It’s time for my 2022 Toronto to Quebec City motorcycle road trip!
A week from today I’ll be leaving Toronto, jumping on a motorcycle, and riding 1,000 kilometers away from here. I don’t know when I’ll be coming home. I’m headed north east to Quebec City, one of the first cities established in North America. A place where all the signs are only allowed to be written in French.
And I’m not going to lie – this motorcycle road trip has me a little bit nervous.
Along the way I’m going to be checking out some cool stuff. I’ll have giant lizards, 400 year old buildings, dinosaurs, the world’s biggest apple, and so much more to keep me company. I’ll be cruising on lakes and islands, spending nights with total strangers from the internet, and making my way towards and through French Canada. South Park says it’s the best Canada in the land.
I have to admit, the whole thing is a little intimidating. It isn’t the riding that makes me nervous though. I actually did most of this ride as a student on a 250cc cruiser. I felt like a rock star on that little motorcycle back then.
I ate fresh watermelon from the grocery store every day of that trip. I met a girl. I slept on a dirty couch, on the side of an 8 lane highway, or with a 1%er biker buddy who let me crash with him.
First trip to Quebec, over a decade ago
I lied to my parents that I was going with a whole bunch of people but it was just me: barely 20 years old having the time of my life, living life young, wild, and free.
But everything changed when I got back home. My father was diagnosed with cancer. The music stopped, the fun stopped, the party was over.
In time I learned that there are different ways of handling grief. Mine included a lot of self-sabotaging behavior, along with burying myself in work or whatever else I could get into to keep myself distracted. I didn’t give myself to permission to make the right choices to allow myself to feel happy. I haven’t taken a motorcycle road trip ever since.
So why am I nervous about taking this trip? Well. It’s all your fault.
A lot of you guys say that you learn stuff from me. That’s an honor. For me to be able to help you and for you to take a minute out of your day to say thank you, that means a lot to me. My fear is that something will go wrong on this trip, and it’ll let you guys down. My fear is that going off-script and doing something different from what you’ve come to expect from YouMotorcycle will turn you off.
The Adrian you see in the how-to videos is a guy who has everything already pre-planned out, set up, and scripted, before he even turns the camera on. The informative articles you find on the website come from over a decade of motorcycle industry experience.
But on a motorcycle road trip there is no scripting and setting up. Everything just happens.
The content you’ll see on YouMotorcycle for the next few weeks will no longer be the kind of prepared and research content that you’re used to. For that, I apologize. I don’t want you to feel like you’ve been the victim of a bait-and-switch.
I’m doing this Toronto to Quebec City motorcycle road trip to try to reset back to where I was a decade ago. It was a time when I had a lot more fun. I want to try to see how much of that kid is still left in me. To literally start again from where I left off. It’s a big first step that I need to do, so that I can move on to bigger steps from here.
My content will go back to normal when I’m done. Trust me, I wouldn’t be sharing my adventure if I didn’t think you’d like it.
Click the pic below to check out Day 1 of the trip. I’ll be leaving Toronto and riding to Brockville, Ontario and visiting everything along the way including Primitive Designs and The Big Apple.
