Category General
Fallingwater
Riding down the moss lined narrow lane through the forest, a sense of calm surrounds you. All we see is the winding lane, the lush forest, spring flowers everywhere, violets, daisies, and Bear Run creek below to our right.
Approaching Fallingwater
There is nothing to indicate that the place we have come to visit has welcomed 5.5 million visitors since it opened as a museum. We park the bikes and walk up the boardwalk to the visitor’s centre: everything is low key, low impact wooden buildings you don’t see until you get up to them.
Our 11am tour group of 9 people is invited to walk down the gravel path to the bridge on the right. It is a lovely walk through the forest. The birds are chirping and the rushing water of Bear Run creek gets louder and louder until suddenly it is revealed: Fallingwater, Frank Lloyd Wright’s masterpiece!
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater house
Fallingwater was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in the 1930s, one of the most prolific, unorthodox and controversial masters of 20th-century architecture who created over 500 structures over his 70 year career, and is widely recognised as the best example of “organic architecture”, integrating buildings with nature. Edgar and Liliane Kaufmann, a prominent Pittsburgh couple, commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to build their summer retreat, knowing he shared their love of nature. They had wanted to make the view of the waterful a feature of their new home, never expecting to have the waterfall to become part of the actual house! Rather than simply look at the waterfall, Wright wanted the Kaufmanns to live with it!!
Cantilevered terraces of local sandstone blend harmoniously with the rock formations, appearing to float above the stream below and glass walls open the rooms to the surrounding landscape. As you enter any room in the house, your eye is drawn outside. But as you look at the detail inside, everything is carefully planned, in balance, serene.
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater house
Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater house
At Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater house
In 1963 the Kaufmanns donated Fallingwater to the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, together with 1,543 acres of surrounding land. Their son Edgar J. Kaufmann jr wanted visitors to have the full experience that Wright created within the spaces of the house: we were able to walk into every part of the house, like any of their guests would have, with no roped off areas, and with all the original furniture, mostly of which was designed by Wright specifically for Fallingwater.
What a privilege it was to visit Fallingwater – another man made structure that moved me in an unexpected and indescribable way.
– Anne
A day in the lives of the 2slowspeeds
We wake up at 4am in Montreal – probably due to a mixture of being on UK time zone and excitement at starting our trip. We get to Air Canada Cargo by 7.30, hand over our Air Way Bill and I hear ‘encore un qui est allé à Toronto’ – another one that’s gone to Toronto!! Our bikes are not the only shipment yesterday that was sent to Toronto instead of Montreal! No wonder we never saw them be loaded as we were waiting to board our plane.
Little did we know then…
Maybe if Air Canada used more conventional airport codes like MON or TOR instead of YUL and YYZ we thought, they may not make such mistakes, repeatedly apparently!!! How about Air Canada send us to Toronto, we will pick them up from there as Toronto was on our way anyway. Sounds easy. But the little challenge is that the computer system shows the bikes being received in Toronto, and nothing else. Where are they now? It seems London hasn’t done anything to rebook them to get to Montreal. And the planes from Toronto to Montreal are not capable of taking the special motorcycle pallets. Are they on the truck over?? Some of the cargo is listed as being loaded onto a truck to Montreal but no mention of the bikes. “You can go and get breakfast while we investigate this says” one employee says cheerfully. Well, not only did we have breakfast at the hotel but we have no wheels to drive anywhere. So here we are – perfect opportunity for me to start our Day 1 report!!!
Within 1 hour of arriving at Canada Air Cargo, we find out what happenned:
The front cargo mechanism on our plane failed so half the cargo didn’t make the flight and they put this cargo including our bikes on the Toronto plane which was sitting next to ours at Heathrow and leaving one hour before us. Air Canada Cargo have an automated system which automatically rebooks such cargo to its original destination. Very clever. But the system failed. They were not rebooked back to Montreal.
We ask whether Air Canada will fly us or at least give us cheap tickets to fly to Toronto rather than us spending a day in Montreal for our bikes to get to us. They have never been ask anything like that but agree to go off and try. Not only are the passenger and cargo branches two different organisations, it is good Friday – no one is around for them to talk too. We quickly check the cost of flights – prohibitive – we are not spending $700 to get to Toronto! In the meantime the air cargo guys have put their thinking caps on for us: maybe they can extend our original tickets from London to Montreal to go to Toronto?! We wait…
The service manager Michel offers to take us to a local coffee shop. While there he get confirmation we have been booked onto the noon flight to Toronto. He is profusely apologetic and thanks us for making his job easier by being calm and patient about the whole situation. After our Delhi customs experience, this is nothing for us. He drives us back to the passenger terminal for our flight. We only need to collect our ticketless boarding pass.
Air Canada ticketless boarding passes
An hour’s flight and we are quickly in a taxi to Air Canada Cargo at Toronto airport. The service clerk is aware of our bikes and immediately refers us to the Cargo manager Jalal as they have a problem with the keys. A problem with the keys?!?! Yes, they are in Montreal and won’t get here until 3.30pm. The automatic forwarding system worked for the keys!! We never got to find out why the keys didn’t stay with the bikes! They will be on a flight arriving from Montreal at 3.30pm.
While we wait for the keys, let’s get the bikes processed by customs so that we can get on our way as soon as the keys arrive. Another little issue to be sorted out: the airway bill has the bikes arriving in Montreal so that is where they should clear customs. The manager gets back onto the phone to a few people. It appears the customs officials cannot clear goods whose airway bill states are to be cleared in another entry port. More calls are made.
More thinking caps are put on and our very helpful Toronto cargo guys come up with a solution. New paperwork is produced with Toronto as the destination. A couple of trips between the air cargo warehouse and customs buildings, reminiscent of our Delhi saga but with hardly any other people around, and we have the bikes officially stamped into the country!!!!
Toronto air cargo customs and warehouses
In perfect timing, the keys are delivered to the warehouse just as we get back there. Time to ride our bikes out of the warehouse.
Streak and Storm waiting for us at Toronto Air Canada Cargo
We cannot thank Michel, Jalal and their teams enough for all they did for us. Unbelievable!!
It is now 4.30pm. The air is crisp and skies are deep blue. Do we check into a hotel nearby and get a good night’s sleep or do we get going? We could be Niagara Falls by 6pm. Guess what we decided to do…
Toronto – we are good to go!!!
A gorgeous day in Niagara Falls
Niagara Falls
Niagara Falls
At Niagara Falls
What a day: Montreal in the morning and Niagara Falls by the evening! We hadn’t even planned on going there – we had seen them from the air and were content with that. But what a sight they are and what a buzz to be here after such a day of surprises. What a fantastic day in the lives of the 2slowspeeds.
Thank you to those of you who humoured us with the caption challenge. You are all winners!!
– Anne
Caption this
Caption this photo taken in Montreal today – what’s happened, where are we off to now?!?
– Anne
Preparing for the road
Medical dramas behind us, we can focus on preparing for our departure to Canada on the 13th. This last week has seen us re-united with Streak and Storm in their winter retreat and us ride them up to North Oxford Garage for their preparation for travel. The BMW Motorrad service department led by Matt have been wonderful in dealing with our various ‘needs’ as Streak and Storm were prepared for a RTW journey. We cannot thank Matt enough for helping us with getting Anne’s bike fully fit again. Matt you are a legend!
Matt from BMW Motorrad at North Oxford with a rejuvinated Streak and Storm
We were reminded that we need to be more vigilant in our inspections as ‘Streak’, Anne’s bike, was found to have dirty brown dishwater for coolant. We have no idea how this happened as the coolant system of the BMW F700GS is pressurised and we have not touched it. A mystery. As I was smugly standing back thinking my bike ‘Storm’ was fine, it was pointed out that ‘Storm’ had suffered overheating to the point where the surface coating of the side of the radiator had blistered off! I never got a dashboard warning! Note to selves, check bikes more carefully in future. Luckily neither problem appears to have caused any damage to the engines, which were examined carefully during the valve clearance check.
Fortuitously, it was found that the tyres, chains and sprockets on both ‘Streak’ and ‘Storm’ appear to have enough life remaining to see us across the USA and Canada. We will now replace them in Vancouver before departing for Asia. This should see us through back to Europe on the second set. An earlier replacement would have increased the chance of a remote location change, not our preferred option!
Packing has proved more challenging than I thought, with everything we used last time stored with the bikes, it should have been a breeze. However when we travelled in 2014/5 we had an endless summer as our hemisphere moves synced with the seasons. We are now starting mid April in Montreal, possibly heading to Alaska, so a little warmer clothing is required to be packed, although looking at the temperature, we may be wearing it all at once! We have also noticed the visible wear on panniers and other items that we will need to watch on the journey, which is starting almost three years since the beginning of our first adventure. We and the bikes are a little bit older, greyer and more frayed around the edges.
This reminded me that three years ago, this blog started as a way of communicating with friends and family when we decided to undertake our first long distance motorcycle journey from London down to Singapore. This was meant to be a one off for the duration of our 2014/5 RTW trip. Our desire to travel again in 2016 both on motorbike and in a 4×4 saw the blog revived, recording our experiences travelling in Spain and Southern Africa. Now, as we undertake preparations for our next adventure, I realised that the “2slowspeeds” blog not only celebrated its third birthday, but saw its 250th entry posted around the same time! Who would have thought, especially with my limited English grammar and both our limited motorcycling skills?
Since we left home in Brisbane, we have also enjoyed the opportunity to spend quality time with both family and friends between our bike servicing, visa applications and packing. While we were unable to see everyone in our time here, we enjoyed catching up but we are now ready to go. Panniers and bikes loaded, we leave from Hampshire heading towards Heathrow. We will overnight near Heathrow and deliver ‘Streak’ and ‘Storm’ to Air Canada tomorrow for customs processing so they can join us on the same flight on Thursday 13th to Montreal.
No more planning, we are off. What adventures await?
We have been so busy that we seem to have had little time to think. This morning as I headed for breakfast, I felt the first stirrings of excitement. The adventure is underway…..
– Anthony
2slowspeeds 