Rain.

Of course..

Cold, windblown, miserable, pouring down rain greeted us on our first full day in Scotland. Well, it is Scotland after all, what else should I expect?

And with that rain, the game beings. When riding conditions really suck in the middle of a ride, Abi and I like to play a fun game called ‘I’m Not Going to Be the Pussy… How About You?‘ Here’s how it usually goes:

ME: ‘Wow. Look at that fucking rain! It’s coming down sideways! Gonna be a miserable day to ride today, isn’t it?’

ABI: (arms folded over chest) ‘Yup.’

ME: ‘And we have to do four hundred miles today to stay on schedule.’

ABI: ‘That’ll be a joy with no windshield. You oughta try it.’

ME: ‘No thanks. I suppose we could cut out the Speyside part. Maybe just ride from here to Glasgow or something today.’

ABI: ‘You’re getting soft, old man. It’s just a little bit of freezing rain. What’s the big deal?’

ME: ‘Or… I suppose we could just stay right here in Edinburrrrrrhhh…’

ABI: (arms suddenly unfolded) ‘Sounds good to me!’

And with that tough decision made, we headed back to the safety of bed for some much needed post sleeping/pre breakfast napping. Breakfast at this inn consists of a runny egg, two pieces of ‘bacon’ which resemble pig ears more than any bacon I am familiar with, and a special delicacy – black pudding. Despite the nice-sounding name, black pudding is made with blood and other assorted nasty bits. Of course I found this out after I’d eaten it several times. And to think I believed it was some kind of spiced pumpernickel bread! But it’s better than ‘Spotted Dick’, which was billed as everybody’s favorite. Err… no thanks, I’d rather starve than have Dick for breakfast.

With steady rain and a thermometer frozen at 39 degrees, stubbornly refusing to budge, today the decision to be a dry tourist beat sitting on a cold, wet motorcycle for the entire soggy day. And, there are worse places in the world to get stuck for a day than Edinburgh – New Jersey comes to mind as one, a TV truck comes to mind as another… So, we did something unique on our long distance motorcycle rides. We stayed in a place for more than a single night, and did the full-on sightseeing thing. We bought a ticket for what was billed as ‘Scotland’s Third Most Popular Paid Attraction‘ otherwise known as the Open Top Bus Tour.

I wonder what the other two more popular paid attractions are?

It wasn’t that bad. Our tour guide, a bubbly Scottish girl with the cutest accent ever greeted us by saying, “Welcome tah Scotland. Sorry ’bout the rain, but it’s Scotland… Wha’ di’ ye expect?” Exactly. We toured the hell out of Edinburgh on our tour bus, listening to inane facts about the city we could later use to bore our friends, and snapping a ton of pictures, as good tourists are supposed to do.

When the bus got boring (actually, that happened in the first ten minutes, so in reality, this was long after the bus got boring) we jumped off at the Palace stop to try and find a choice adult beverage or three. We decided on a whim that being both tourists and single malt fans, we should take a tour of the Scotch Whisky Experience.

This tour disproved my theory that any tour that starts with alcohol must be a good one. After handing out glasses filled with a splash of blended whisky, the group was ushered into a small theater, where we endured crappy movie after crappy movie. The tour was so lame it reminded me of the Kennedy Space Center, with its ‘Dare to Dream’ film we were subjected to. Is there a single company that makes retarded films for all these tourist traps? If so, they should be firebombed in the name of sanity. But the capper, or I should say the crapper of the crapulent tour was its grand finale. Up on the top level was an honest to God amusement park ride. Well, it was actually an extremely lame ‘History of Whisky’ ride, reminiscent of Disney’s ‘It’s a Small World’, but without any of the good parts. LAAAME-OOO! Now I remember! Cheesy rip-offs like this abysmal place are why I hate doing touristy stuff. The only thing I learned worth retaining is how the Scottish propose a toast – by saying, ‘Slangevar!‘ We did what any two self respecting gentlemen tourists not on motorbikes would do in this situation. We retired to The World’s End pub for lunch and to practice saying Slangevar for the rest of the day.

Having survived my Black Pudding of Death at breakfast much better than the Indian food of the day before, I decided to try something REALLY adventurous for lunch.

Haggis.

When I finished, the waitress purred at me in her sexy Scottish accent, “So, what’d ye tink o’ tha Haggis?”

“Umm… It was… Interesting.”

“I’ve neiver heird it described qui’ like that before….”

I asked her to repeat herself, not because I didn’t understand what she’d said, but just because her accent was so damn cute. I’d have paid her thousands to just stand there and read the menu, the newspaper, hell, even some junk mail to me over and over and over…. I think she caught on after about the fourth time. That or she thought I was a bit slow and in need of a hearing aid.

Fueled with our newly gained knowledge of Scotch Whisky’s Heritage, the rest of our Edinburgh rain delay day became a happy, touristy blur.

Many hours later we somehow managed to Slangevar our way back to the inn, and a merciful fade to black soon followed.

The next day I awoke to sunny skies and warm temps. I rolled over to peek out the window, and what to my wondering eyes did appear? Three giggling, topless Scottish lasses outside my window washing my bike in the dancing sunbeams! I sat back and marveled at this wonderful country’s most excellent scenery for a while, just taking it all in. Then, the unthinkable happened. I really did wake up. There were no girls out there, of course, but at least the sun was shining bright. It was time to leave Edinburgh for the much anticipated Highlands.

As we loaded the bikes up, Abi and I had the same thought at the same time. By riding these rented motorbikes, are we cheating on our poor, faithful motorcycles back at home? This tells me two things. One – I really do love my lonely FJR currently stuck stateside, and Two – Abi and I spend way too much time together.

Because we lost a day, we had to amend our route. Yesterday, I’d planned to visit my second favorite place on earth where my second favorite adult beverage is lovingly created – the Macallan distillery, but that got washed out. Now, to make up for lost time we decided to skip the world famous Malt Whisky region of Speyside entirely, and get back on the boring motorway and head north for half the day. But first, we needed petrol.

Petrol, which, in American loosely translates to ‘Really Expensive Gasoline’, is fairly simple to find near big cities. As we would learn later in the trip, it’s not so easy to secure in the more rural areas of Scotland, especially on a Sunday, but that’s getting ahead of the story.

Besides both flavors being very expensive – at around $8 a gallon – diesel and unleaded on these pumps are easily confused. The pump handles are the same size, and right next to each other. If you were tired, say – or maybe a little hung over from too much Slangevaring the night before, it would be a cinch to grab the black handle instead of the green one and load up with the wrong kind of fuel… not that this actually happened to me (though it was close on more than one occasion.)

We burned pricey petrol at a furious rate riding up the motorway, and before long mountains started appearing. And on those mountains? Snow. Lots of it. While the day felt warmer than the previous couple, it still wasn’t what could be actually called warm. Seeing those snow covered mountains made it feel even colder than it was, and heading straight for them didn’t help.

At least we weren’t the only nutters out enjoying a nice brisk ride. We passed a cute older couple on an old Triumph motorbike also heading north. We both waved and shook our heads at each other, acknowledging our collective folly.

And then, just past Inverness, everything changed for the better. We turned off the A9 for the much better B9176 (yes, the route names are confusing, that’s why I’ve mostly avoided using them – if you think the names are bad, try following them sometime!) Suddenly, without much warning, our endurance riding test was rewarded.

Ho. Lee. Shit. The scenery exploded into spectacular vista after spectacular vista. My tiny brain struggled to comprehend the astounding beauty abruptly on display. Sometimes I had to slow the bike to a crawl, because my eyes were overloaded, my synapses completely overwhelmed. I was afraid not only of missing something, but splattering my overworked synapses all over an oncoming truck while gawking and gaping at everything but the road in front of me. Pictures can’t do this place justice.

Video can’t either. IMAX might come close, but I doubt it.

Stunned and in complete awe, I started naming the huge mountains surrounding me. ‘That’s Mount Muuuuther-fucker!‘ Over there is ‘Holy Shit Peak!‘ Damn, Scotland, when they find out, the people of Rhode Island will be ecstatic that I claimed such unbridled beauty for them.

Oh yeah, the road – empty of cars but full of curves – was fun too.

And it only got better. Coming over a mountain pass into the small seaside town of Ullapool, our home for the night, was like riding in a movie. Yellow flowers lined both sides of the road, and more snow capped mountains rose in the distance. Fishing boats bobbed in the waves of Loch Broom as we descended from riding paradise. I wish I was a good writer at this point, because I really can’t do justice to the absolute perfection that was the second half of this day. Even Abi, who is normally hard to impressed, was smiling.

When we rode to Niagara Falls a few years ago, he took one look, turned to me and said, “Its water. It’s falling. I get it. Let’s go.’ To impress him enough to crack a real smile, this place must be first rate, or as he later put it, “Not bad.”

And though at the time it seemed impossible, the next two days would get even better, though not without their share of hardships…