the Old Orchard Beach sun, Chippie's hands were hot as the Honda pipes . [Details omitted]

A little voice in Dan's brain, the one that decades later stopped his fingers from touching a live electrical wire during a home inspection, spoke over the Honda's roar.

"Hold on, hold on a minute. Something is wrong here."

As Chippie glued to Dan and Honda continued to wobble for another block Dan thought. "This girl is either stoned, drunk, or crazy."

The tiny voice got louder:

"Be afraid, Dan. Be very afraid."

He made the next possible right turn. The big Honda leaned at low speed but it wobbled a bit less.

Chippie said "Wheeeeeee!"

Little voice said:

"There is just no way, no way on earth [details omitted] you are going to touch this crazy girl. She's a lunatic, drunk, or ... something worse." 

Turning away from the woods, and away from the prospects of anything naked, Chippie + Dan made the next right turn and together they circled slowly back towards the intersection in front of the Old Orchard Beach amusement park. 

"Is this the whole ride?" Chippie asked? Her hands were still.

"Yep. It's been fun."

"What the hell is wrong with you?" Steve asked? 

#####

Chapter 2: Call of the Highway

Eight bikes, without the Chip, turned north towards Cape Breton and began to look for a campsite with a view.

Later on the Cabot trail, facing the icy wind without a fairing, Stan would offer up Allison and his own bike in a swap if he could ride Dan's bigger Honda sporting its big white Windjammer II. Riding passenger is warmer than being up front with no windshield. Allison was a sport.

Three quarters of the way around the freezing and rain-soaked Canadian peninsula that forms Cape Breton Dan, who was in the lead, pulled off of the highway onto a flat spot and waited for the rest of the criminals to pull-up. In 1974 the highway around the cape was and probably still is, mostly deserted. Waiting to find a diner to warm-up is waiting for Godot.

"Ya want to stop for some hot coffee?" he offered.

Without waiting for an answer, as the rest were too cold to speak, Dan unpacked his little Svea 123 stove, flipped it over, held it under the Honda's gas line and pulled off the line just long enough to dribble some gasoline onto the concave upturned base of the stove.

Really, that's in the instructions! The Svea has a stamping right on the body informing us that it can burn benzoline, petrol, essence, bensin.

Safely away from the re-connected Honda he set the upturned stove on fire! The heat builds pressure in the fuel container that in turn means you can light the Svea stove even in freezing cold weather.

...

It does leave a bit of sooty muck on the stove bottom.

We had hot coffee, tea, or maybe it was hot chocolate, in minutes, on cold Cape Breton. I don't remember which.

Thank you Steve, Stan, Allison and the rest.

...

Where are you now?

Allison and Stan moved down from Maine to Long Island. Steve sold real estate in Colorado.

Years later Ken, working at the railroad late at night called Dan. " You still ridin?"

Svea stoves was bought by Optimus in 1969 and the stove is still sold today.

...

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