York Wings: What's This White Stuff?

Every weekend members congregated at Fuller Restaurant and decided where to go riding. A destination would be decided on, and after a leisurely breakfast, we would all go

Parking lot outside the Fuller Restaurant.

for a ride. One particular weekend early in the riding season of 1977, the ride would be to -Barrie where we would participate in a local poker run. Riding out of Toronto and on to the 400, the weather was a bit cool but bright with sunshine. Being Torontonians and used to moderate temperatures, many of us were content with an sweater under the leathers, and gloves on our hands. Certainly those with fully faired motorcycles left the city confident that the weather that day would not be an issue. After all, the radio informed us that the forecasted high would be in the teens (Celsius) with nary a cloud expected.

As we made progress on our sixty mile journey straight north, the warm sun started to play hide and seek among the rapidly gathering dark clouds. By the time we reached Barrie, the sun had vanished altogether and the temperature hovered somewhere in the single digit range. I knew I was starting to get cold, but I also wondered how Walter , my friend and fellow York Winger was getting on. He was riding his chopped Triumph Bonneville attired in the type of gear only a hardcore hard-ass old school biker would wear. Regular grade unlined leather jacket, Levi cut-off vest on top, unlined gauntlet style leather gloves, and the mandatory shorty helmet without any zip-on skirt was all he had for protection. Not even a hint of a windshield on the bike either. Looking cool never looked so cold, I thought to myself. I asked him later at one of our stops how he was doing. With his jacket stylishly open at the top, he would exclaim that the "balmy" weather was "refreshing".

With the sun apparently gone for the day, I kept my fingers crossed that it would at least not rain. I suppose my wish came true since big wet snowflakes started to fall instead. At first the white stuff melted as soon as it hit the road. We all decided that this was not too bad and continued to ride. Then the snowfall intensified. Soon we were riding through a blizzard with limited visibility. The windshield on my bike required frequent brushing off, the snow rapidly replenishing itself as fast as I could remove it. Pretty soon, it took all my concentration just to follow the bike in front of me. All I could make out through my water spotted glasses and obstructed windshield was

Just arrived in Barrie, registering for the Poker Run

the gently glowing taillight of the bike in front, and the tire rut left behind in the slush covered road. Had the bike in front driven off the road, I would have followed lemming-like without question.

But as miserable as I felt at that time, seeing Walter at our next rest stop made me feel like a wimp. Imagine Jack Frost from an illustrated children's book, and you would have a perfect image of Walter that day. Icicles dangled like jewelry from his ear lobes, his beard encrusted with stringy chunks of ice, and his torso layered in a mixture of snow and slush captured from both the blizzard and the road, he was a sight to behold.

That evening when I returned home, I found that I was totally exhausted. The strain of riding in such adverse conditions, not to mention the cold, had taken its toll. I'm sure I was close to hypothermia, and it was amazing that Walter did not find himself in the emergency room. We lost Walter sometime during the ride. With his small coffin tank, he was forced to pull off and search for gas frequently, and it was on one of his refueling stops that he was accidentally left behind. Apparently most of our concentration was on our own survival, so no one had noticed his absence until it was too late. I called later that night and was relieved to hear his voice on the other end; he had survived as well.