The 2020 Junk Run event – Starting the Planning.

If you’re anything like us, you’re probably sitting at home right now saying “I feel the need to do something truly inappropriate and ill-advised with a small two wheeled motor vehicle, preferably in a way that impresses absolutely no one with either my machismo or my competence.”

At least, that’s the kind of thinking that was going through our two stroke smoke addled brains when we came up with the original Junk Run, which we ran in 2018, and then planned to make a recurring, every 2-years event. And thanks to the apparently inevitable forward progression of time, in 2020 we’ll be repeating this absolutely top 3 tier event (if you poll among Ontario based offroad scooter and moped events anyways) and inviting you to come along!

The 2018 event was a run through Ganaraska park with a few riders, very few of which were horribly killed during the ride due to exploding scooters!

If you want to read about the 2018 event – you can read about that HERE.

All the machines managed to complete the event in fact, and (somewhat surprisingly) the only casualty of a mechanical nature was some self-ejecting fairing screws from a Kymco People S200. (The other People S200 riding along kept all its screws, but the rider definitely had a few loose in other ways.

Despite the success mechanically, we mention the casualties of a physiological nature to protect those who participated, but lets just say we cannot guarantee any rear ends were not harmed during the running of the event.

It was a gueling run through soft sand, single track, going (occasionally crazy slowly) through all kinds of offroad conditions in Ganaraska.

It was painful, personally humiliating and thoroughly unpleasant. It’s a bad idea for the scooters as well, as dust can get into the CVT causing premature wear on components, components of the bike can fail due to vibration or impact, and there is a certain physical risk as well.

So of course, that’s why we’ll be doing it again this year. But this year we have a bit more…. distance to cover. In fact, we plan to do as much as we can manage of the Park to Park trail.

Stretching from Killbear to Algonquin, the full trail is 230km but only 180+km are available for motorized machine. Most of the trail are Rail Trails, former railway lines and they are used by various off-road machines as well as hikers and horseback riders in various spots (and contain some spectacular scenery.)

The Junk Run will be attempting to do as much of that as possible (skipping deep water crossings, impassible mud, etc. We may be stupid, but we’re not *that* stupid.) It’ll be a “ride your own ride” type of thing.

Basically there is no sign up – we’ll announce the date and meeting place and time, and you will be responsible for your own ride, your own trail pass (trail use requires a trail pass which goes towards upkeep of the trail – and well worth it), and your own safety. This *might* change if we get a lot of interest, but we expect only a few riders to be brave (I.E. crazy) enough to join us on this ride.

If there is interest, we may see if we can book a group campsite at Killbear (which is pretty much the western end of the P2P trail.)

As well, as some of you may remember Scoottoronto Editor Jamie Leonard was the recipient of the Rob Harris Spirit award in the final 2019 Mad Bastard Scooter Rally – which was a bottle of Rob’s favourite scotch. This scotch will be brought to the rally and shared out to those who attend at the Saturday night camping. Because we couldn’t think of a more appropriate way to remember the founder of Canada Motoguide and the Mad Bastard Scooter Rally.

So far, the plans are for a weekend in the first half of August. We’ll be taking some machines up north on the Friday evening, camping overnight and getting an early start on the Saturday close to to the east end of the P2P trail, near where the motorized section of the trail begins.

The goal will be to do as much of the trail as we (and our machines) can handle. But should things get too crazy, there are several bailout points along the way and roads that (much of the way) run close to the trail, and will allow riders who just can’t take any more to drive to Killbear on nice, safe pavement.

There will also be a bonus trophy made from the finest junk we could scavenge from our shed and hot glue together into a shameful semblance of an award. We are thinking this will go to the person collecting the most pieces of trash along the way – so we can help out the organizers of the trail and clear up the environment along the way. It also fits in with the “Junk Run” theme.

We’ll be posting more details as we continue planning. If you are interesting in helping plan the event, attending the event, finding out how to scavenge parts from the remains of failed competitors in the event, or you have a therapy practice and feel you can help the participants, please feel free to contact us.

And for those who are interested, we also have a betting pool as to how long we can go without making a joke about “touching our junk”. Which we seem to have just lost, so nevermind.

Keep an eye out for the next Junk Run update in a few(ish) weeks!