Part 1 of our Homecoming trip story.

[dltang]

Wednesday, June 4th, 2008 at 11:30 a.m. we departed our home in Grand Blanc, MI for the first annual Spyder Homecoming. It was drizzly and cloudy so we donned our rain gear in preparation for the potential weather. Our first stop, fuel, then east bound down I-69 towards Port Huron.

There we would meet our new friend and riding companion Duane. We had a little bit of a wait for Duane so we didn't get back on the road until about 1:45 p.m. He is from the "thumb" area of Michigan. I will make sure and keep him on my good side, (he owns a Dairy Queen :lol: ) We met at Chase Bank right by the bridge. It appeared that the weather was clearing up so off with the rain gear. Next over the Blue Water Bridge and through customs. The lines were long and it was hot and sticky during the wait. By this time, it is 3:00p.m Once we cleared customs, a quick stop at the currency exchange to get my Canadian cash and we would be off.

Now, I had one very important phone call to make though. I had to call "The Director" aka Bruce from this forum. We had planned to meet for lunch in London Ontario. I let him know we would be there in about an hour. We got to our restaurant about 4:30 p.m. He was a very generous host and we spent well over an hour enjoying lunch and great conversation. Bruce is a great guy and I will be reciprocating this Sunday when he comes through our neck of the woods.

Leaving the restaurant was a different story. Who knew a couple of miles of construction could take nearly 40 minutes to get back on the highway. Anyway, we got our butts in gear again and all was well. Toronto is a great place to visit but not to drive through. Thank goodness we didn't get there during rush hour. Even so, it was still a very busy commute through the heart of Toronto. We finally got to the east side of Toronto and decided to stop for the night as it was nearing 9:30p.m. We found a Howard Johnsons that was clean and cheap. It is amazing how long every gas and food stop took. There are hardly any Spyders in Ontario yet and we got all the attention.

After breakfast in the hotel we headed out for our next destination which would be Brossard. That is where we would be meeting up for the ride into Valcourt. The weather was fantastic on Thursday. The only issues that we really ran into here was the amount of traffic headed towards Montreal for the Grand Prix. One nice thing, on one of our fuel and food stops we met another Spyder owner headed to Valcourt. They were headed to Drummondville for the night and planned on dropping off the Goldwing that his significant other was riding. His Spyder was stock yellow. They were from Ohio and extremely nice folks. We talked it up for a while in the parking lot before we all headed out. We didn't ride with them from there but did see them again at Valcourt and said our hello's. Can we say Traffic Jam? And we weren't even in the heart of Montreal, we were south of there. I think it was rush hour as we were getting into that area though and once again, bumper to bumper slow, hot, sticky traffic. Once we were out, it was a breeze into Brossard though. One thing I wish I would have done before we got that far was to pull over and get a photo of the Spyder under the welcome to Quebec sign. It truly is like entering France in Europe. Very few signs are in English now. This is French all the way. Thank goodness most of the folks also speak English. But my three years of high school French did come in handy, and surprisingly, a lot of it came back. I was able to just get by with what I could remember, when I needed to.

Once we got to the Comfort Inn in Brossard, it was time for a shower. We all got cleaned up and rested up and went across the street for a nice dinner. Our waitress spoke very little English so it was an adventure. Once back in the room, I checked the forums briefly and then we tucked ourselves in for the night. Morning came all too soon and of course it had been raining and was still drizzling as we packed our Spyders. It turns out we were only about a mile and a half from our meeting point. Rain gear on once again and continental breakfast to tide us over and we were off.

We were the first Spyders in the parking lot at Cineplex Odean. We were a bit concerned, we weren't sure if we were in the right place. After about 10 minutes two more Spyders showed up. I thought these two were our BRP reps but as it turned out, they were just a couple of local Quebec owners. Very nice gentleman. After that, it just got more and more awesome. Whole groups of Spyders started showing up. It seems a number of dealers had their meeting places at the dealerships and then all came as a group to Brossard. By the time everyone got there, there must have been 150 Spyders. Of all the Spyder owners that met there, I would say about 90 percent were from Quebec and of that 90%, 70% were speaking French only. It was truly a cultural experience.

While we were waiting, a red Spyder pulls up in the middle of the mix and the driver gets off and introduces himself as our BRP guy. His name is Adrienne. He walked right up to me and said you are Debbie, right? I asked him how he knew, he said he reads the forums and he knows who I am. It was kind of neat. It was a little after 11:00a.m. before we all took off as a group for Valcourt. What a beautiful ride. That is what this Spyder is all about. Riding twisting, winding roads, with good friends and wonderful scenery.

I can't even begin to explain the view as you come to the top of a hill and looking down all you see is a winding road of hundreds of Spyders. It was truly Awesome!! They had it timed fairly well, it appears we were the first group to arrive at the factory, just as we were parking the next groups started arriving and it was a never ending line of spyders. There were a few that had to do their burn outs on the way in but it was cool.

I got to park up front with my custom paint job. There was a lot of attention up there. Reps from BRP were out asking very detailed questions about what changes you've made, what you want to make, what you need, what kind of gear did you buy, why did you get that vs. something else. They seem to really be looking for answers. Well, this is where I will stop part 1 of my story. I will try to complete the continuation tonight.
Deb

 

[Lamonster]

Re: Part 1 of our Homecoming story trip

:bigthumbsup: :spyder: :doorag:

 

[pphantom538]

nice story

 

[Smylinacha]

Keep posting - I wanna hear the rest! Very very cool! :doorag: ;D :bigthumbsup:

 

[spyder3rdr]

Hi Deb , It was great meeting you and all the other owners , very nice description of your experience !

 

[captainryder]

dltang,

1. Glad you had a safe trip up and back.
2. Really like your journal...

This Adrienne guy, he reads the forums... Did you ask about SE5's....

 

[jeuchler]

OK, I know Barbara and my story (part one) is not as exciting as those of many other members here, especially because we only drove from Massachusetts, but hey, "sharing is caring" so...

We left work late late LATE on Thursday after an unsuccessful several days looking for B's birth certificate. A few curt marital moments as she wondered why we had saved 37 empty cardboard boxes she found, I wondered why we had her deceased parents' marriage license, my grandfather's army discharge papers, but NOT HER BIRTH CERTIFICATE!

We had resigned ourselves to either sneak through the woods at the border, or collect every piece of documentation we could find and convince the border authorities (B is a good schmoozer) that we were for real and no threat to the government of downtown Canada. We collected voter registration cards, employee photo id's, birthday cards from when we were 5 years old--anything to try and prove our citizenship and upstanding-ness.

As I got home from work a bit before my lovely bride, I started loading up the Spyder, and was interrupted when the UPS driver pulled up the driveway with an envelope.

"That's not my new Shoei RF1000 helmet from DirectLine," I thought to myself. It was an official copy of B's birth certificate which I had ordered online only a few days before when I suspected I might never find the dang thing...

Happy, we took off at 9:30 pm through the Berkshires and into New York, taking all back roads, going light on the throttle through the small towns with the new Micron pipe rumbling deeply. The Micron still, I think, chased away bats, birds, cats, dogs, raccoons, deer, a fox, and a large, v e r y s l o w opossum with a l o n g tail which I almost clipped.

Never hit a single critter, tho', so I'm thinking there is something to that old "louder is safer" motto. (Thanks again for the Micron, Ev!) :spyder:

We got almost to Americade in Lake George when it began to really rain.

Remember the interruption of the UPS driver with the important document? Well, that was enough of a distraction for my feeble brain that I didn't remember to pack rain gear. Oh, sure, rain covers for the N-R saddlebags and rear roll bag, but none for us humans.

We rode up and down the main drag there in Lake George (all the smart bikers standing under awnings of bars and restaurants) in torrential downpour looking for our motel. B finally asked (men don't ask directions, duh) and we took one more swipe through, then outside of town to our bed for the night.

The night manager kindly let us park the Spyder right under the big permanent awning in front of the lobby, and offered us breakfast at 7 am. I groaned. I told him we'd be gone by 6.

I cranked the heater in the room up to 85 degrees and kept flipping the wet pants and gloves while I watched Comedy Central quietly, as my terrific sport-of-a-wife snoozed. I konked out at 2:30am.

At 5am I woke up to see even harder rain than what we drove through, but honestly, it all let up by the time we we dressed and rode out in dry clothes. We met up first with Anthony and Kay who came all the way from Texas (Waco, I think) and they showed us where the gathering place was.

We met Lamont who laughed but, understandably, took a step back when I introduced Barbara to him as she said, "So, YOU"RE website is the reason my bathroom is still not finished!"

I recognized many people's Spyder's from spyderlovers.com, now I started to put faces with the vehicles. We had a nice little bite and coffee and sat and talked with Philippe, an engineer from BRP, who was riding one of the red Spyders.

After we took off from Lake George, Mr "Dual Exhaust" and Mr. "World's Fastest Trailer" (Yeah, you know who you are) flew past us so we just kept the middle of the pack tidy, a bit too often at three digit speeds, I confess! Police? :cop: Never saw 'em.

In Plattsburgh, we re-fueled and re-coffeed, and got to meet Marc on his red SE5. Anthony and Kay chatted with us, and they could not believe how ridiculously cold it was.

A somewhat shorter ryde from Plattsburgh to the border started. It was the first time out of the country for me, and Phillippe advised us not to show grandmas' birthday cards and our old movie ticket stubs, etc--"Just give them what they ask for!" turned out to be excellent advice as we rolled to the border. I say "rolled" because most of us realized it was absurd to keep starting the engines to drive up fifteen feet and wait again, so we all just pushed every few minutes as the ramp was fairly level. This also kept the noise down and made for a bit of a block party atmosphere as people wandered away from their vehicles to chat with neighbors.

We met Venym and his friend, Mike, I think, from Buffalo, and compared notes on throttlemeisters and Garmin Nuvi GPS systems and whether they were waterproof. (Conclusion: we rode through w a y more wetness later, and the device still works great.) We gathered again on the other side of the border, and were hosted to a nice lunch/snack and we met the film crew who would be riding in a convertible PT Cruiser up and down the line of Spyders. One of the BRP guides stated that, while we had a nice ride on the Northway, the Spyder is no novelty to police around Valcourt, so we should watch ourselves!

About five people came over to ask about the highway pegs, which I really did not think were a novelty by now. Several people, tall and short, including Phillipe the BRP engineer, asked to sit on our Spyder to try out the pegs and brackets. Maybe highway pegs will be stock in the next Spyder incarnation?! :

The wind was constant and ferocious (indicated well by the "C" shape of the trees along the side of the road) and someone later remarked it reminded him of his old sailing days. I don't know how well I could've safely navigated my Katana on 2 wheels through that wind, and I think the F1 shield did a good job of keeping our upper parts dry and intact.

The brief spit near Montreal was absolutely you-belong-in-the-wacky-shack nutty. B and I grew up in New York City which is where we learned to drive and ride, but these people were seriously dangerous in their effort to get to work or home or to wherever. More than one truck/Spyder close call caused us to gasp and me to grab a foot full of brake. No accidents, though--whew.

When we all collected again near the road construction site (lots of Spyder ryders with nicer paint jobs than mine, I can tell, were not so happy about ryding on that dirt and gravel stretch) and we triumphantly rode into Valcourt.

Truly, people stopped still on their lawns and porches, waved, smiled, cheered, and some little kids were actually jumping up and down. Later Barbara pointed out that town, like our own, was a small one, yet here was 10% of the year's production of one factory rolling into an area whose local economy had to have been drastically, and positively, affected. Of course, I was liking the pointing and staring, but my ego had to be reminded of the time several years ago when I was waiting for B outside a shop with our very tall, 100 pound red Greyhound. Two young ladies happened by and said "Oh, aren't you the cutest thing?!" right at the moment my wife steps out. Barbara says, "Um, you know they're looking at the dog, right?"

I know. They were pointing at the Spyder, not at me.

The helicopter flew low, but the 2 and 1/2 hours sleep and not enough caffeine made me a bit weak to enthusiastically wave at the cameras. (I also apologize to all who rode behind me, as by now I was definitely resting my foot on the brake and driving you crazy!)

We were close to the rear of the group and you'll see our silver #2929 parked way in the upper left corner in all those aerial shots of the BRP parking lot. This allowed us to walk past absolutely every other Spyder, all the way up to Lamont's and Deb's and so many other beautiful and creative vehicles. It was overwhelming.

I got impatient due to a bit of fatigue while we waited in the factory and saw the Catia 3D modeling drawings of the early Spyder development, the assembly stations (apparently, Plant #1 used to make other products, and was refitted to only produce the Spyder. I was impressed with how much fabrication is done onsite. Bjt and I later discussed how the plant was operating at 50% capacity due to several factors, even though the equipment is present to run at 100%. The workers were very passionate about their baby, and we were often reminded of how our early suggestions after test rydes were reviewed and incorporated into the production.

By this time I was a bit like "Yeah. Rotax engine. Aprilia. Detuned. Nice. Whatever." yet I had so looked forward to bringing back some awesome info to my engineering design students, but I was just tired. I can only imagine how you folks from Michigan and Tenessee and Florida must have felt. (On the other hand, you probably had a good dinner and some real sleep Thursday night!)

We hopped on a waiting school bus and rode over to a pavilion (big tent) for, well, I guess it was lunch by then. This would be the third time that BRP hosted us with food! The absolutely amazing thing was to listen to Marc and Yves and Jose speak in French, then English, then French so seamlessly.

They continually thanked us, then announced the prizes. I really think this was extremely generous of BRP executives to give out the hat, pin, shirt, DVD, catalog, and free tank of gas. Yes, of course we gave them over 15 grand for their vehicle, but still... I remarked to my son and daughter later when we got home, did Dodge do any of this when I bought their truck? Did Suzuki when I bought their motorcycle?? Just plain good business in my book. Barbara and I and my friend Steve (who first told me about the Spyder two winters ago) discussed how BRP must have had conversations about building customer loyalty to the point of identifying with a community, like what happenned with Harley-Davidson riders in the 1980's and to a degree, with Porsche owners. I think they are doing it, and many of us are more than willing participants.

I'm not saying that there wasn't any crazy behavior from any Spyder ryders, but we didn't witness any, and BRP had nothing but positive things for any press to report concerning the owners of their product. Not exactly always the case at Daytona, Sturgis, Laconia, I realize.

We appreciated that our wait on the long line to get our goodies and meet BRP executives was made very short by chatting with bjt and dltang. The more time we talked, the more my lovely bride wanted her own (red, of course) SE5!

We rode on our own to the Chateau Bromont, too impatient to wait on line and get the free gas that night, just following along Garmin's directions. The countryside was beautiful and I must've had the device set for "shortest time," as we caught up to another small group of Spyders going to the chateau.

We pulled into the parking lot on 2 bars of fuel, while a smiling attendant asked us to keep just two feet between the vehicles. Another ryder pointed out that he rode 17 miles with the light on, long after he had no bars! There's an endorsement of the reserve tank for ya... :doorag:

After cleaning up a bit and avoiding the temptation of that comfortable bed, we headed down for dinner. A lot of the folks we had met were already at full tables, so Barbara chooses a table filled with--you guessed it--all French speaking Canadians! While all the other folks didn't (couldn't?) speak with us, the gentleman immediately to our left was fluent in English as well, and we found out he was a dealer in Quebec City. He explained that part of the reason for the price increase in Canada was, among other issues, the cost of publication of everything about the Spyder in two languages, along with the fact that the dealers in, say, California or Florida or the Northeast have a high population density for their distribution, where all of Canada's adult population is not a whole lot more than a couple of our large cities. Without getting too political here,we discussed how amazing it was that so many folks were bilingual (the BRP employees were amazing) and how it just makes sense to try to communicate with as many people--and prospective customers--as possible.

In the Northeast, I have had far worse meals for $30, and ours was delicious right through to dessert. It was great to conclude the evening with the video of the day's ryde (along with still more words of appreciation from Marc of BRP) Of course, I can't wait for the whole video to be released/posted/mailed to us so I can pause it and see if we're in it anyhwere!

Sorry for the rambling, but I know how much I've enjoyed reading stories you folks have posted about the Dragon's Tail, Highway 1, ryding in snow in Canada, Daytona Bike Week and so many more. Also, I know I'm still processing all that happened.

I will stop here, except to say that I picked up a copy of "Bombardier, La miniserie" DVD

http://www.zip.ca/Browse/title.aspx?f=titleId(160409)

at the museum. If you saw the 10 minute video, this is the whole miniseries that it was excerpted from. It's never great watching film dubbed into English (an option on the DVD) but the story is fascinating, inspiring, uplifting, and I recommend it to anyone who has started to feel a little like they are part of the BRP "family." The many historical scenes with actors actually driving the b7, the 12-passenger b12

http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/North_America/Canada/photo36002.htm

and several other snowmobile vehicles that were right there in the museum were awesome. Again, a must see for Spyder owners and Ski Doo ("Ski Dog!") owners alike.

Thanks for reading my ramblings! We are looking forward to Homecoming 2! :bigthumbsup:

(B says if any BRP rep's are reading this, please allow more time at the Chateau Bromont during the next homecoming so that the hotel massage can be experienced!)

Now I have to go watch my "Why They Ride" motodocumentary!

 

[Smylinacha]

Keep coming w/ these stories! Thanks Jeuchler! That was great!
OK, I wanna hear more stories please! :bigthumbsup:

 

[bjt]

Wow. Nice write up bro. As we said before, dltang and I really enjoyed chatting with you guys Friday. It is awesome that the Spyder can bring together people from all around the country. The bad thing is that once you make many new friends from all over the eastern states and Canada, it is hard to leave them and go back home. I guess all we can do is wait for next time when we have the chance to get together and maybe hang out more than have all the hustle and bustle of a BRP event.