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COPYRIGHT 2002 Ehlert Publishing Group
THE EXHAUST NOTE of my time- and trail-worn Honda XL175 echoed through the empty, early morning streets as I rode down past the mills and across the railroad tacks to the waterfront of Port Alberni, British Columbia, Canada. This bike and I were scheduled to sail aboard the MV Lady Rose, an aged packet freighter that crosses the Alberni Inlet delivering mail, fuel, groceries, building materials and other provisions to scattered outposts inaccessible by road. I had booked a one-way passage to Bamfield, population 300, on the wild, unspoiled and largely uninhabited west coast of Vancouver Island.
About 120 road miles lie between the island's east and west coasts, but culturally, commercially and environmentally they are worlds apart. Earlier this morning I left my home in the midst of strip malls, golf courses, big-box retailers and senior housing projects strung along a serene and sheltered shoreline. The vintage XL and I were headed toward one of the globe's most rugged junctures of land and open sea. We would return to the gentler coast via a network of active and abandoned logging roads.
The keel was laid for the MV Lady Rose, locally known as simply, "The Rose," in Glasgow; Scotland. Launched in 1937, she began her Trans-Atlantic crossing on May 6 to the Panama Canal and up the coast to British Columbia. That was Shirley Temple's year as box-office champion, and the Hindenbury exploded on the Rose's second...
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