Last Week's Ride - Highway 3

Last week I was fortunate enough to ride out on Highway 3 to the Okanagan and come back three days later. For those of you who don't know Highway 3 is the 'scenic route' to the coast from Calgary and southern Canada. The whole highway once you get off 22 coming down from Calgary and get onto the 3 is full of motorcyclists. Once you get deeper into BC it's easy to see why.

Twisties abound, and you'll often find yourself riding hard through a mountain pass only to be blown away by a breathtaking vista that showcases the natural beauty BC is famous for. My favourite leg of the highway is the one between Creston and Osoyoos, there is not a lot of developement along that trail, and it's where the curves in the road get real agressive. There's nothing like ripping through tight turns at a decent clip and being able to simply rip open the throttle and pass all the minivan imprisoned squares while you arduously climb a massive mountain in the middle of nowhere. Also, once I ended up in Osoyoos I hit up the highway to Keremeos and then hopped over to Penticton, it was a beautiful ride through those dry, almost desert hills.

Being that I was riding a sportster with the stock gas tank, with a grand total of 3.3 gallons of space, stops were frequent. I was itching to test out the advertised 60 MPG highway on this bike, unfortunately it wasn't quite that fuel effecient, however there were several mitigating factors. On the ride down to Crowsnest Pass early Sunday morning it was perhaps 3 degrees celsius out, tops. Regrettably this forced me to warm my hands up on the engine itself, seeing as I was doing a decent clip of 120 kph pretty much consistently. The wind chill was ferocious at this time of year, and until about 10 am I had to do this with regularity. This prevented me from keeping a constant speed and I drifted into Crowsnest Pass in bad need of gas.

That was the only hiccup though. This winter I'm definitely going to try and invest in some heated grips and perhaps saddlebags as the backpack started to wear on my shoulder pretty hard by the end of the first trip. I also got a few dirty looks from fellow HD riders because of my full face helmet. I own a bucket helmet, but I rarely take it outside of city limits, simply because I don't feel I have enough riding experience yet to take a bee (which has happened at highway speed) or worse yet a rock, to the face and maintain control of the bike. Plus all those dudes had windshields anyways.

It was a great ride, unfortunately I didn't have my camera on me at the time, but next time I will for sure. Highly reccomended for those itching to get out on the highway and like to ride.