Zac’s in a good mood these days. He’s just come home from a few days in California, where he was riding the new Aprilia Shiver and Dorsoduro 900s around the Ventura canyons. He did better than me: I was driving through Georgia in a Buick with a “wanker” sticker on my back.
A lot of us in this business also review cars for other publications, but don’t worry – the closest you’ll get to a car in Canada Moto Guide is this Toyota review. As luck would have it, I was in Atlanta to drive the new Buick SUV for The Globe and Mail while CMG’s Costa Mouzouris was there to drive it for Postmedia and Jacob Black was there to drive it for AutoTRADER.ca, which now owns CMG.
Somewhere along the way, somebody printed off a sticker with the word “wanker” on it and slapped it jovially on my back, and I carried it there all morning. Nobody let on until I finally saw it in a photo – wankers.
We get criticized sometimes for the hijinks that can happen on these press trips, though nothing compares to the infamous Kawasaki Ninja press trip of 2000 that we told you about last year in all its gory detail. Yes, we get to go to warm places to ride motorcycles in the wintertime, for which we expect and get no sympathy, but it’s not always all it’s cracked up to be. Most of the motorcycle trips, like this Buick trip, include coach-class travel with all the inevitable delays of American airports.
The three of us on the Buick trip missed separate flights to get home: Costa and I were stuck on the tarmac in Asheville, NC, because our Delta jet was overfueled, and the pilot had to rev the engines for 45 minutes until we’d burned enough gas to be light enough to take off. We were all late home by several hours but Costa was latest of all, flying back to Montreal through Minneapolis, where he was almost stuck again, and finally getting in eight hours later than he should, at 1 am.
But we’re not looking for sympathy. Sometimes, it all works out, as it did for Zac. He got to live the California lifestyle for a couple of days and even wrote his review of the two Aprilias while scrunched into his coach-class seat on the way home. It’s not really that exotic a life but it has its moments, and we bring them all to you at Canada Moto Guide.
The comments about how awful it is to fly “coach-class”, ie., regular seats where 90% of the populace flies, mean he’s a bit of a wanker.
Just a bit though.
Delays are another matter, a real reason for complaint.