I've been racing against the arrival of hurricane Earl in Labrador. And been having a crash course in french vocabulary and hurricanes eg Ouragan is the word for hurricane. The local people have been getting very excited describing the hurricane's route and strength as it approaches north east Canada, unfortunately I'm not able to fully understand everything they've been saying, just joining in with the 

"ooh la la you're going to be riding a bike through the hurricane- bonne chance"

More later.

Sweating in the heatwave here in Montreal - whilst simultaneously providing a lot of entertainment with my attempts at french - I think it`s the fact that I have a very British accent on my french that they find funny. Luckily most people are bilingual, but apparently as I go further east towards Quebec City and that hotbed of nationalism known as Lac St Jean I will meet a lot more purists who speak no english.

Thanks to Jeff, the GS 1200 rider I met riding last night on Route 15 somewhere near Morton (Ontario), I managed to make it to North Gower. The 15 was closed by police with some serious road blocking techniques that not even a bike would get through, I had the map and Jeff had the local knowledge, so we took some side roads to get around and then he led me through the confusion of streets known as Smith Falls to leave me on the correct road.

No, not the people, but the parts. Dave in Calgary had pointed out that I had a Russian ignition coil on Thelma, I can't remember if it was a genuine replacement or whether at some point in Siberia when I had some work done on Thelma maybe someone decided they wanted the nice BMW ignition coil for their Ural and so swapped them over.

Taking a look at the map I saw I could go around the north side of Lake Michigan on big highways or...cross to Manitoulin Island and take a ferry to Tobermory on the southern shore - no prizes for guessing what I did.

Thelma's longest ever ride ensued as we once more headed north, it was over 650 miles to Sault Sainte Marie. Across Wisconsin which should be known as the Firework State - is it the only legal place to buy them? Every other shop was selling fireworks. I went along the Michigan UP - can't remember now whether that means Upper Part or Peninsula, admiring the holiday homes and cottages along the shores of Lake Michigan as I went and then not so admiringly the full moon that was rising over the forests around me.

Take me back tot h Black Hills of Dakota, I sang as I passed the hills near Minot, northern North Dakota, however I was later t find out that actually these fabled hills are hundreds of miles away on South Dakota (no-one told me there were TWO Dakotas). 

ND proved to be one of the friendliest States I have been in with lots of friendly greetings, good wishes from people and chats about where, who and what on earth I was doing in North Dakota.

And a not so friendly welcome from the US Border Officials, all my stuff was searched, I had to empty all my pockets which included numerous tissues, as I commented, "when you're on the road, you never know when you'll be caught short and there's no loo roll available"

No journey across Canada is complete without a stop in the Saskatchewan town of Moose Jaw in the heart of the Prairies. I'd finally left all sight of the Rockies behind me and spent a day riding across what I'd been warned would be flat and boring - not at all, there was a lot to see and I was glad the roads were straight so that I could look around me as much as I wanted. The road kill was exotic- skunk, raccoon and some unidentifiable stuff. A coyote as well I think, but I didn't want to look too closely in case it was someone's pet dog.

After some extremely hard work and an amazing gearbox re-build by Dave Anderson (airhead genius extraordinaire) Thelma was ready to hit the road once more. While she'd been on the ramp, I'd been allowed to lend a hand, although my efforts were somewhat limited, mainly restricted to cleaning Thelma's wheel rims and now they gleam as they haven't done since the day I left South Molton when the rims were new six years ago!

I want to say a big thank you to Dave and the team at Anderwerks - Mike, Curtis, Malcolm, Tyler, Kelsey, Jenna and Fallon- you were all great.