Below is my Vermort 13 report, basically grabbed and slightly edited from RMH:

I'll skip over the minor details, like the 18 hour ride to Ottawa from Halifax in the middle of the night with the kids in the back and the bike being pulled in the trailer and move right ahead to Thursday.

We packed up and hit the road around 9 ish on Friday morning, it was cloudy but no rain in site and a hint of sun. Brett was driving the chase truck packed with all our shit for the trip, so unlike last year, we didn't have our bikes loaded down. Other than a short 10-15 miles of slab, we stayed on the back roads on the way down. We took the 416 our of Ottawa and turned onto the 8 and headed east, we stopped at the 31 to confirm that this was where we wanted to turn, and to let the cop in front of us get a little further ahead.  Once we had our bearings I grabbed the shifter and pushed it forward in order to get it into gear, hmm, felt kind of mushy, I pulled it back and noticed that it moved much more freely now, as if it was no longer attached to anything.  And sure enough it wasn't, it was now just holding it my hand.  This wasn't good. I was in first gear so we jumped it and putted down the road looking for an automotive shop.  This first gear thing wasn't working out to well, so we pulled over and managed to get it into 3 and jumped it again. We took off in search of a shop and with a wrong turn and a double back we found one without too much of a hassle.

I took the peices in to the girl behind the counter and asked if there was anyone there that could weld it back together, she said she'd check.  Long story short, the work was done in about 15 minutes and only cost $5, just enough for the guy doing the work to "buy the fellas some coffee."   Good stuff.

We made another stop shortly after that in order to check out a shop that sells old cards, really old cars.  It was a nice break and gave us an oppertunity to releave ourselves.  Back on the road we followed 31 down to the 2, which runs along the river on the other side of the 401, the river seperating NewYork and Ontario. We had two unexpected stops on this stretch, both dealing with electrical connectors, both fixed with duct tape in about 2 minutes.

In RMH there was a break here and I continued the story in another thread.

When I had last left off I was arriving in Vermort on Friday evening with the bike in the back of the truck, again.  Fortunately it was nothing serious, nothing a little bailing wire wouldn't fix up, thankfully Traci had some in her sidecar.

But that was on Saturday, and it was still just Friday evening.  The ride down saw no rain whatsoever, so we came through much better than many of those coming from the south and east, moot point since I was in a truck for 1/3 of the trip. Drinks were had, backs were slapped, lies were told, all in all a good Friday night. I think Allen-1 might have seen a little rain on his up.

On Saturday morning we fixed up the exhaust header with the bailing wire I got from Traci and then headed to the hot rod show to wonder around for a while, this included myself, Bep, Brett, Traci, Steve, Bill, and I'm sure someone else I'm forgetting, sorry about that.  The hot rod show was great, as usual, assuming your into old cars.  There was an OCC bike at one of the booths for Miller, not the one from the show but another one.  Bep wanted to get some info about their welding machines but the guy was more interested in pointing at the bike, so that conversation didn't last long. I believe it started like:

Sales guy: Cool bike isn't it, those rims are great.
Bep: I don't like them, I prefer wire wheels.

At this point the guy ran off to get a picture of the bike that OCC did on the show for Miller, at which point Bep realized that he wasn't going to get any useful info from this guy and we left.

Took a nice little twisty road on the way back to Ken's, then sat back and enjoyed the good company and good food, fortunately both were plentiful.

BTW, Ken's place looked great, a lot of work done and it showed, my only complaint is that there seemed to be some geographic anomoly floating around in the pool. I swear I had a picture of it, but I guess like the Bermuda Triangle, it mysteriously disappeared from my camera.

Rather than add all the images on this page, I’ll just put this link in to the main images pages for the trip.

Saturday night was great, as usual, the people, conversations, food, weather (ok, it was a bit on the cool side), all good.  It was great to meet some people I've only heard about or saw as pixels on the computer screen, and as always it was great to talk to the regular Vermort crowd. Special mentions go out to Phil and Tara, it was great to finally meet Phil and I could sit and listen to Tara discuss all things Canadian for hours.  Donny got me itching to hit the BBQ in Boston next year, so Bep, Brett and I will be working on the women folk over the winter.  Len and TL were missed, as were Terry, Maddy...wait, I'm gonna stop there or this will be a very long list. Like I said, it was great to see and talk to the rest of the crew, it was the first time I got to meet Lisa (of Allen and Lisa) and Tom (although I didn't talk much with Tom, Dobbin wasn't it?), and Banzi Lee and Wakko, even if just breifly. Where was I going, ah well, basically it was just great to see everyone.

In RMH there was a break here and I continued the story in another thread.

After a windy night, in which I'm sure my tent would have blown away had I not been in it, we woke up to cloudy sky's with the hint of blue in the distance.
 

Wakko was going to follow Bep and I up to the Quebec border in order to do his ABC tour, so after gassing up we headed up through the islands of Lake Champlain toward Canada.

At the top of the lake is the border of Vermont and New York and about a mile from Canada, we stopped for a minute to decide which way to go and to give the bikes a once over, and I'm glad we did. One of the valve clearance inspection covers was missing off my bike, fortunately Bep carries an extra, so that was no problem, then I noticed something that was a problem, one of the front motor mount bolts was missing.

So, like a well oiled pit crew, we had the bike in the back of the truck in no time, which was too bad because the further north we got the clearer the sky's got and the warmer it got. With Brett and me in the truck we followed Bep up through Montreal and into Ontario. At this point Bep pulled onto a back road and we stopped at a hardware store, where we pulled the bike out of the truck, bought a new bolt for the motor mount and grabbed a late lunch.

We followed this back road, the 17 I believe, all the way up to Ottawa, then we got on the main highway to cross Ottawa towards Bep's place. Traffic was relatively light so we managed to maintain highway speeds along this stretch. While on the highway we ended up behind a cop, this concerned us a bit since I only had a high beam, my bars didn't fall within the local standards, and the bikes are a little loud. I've been behind cops before and we just kept on riding, but I really started being concerned when he pulled off the shoulder and then pulled back in behind us, not good since both of us were running without functioning tail lights, and they'd get a good chance to hear the bikes. I'm not sure if the cops just wanted to check for patches or check the license plates, but they were only behind us for about 10-15 seconds then took off past us again and disappeared.

This all occurred a couple miles from our turnoff of the highway, and about 20 minutes from Bep's. We pulled off the highway and headed for Bep's on the back roads again.

<the rest was snipped from a previous post>

There's a straight piece of back road just before the turn off to Bep's place, and traditionally he tries to get his bike up to top speed at this point, since if he blows anything he can walk it home.  So we're on the way home from Vermort and we reach this point, about a mile or 2 from his place, he opens it up and I see him duck down to lower the wind resistance, so I decide to see what mine can do. I managed to overtake him with no problem, sitting up right and smiling at him as I go by. Once I passed him I eased up and let him take the lead again, just then I hear a rather unpleasant noise from the primary.  I immediately pull in the clutch and pull the bike over, we load it up after briefly pondering if it would be just as easy to walk it the rest of the way and get it home. Once back to Bep's we remove the primary and it appears as if the rotor nut backed out (even with the tab washer on there) and then jammed against the inspection cover, this sudden stop of the rotor caused the crank to sheer the key out while damaging the grove in the crank that the key sits in. Initial damage appears to be a destroyed key and the slot on the end of the crank is buggered up.  I'm not sure how the stator and rotor came through the ordeal, these will need to be tested.  While the rotor nut backed out? I don't know, it happened once before so I was careful to install it according to the shop manual specs the last time.

Thus ended our trip to Vermort.  It appears that I've got some work ahead of me for the winter as I suspect Bep is going to want to ride from Halifax to Boston for next years BBQ.  I'll need a shot of novacane (sp?) in the ass for that ride.

It's a good thing the Vermort run is at the end of the season. <g>