Pency O’Doule, Enthusiast Extraordinaire: Pency Traumatizes a Troglodyte

            I had told Dave Owen that I would meet the guys on the 1999 Tour B.C. run at The Goldpanner Cafe on Highway 6 between 10:30 and 11:30 on Thursday.  It was 11:45 and I was wondering if I had misunderstood.  Still, I knew that eventually they would have to pass by because it was the only way to get to Nakusp and the other fine British Columbia towns on Dave’s itinerary and still take in the best of the twisty, Southern B.C. roads.  As I glanced up from a dog-eared copy of the Coldstream Advertiser, I caught a glimpse through the cafe’s fly-specked front window of a ’96 Connie slicing past.  I slapped a toonie on the table to pay for the coffee and pushed through the front door.  By the time I had picked up my chaps and wrapped them around my waist another Connie, a ’94 had zipped by, followed by an ’86.  I had put my jacket on and was just sliding into my helmet when an ’87, identical to mine flashed by, on the back the tell-tale red waterproof stuff sack of Pency O’Doule.

            I launched myself out of the parking lot just in front of a fully loaded logging truck that was jake-braking on the slight downhill past the cafe.  I didn’t want to get stuck behind that kind of a rig as I began the chase to run down Pency and the others.   With a minute or so edge on the relatively traffic free highway to the Needles-Fauquier ferry, they would be able to crank on the k’s.  Obviously, I would have to crank on more. 

The rear tire skipped a little to the right as took off.  The road immediately dipped into a short left hander and then a long right around an outcropping of rock.  The mountains extended up a thousand feet here on either side of the creek.  They were covered in second growth pine and fir.  For most of the sixty kilometres to the ferry at Needles, the creek would be down to the left and the uphill slope on the right.  I settled into the rhythm of the winding road, trying to be smooth, to minimise my braking, roll the throttle on and off with a bit more finesse, give the sidewall tread a little more work to do. 

Out of nowhere, the realisation popped into my head that my Concours buddies had almost ridden right by me!  Why hadn’t they stopped at the Goldpanner as arranged?  Had they not seen my bike?  It had been parked right in front.  Pency must have seen it; Pency never missed anything.

Hardly had those thoughts entered my mind, when I exited a corner to find, a hundred yards in front of me, the red-bagged backend of Pency’s motorcycle, which had slowed to about sixty k.  Pency was half turned around on his saddle in the hurry-and-catch-up position familiar to all motorcyclists.  I waved him on with my left hand and we were off.  He hadn’t missed me after all.

The ride to the ferry was fabulous: sixty kilometres of twisty, traffic free, smooth and silky asphalt; thirty minutes of pure pleasure: swooping through a gradual left and right, hammering up an inclined straight, braking over the top and down, around again, throttle on, left and right, then braking, braking, bending it hard and harder still as the radius tightened, out, blasting out and down toward some little bridge, over, up, a glance at Pency’s stuff sack, still there, damn getting smaller, throttle on...  For thirty minutes: eyes wide, heart going, wind, air, heat, noise, both hands and feet playing the two-wheeled calliope just as hard and fast as I knew how to play.  As I said: fabulous.

We passed the other Connies one by one on the way, and another guy and his girlfriend on a twenty year old Yamaha 1100 cruiser.  By the time they caught back up to us at the ferry terminal, Pency and I were sitting at a little picnic table eating some of my stash of beef jerky, still grinning. 

Ferry terminal is a little bit of an exaggeration.  The highway just sort of disappears straight into the water of Arrow Lake.  It re-emerges on the other side, about eight hundred yards away.   A set of three, three inch cables runs across the lake guiding a twenty car ferry back and forth.  We had about fifteen minutes to wait until the ferry came back.  Ken McNair, Dan Paulsen and Wayne Stirrett were the other three Concours riders.  We took a few pictures to pass the time.  Within about five minutes, the Yamaha pulled up and the two riders got off.  The guy introduced himself as Phillip and his wife as Irene.  They appeared to be in their late thirties.  Philip was pleasant enough, but Irene had hardly taken off her helmet before she launched into a tirade about excessive speed and passing on yellow lines and bad name to motorcycling not to mention endangering life and limb and besides how could anyone see the scenery, they might as well be on a race track.  Phillip seemed a little embarrassed which is probably why he started diligently searching in his saddlebags for something. 

“Do you suppose he’s looking for a gun?” Pency muttered to me.

“Why don’t you just slow down so you can see something,” Irene concluded, and though she was not directing her comments to him specifically, Pency glanced at me, rolled his eyes and responded.  I was pleased to note that he employed his best, clipped British accent.

“You err, madam, to assume that the acuity of one’s vision decreases with speed.  The joy one gets from riding briskly is infinitely enhanced by the very scenery you so quickly assume we cannot apprehend.”

I bit off another chunk of jerky to disguise my grin.  Phillip looked up, a slight smile on his face.  Irene frowned.

“What?  What has all that got to do with just slowing down instead of being an idiot?”

There was a slight pause.  I looked at Pency whose eyes, I noticed, were now locked onto Irene and no longer blinked.  He took a small step toward her.

“An idiot?” he said.  “I see.  Madam, at 80 kilometres per hour, the speed at which you choose to travel, one engages the senses in the usual fashion, one at a time, as did the troglodytes of old.  One sees, or hears, or smells as the case may be.  Occasionally, the tactile sense makes itself known as the droning vibration of the motorcycle slowly creeps through the foam and then the cellulite to the lower pelvis.”

Irene opened her mouth to speak; Pency kept going.

“At 110 kilometres per hour, all the senses blur together in a charming cacophony of sensation which, while enjoyable, eventually becomes tiresome: one hears and feels and smells and sees everything in a vibrant blend of fuzzy feeling.  At 140 kilometres an hour, the speed at which I choose to travel, each sense in that blur separates into a very distinct rainbow of sensation; the speed requires that I see everything, hear everything, feel everything, smell everything.  Not a colour, whiff, click or vibration escapes my notice.  In the last sixty kilometres we passed one eagle, a red-tailed hawk, two dead racoons, one dead king snake, you and three deer, one of which was a buck.  The eagle was flying back to its nest with a small kokanee, the buck had four points, the bum of your jeans is starting to split, and the Yamaha is burning a little oil in the third cylinder.”

Irene hesitated.

“Oh, right.  As if!” she finally said, and turned away.

Pency wasn’t through.

“Did you, for example, at your sedate speed happen to notice what the last road sign said?”

“Yeah, I did, as a matter of fact,” she said turning back.  “It said ‘Fauquier: 3 kilometres.’”

Pency smiled.

“Actually, it said ‘two kilometres.’  And by the way, the name of the town is French, and its not pronounced FOKE-ee-yer.”

Ah, Pency, I thought, you just can’t resist, can you.  I looked at a smiling Phillip and wondered how he would take this.

“And I suppose you are going to tell me the correct pronunciation,” Irene said with a slight sneer.

“If you insist,” Pency said, and then, in his most charming, phoney, Pink Panther French accent replied: “Een France wee say: Foke-ee-AY.  Een British Columbia, wee say: Foke-ee-YOO, eh?”