Gonzo of cycling- August 2006 Part 1
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Part 1
This is the story of the bicycle trip that I took in August 2006. I’m sure some of this is a bit incoherent, and most of it is probably going to be pretty boring to most people.
Saturday, August 12
Woke up at eight in the morning. I was pissed because I had overslept by two hours. I had some great ambitions for the day’s riding and I wasn’t sure if I could make the distance I was hoping for if I got a late start. I quickly scrambled some eggs and vegetables and threw my clothes on before heading to the garage. I had packed everything the night before, which kept me up until the wee hours of the morning, and contributed to my sleeping through my alarm. I jumped on my bike, rolled out of the garage and headed north. Before I had even made it to the other side of town I realized I had forgotten an important item. My father had given me an antique miniature pocket compass as a college graduation present. I’d worn it, hanging from a ragged hemp necklace that I had fashioned for it on every bicycle tour that I’d ridden on up until that point. It was a bit of a good luck charm. I decided not to backtrack a couple of miles to go get it. Too bad, I was going to need a lot of luck on this bicycle tour.
I was riding my old beat up touring bike that I had purchased five years before. The frame was still in pretty good shape, but the wheels had seen better days. The front and the back rims were deeply grooved from years of heavy touring and training rides. I was riding on the cheapest tires that my local bike shop had in stock at the end of the last winter, when I had ditched my snow tires. My whole drive train was new, so at least I knew that was solid. But just about everything else on the bike was a little suspect. I hoped that my recent run of bad luck was over though.
I’d had so many unfortunate bicycle incidents in the past week that I thought my ill luck must have been exhausted and that nothing could possibly go wrong on my tour. On the Sunday before I left I was doing a century and a half training ride. I was riding down the Dixie highway somewhere between Detroit and Monroe on a particularly rough stretch of road. There was no shoulder and half of the road was completely missing. The pavement had been replaced by a network of concrete and asphalt patches that made for a horrible ride. In the interest of saving my wheels I was riding down the middle of the lane. There was a fair amount of traffic traveling in both directions, so it was difficult for cars to pass me. One motorist began to tap the horn of his SUV impatiently as he waited to pass me. Often times I’ll flip off drivers that act like that and then shout a string of profanities, but I’m trying to work on being less mean spirited, so I just waved instead. After a few more seconds the SUV was able to pass me. As he pulled even with me I gave him a thumbs up and a big grin. The driver and the shotgun passenger just looked at me grimly, but a backseat passenger took matters into his own hands, or mouth in this case. He leaned out of the window and spat at me. He missed, but it was the thought that counted. I dropped my cheery façade, waving my middle finger at the car and shouting the profanities that I had been holding back. But then they were gone.
Several days after the prior incident I was out on a normal morning training ride. I had cruised through Dexter and Chelsea and I was on my way south down M52. Instead of continuing down through Manchester, Clinton and Saline I decided to cut the ride short and head home on Scio Church. Just after I turned for home I heard a tell tale metallic ping that I’d heard many times before. A spoke had let go in my rear wheel. Every time that I’ve blown spokes in the past it has been during a major tour, when my bike has been loaded with a ton of gear. This was the first time that I’d blown a spoke on my normal road bike, which has lighter weight wheels that don’t react as well to broken spokes. The wheel was so bent out of shape that the rim was rubbing hard against my break pads twice on every revolution. It was like trying to ride down the road with my rear breaks fully engaged. I slogged my way home at a paltry twelve miles per hour on the flats and a near walking pace on the up-hills. Luckily I wouldn’t be taking that bike on my tour, so I just tossed it in the garage and left it there. I’ve wanted to get a new wheel built for that bike anyway, so this will finally give me a good excuse to get it done.
The last pre-tour incident occurred on the day before I was supposed to leave. I was out running errands and picking up items that I would need for my tour, riding around on the bike I would be using for the trip. I stopped by a bike shop to get some things and headed north on Packard. Two blocks away my tire ran flat on me and I had to walk the bike back to the shop to fix the tube. I had neglected to bring my pump with me and had to use one of theirs. The gash in the tube was one of the largest I’ve ever had, but it fit nicely under a patch and inflated just fine. I completed the errands, but the time spent messing with the tire was time that I was expecting to use to pack before going to work, thus I ended up packing late into the night.
I rode north on Pontiac trail, past Tasha’s parent’s house, past the site where my sister’s former house once stood, past German park, and well beyond. Through the outer northern suburbs of Detroit I rode, and on to the St. Clair river. The area immediately north of Lake St. Clair is pretty nice. There are several small, harbor towns and some extensive wet lands, which are unfortunately in the process of being dominated by the invasive aquatic weed, Phragmites australis, which is replacing most of the native cattails. As you go north on the St. Clair river things start to get a bit ugly. By the time I reached Marine city, and the ferry that was to carry me to Canada I had a good view of the towering power plants and factories to my north on the American side of the river, as well as some of the industrial plants and power plants on the Canadian side. Having biked through the area in 2004 and having camped illegally in the shadow of one of those power plants on the American side I already had a bad taste in my mouth about the area, but I was soon to learn that I had actually seen the good side of the river on that trip.
The border crossing was a breeze. I waited around ten minutes for the ferry to arrive, and the trip across the river wasn’t much longer. The border guard asked me the prerequisite questions and waved me through. She was all business and quite a bit more gruff than the Canadian border guard that I had dealt with on my way into Alberta in 2003, but not unpleasant.
I continued to ride north, passing the coal power plants on either side of the river, and a Canadian chemical plant that was set a good way back from the road. Further on I reached a heavily industrialized area that was populated entirely by massive chemical cracking towers and smoke stacks of various sizes and descriptions. The chemical plants lined both sides of the road and stretched on for miles. I was riding into a moderate headwind that carried the smell of benzene and various other unidentified noxious chemicals to my nose. I was huffing and puffing to fight the wind, so I know I got a good dose of whatever they were cooking in those plants. It was probably no worse than smoking a cigarette, but I got a pretty good headache as I rode on, and I’m not a person that is prone to headaches at all.
Before too long the chemical plants were behind me and I was in Sarnia. It didn’t seem like a bad town really, but from the waterfront parks you could look south and see the horrible chemical plants and the distant power plant smoke stacks to the south. At one such park I stopped to fill my water bottles. There was a sculpture of abstract human forms that framed the view of the chemical plants to the south. The sculpture was located next to some children’s play equipment and a plaque that said that the park and the sculpture were dedicated to the children of families that had been destroyed when parents had been killed in the chemical plants. I wondered how many people had actually died there, but the sign offered no indication. I would read in a Toronto newspaper a few days later about an explosion in a similar chemical plant in another part of Ontario.
I got a bit turned around on my way out of Sarnia, going down a couple of dead end roads and having to back track a bit, before finding a road that would lead me out of town. On the way out I stopped under the blue water bridge, which carries traffic from the US to Canada. I would have crossed into Canada there, but they don’t allow bicycles to ride over it anymore. The bridge stands right at the point where the St. Clair river opens into Lake Huron (well technically it’s the point where Lake Huron flows into the St. Clair river, but one doesn’t often think about lakes flowing into rivers, usually it’s the other way around). The view out onto the open water in the late afternoon was breathtaking. Now the stated purpose of my trip was to begin, to ride the outer portion of the Lake Huron and Lake Michigan circle tours. I’d biked the inner portions on my tour in 2004. Someday I’d like to bike the coasts of all of the great lakes, as well as a lot of other places.
I continued to ride north for a couple more hours along the shoreline road, which was rarely close enough to the lake to offer a view of the shoreline, before finally stopping to camp at a public campground near Forest, Ontario just as dusk was about to set in. I had failed to reach any of my intended destinations for the evening by a considerable distance, but I’d put in a lot of miles and I was relatively satisfied by my progress. As usual the shower was the highlight of my camping experience. There is nothing like a good shower after a long day of biking, although a jump into a cold lake isn’t too bad either, but the campground was situated a bit too far inland to make that practical.
On my way back from the shower a group of middle aged and older people invited me to sit with them by their campfire. They provided me with beer and we sat and chatted for an hour or more. There were three couples, and all of the men were or had been employed in the petrochemical industry in some capacity or another. The conversation turned to the blackout of 2003 at one point, and I noticed that these people referred to electricity as “hydro”, and to power lines as “hydro lines”, even though the electricity in the area was not generated by hydroelectric plants. I would find that people all over the region use similar slang, and that it is so pervasive that official documents for some of the provincial park campgrounds refer to camp sites that have electrical outlets as being “hydro” sites. One of the women mentioned to me that her son was employed as a bike messenger in Toronto. It looked like the group would be sitting out by the fire for a good long while, but I had to head back to my tent early to turn in for the night. I looked up at the stars as I walked back and marveled at how many were visible so close to some relatively big cities. Sleep did not come easy that night. A bunch of drunken college kids were camped next to me and they chatted at an elevated volume deep into the night. Some other nearby campers finally told the kids to shut up, which they gradually did and eventually I did finally sleep.
Sunday, August 13
Despite the poor sleep that I had had the previous night I was up and riding before seven thirty. The morning was quite cool and damp, but the sun would beat down all day from the cloudless sky and it would grow quite warm as the hours wore on. My day’s riding took me through a largely flat agrarian landscape. I was usually about a quarter mile to a mile from the water’s edge, and the lake was often just barely visible from the road. The farms ran right down to the lake in most places in that area, which was a rather unusual situation for most parts of the great lakes in my experience up to that point. In many places in Michigan the lakefront real estate is far too valuable to be occupied by farmland. There the land is usually divided into small plots for the cottages and summer homes of the rich.
I got my first flat tire of the tour as I was cruising down the road. When I pulled the tube off for inspection I discovered that it was the patch that I had placed on the tube two days prior that had failed, rather than a new puncture. I slapped a new patch on over the hole, put the tube back on the wheel and kept going.
It was a very easy day of riding, with the flat terrain and a very light tail wind. I was cruising along comfortably in the mid to late afternoon, when I came across Macgregor Point Provincial Park. I had intended to ride for at least a few more hours that day, especially with the wind at my back. But the idea of camping at a park right on the coast and getting a chance to relax and take in the sunset was appealing to me. At 115 miles the day’s ride wasn’t exactly a short one, but I would come to regret not putting a few more miles in, as a good tail wind can be hard to come by, and should always be taken advantage of on an extended tour.
After setting up camp, showering and gorging myself with granola I walked down to the beach with a National Geographic magazine and my ipod to await the sunset. It was still before seven, so I’d have a couple of hours to wait. I sat on a rather uncomfortable wooden bench on a beach at sunset point. The bench was my only option, as it was a very rocky beach that would have been even less comfortable to sit upon. After finishing a few articles in the magazine the sun was dropping low on the horizon. I left a while before the sun was actually going to set. The sky was afire with reds and yellows, but the clouds that were brilliantly lit by the sun’s dying light were also threatening to obscure it’s final passage beyond the lake’s horizon. I didn’t feel like sitting on that uncomfortable bench to await a partially obscured sunset.
Before heading off to sleep I poured over my Ontario road map to plan out my next ride. I would have some choices to make. I was going to arrive at the Bruce Peninsula the next day, which forms the outer edge of the Georgian Bay. I had heard that the peninsula was one of the nicest, most scenic places in the bay area. There was also a ferry that went from the tip of the peninsula to Manitoulin Island on the northern end of Georgian Bay. I had considered taking the ferry, which would cut off at least a day of riding around the outside of the bay. But I felt like I was making pretty good time as it was, and I wanted to ride all the way around the outside of the bay anyway, if only to complete the circle tour. Having written off the ferry I still had to decide if I wanted to ride around the peninsula or just cut it off completely. It looked like a ride to the tip and back would be around seventy miles, which would occupy at least a half day of riding, though there were options that would allow me to ride through part of the peninsula without going all of the way to the tip. As I put the map away I concluded that it would be best to skip the peninsula altogether, as I was still uncertain about how I was going to travel around the eastern side of Georgian Bay without getting on freeways. In the absence of noisy neighbors sleep came far more readily to me that night.
Monday, August 14
I was up and riding a bit after sunrise again. The terrain was still quite flat for a good bit of the morning, though it did start to get hilly as the day went on. I had heard about some rather large hills in the area, so I was getting ready for a couple of big climbs in the early part of the day. I got another flat tire in mid-morning. Again the patch had failed. I slapped another patch on the same spot, and again the tube seemed to hold the air just fine.
As I neared Owen Sound, one of the largest towns that I had come to since passing through Sarnia, I dropped down a rather large and steep hill, which ended right at the edge of the downtown district. I was flying along in the mid-thirty mph range as I approached the first traffic light and had to get on the brakes quickly.
I stopped at a CAA office to ask about directions for cycling around Georgian Bay and to see if they had a more detailed map that would indicate if there were alternate roads that ran near the highway around the edge of the bay. I got a fairly detailed map, which showed absolutely no secondary roads that paralleled the course of the highway for many miles. It looked like I was going to have to detour a few dozen miles inland of the route that I had intended to take around the bay. The roads I would have to take looked to curve and wind about quite a bit as they ran through the hills and lakes of the back country. I was worried that I would lose a whole day of riding trying to navigate my way back to the coastal route that would take me around Georgian Bay. This meant that instead of turning to the north and following the coast line at the end of the day I would have to ride further east and south to set myself up for the overland trek of the next day.
As I headed out of town I came upon another huge hill at the opposite end of town. This time I would have to climb. For a while the terrain continued to be hilly. There were a few more big climbs, and another huge descent, where I almost topped forty miles per hour for the first time since riding the Pacific Coast, three years before. But things flattened out after a while, as the road hugged the coastline a bit more closely. I passed in the shadow of some pretty sizeable ski hills that ran almost right down to the water, but the road skirted around the edge of those.
I got another flat tire and finally decided to do away with the tube altogether. It was clear that the patches weren’t going to hold with so much weight, and such a large cut in the tire.
Towards the end of the afternoon I came across a bike shop in a small beach resort town. I stopped in and purchased a bunch of energy bars, some new tubes and a new tire. I was concerned about my cheap rear tire and how it would hold up to the rigors of touring. It was kind of fun to live on the edge and see how far I could push the components of the bike, but the tire wasn’t looking very good, and I’d been stranded in the past by tire failures. I just folded the new tire up and packed it with my gear. I was going to try to finish the tour on the old tire, but I liked having the security of the spare.
I was heading for Orillia, which was situated near a couple of provincial parks, and it was a good place to start heading north for my detour. I had the choice of riding on the numbered secondary highways which took a slightly circuitous route, but tend to be good for biking because they often have good shoulders and more even grading, or I could cut off a few miles by taking some smaller back roads that were slightly more direct routes to Orillia. In situations like these I often repeat a line from Tolkien’s “The Fellowship of the Rings” like a mantra. Short cuts make for long delays, short cuts make for long delays… Funny, I rarely take my own advice.
As I turned onto the back roads rain started to fall. It was nothing serious, just enough to soak me as I rode along. I came to one of the last back roads that I would take before returning to the numbered highways, Horseshoe Valley road. There was a relatively long climb up to the intersection before I turned onto the road. As I made the turn, thinking I had reached the end of the climb, I looked ahead and saw that it had only just begun. The road just went up and up, and it looked to get a bit steeper near the top. I dropped down into my lowest gearing and just spun the pedals as I inched my way up at around five mph. After ten or fifteen minutes I neared the summit. It hadn’t been a particularly horrible climb, but I was already well past the century mark for the day’s ride, and it was still raining. At the summit there was one of those road signs that I’m so fond of. I love those little yellow signs with a picture of the silhouette of a truck driving down a steep triangle. It has long been my theory that a person can verifiably calculate the amount of joy that a touring cyclist is experiencing at the top of a mountain summit by multiplying the percentage number that is listed for the gradient by the number of miles of the gradient. In this case there was no mileage listed, as the climb hadn’t been more than a half mile, but the sign indicated that the gradient was 8%. Unfortunately there wouldn’t be much joy for me. At the end of the down slope there was another big climb that would begin immediately. I stopped at the summit of the first hill briefly and wolfed down an energy bar before beginning the quick descent. On the way down I got moving pretty quickly, and it was a harrowing ride in the rain, but it was just a straight drop, with no turns or switchbacks. The next climb was shorter than the first, but it got really steep really fast, and the angle of the ascent never changed, it was just a straight line right up the hill. I could feel sweat pouring down my face, mingling with the light rain that was falling as I crested the summit. This time the sign indicated a 10% gradient.
It was pretty up and down for another five or six miles, although there weren‘t any hills that were quite as steep or long as the first two climbs. The rest of the ride was just enough to keep my quads burning until I reached the numbered highway again. Then it was just a quick shot into Orillia, where I stopped to get a sub and briefly got lost on my way out of town towards the provincial park campground that I would be staying at for the night. As I was regaining my bearings and trying to figure out how to get out of town I noticed that my speedometer had stopped registering speed and distance at the 127 mile mark of my day‘s ride. I played with it for a few minutes but couldn’t get it to work again. I headed for a major road that took me south and east, over a causeway that crossed the large lake at the edge of town.
As I arrived at the campground the sun was starting to come out again. I played with my speedometer for a few minutes before setting up camp and showering and was able to get it to work by totally resetting the memory. The cumulative mileage for the trip had reached 381.9 miles before the thing crapped out on me. I figured I rode at least three miles, maybe more, after the distance had stopped registering.
Tuesday, August 15
I headed due north on secondary highways, past an Indian Casino (or “First Nation” as they call the tribes in Canada) until my progress was blocked by a freeway. I backtracked slightly and continued on some real back country roads. The route twisted and turned over some really beautiful, and often heavily forested terrain. There were a lot of short steep climbs. Quite frequently it was apparent that the terrain was molded over the shapes of boulders and exposed seams of bed rock. A light morning shower passed over me and doused me slightly in the lovely sunny morning. After a few hours a pretty major headwind started to blow. It became difficult to progress at any kind of a decent speed on the ungraded back roads as I fought the wind, but I struggled on. I noted that the road often took the worst possible route over the hills, so as to make the climbs as steep as possible.
As I advanced I heard exactly the sound that I didn’t want to hear. It was the ping of a broken spoke. There was nothing I could do about that though. I never carried the proper equipment to replace broken spokes. I was just going to have to continue on and hope to find a bike shop somewhere along the way. The next big town was Sudburry, which was still a couple of hundred miles distant.
By and by I reached the town of Gravenhurst, which was decently sized. I thought there was a good bet that there might be a bike shop, so I rode around the town, looking around. I finally arrived at a Canadian Tire store which, despite the name, are ubiquitous hardware stores that can be found throughout Canada, much like Sears in the US. The store didn’t have the tools that I needed to fix the wheel, nor did they perform bike repairs, alas. But an employee did inform me that there were a couple of bike shops in the nearby town of Bracebridge. In the store’s parking lot I pulled a map from my bike to try to figure out how to get to Bracebridge, when a nice older man came up to find out what I was doing. He turned out to be a bit of a cyclist himself, and he gave me good directions to get to the bike shop that he frequented in Bracebridge, the big purple one at the edge of town. I took the route that he suggested, which took me along some beautiful and quiet scenery, past the Taboo golf course, which was prominently advertised as the home course of the pro golfer, Mike Weir, for whatever that’s worth. His directions were quite clear and easy to follow and I easily arrived at the Ecclestone bike shop. http://www.ecclestonecycle.com I rolled right into the repair shop and Ian was quickly working on the broken spoke. After fixing that he noticed that the cassette housing was messed up, so he swapped that out. He confirmed that my rims were indeed in pretty sorry shape, but I had no intention of waiting around to get new wheels built. I mentioned that I would like to acquire the tools that would allow me to pull the cassette off myself, so that I could switch out spokes when they break in the future, as spokes are sure to break sooner or later. He didn’t have everything that I would need on the shelf, so he went into his own tool kit to get the tools for me that I would need! That had to be about the coolest thing that a bike mechanic has ever done for me. Ian was really cool. After I paid for the repairs,and the labor, which seemed to be discounted to me, Ian loaded me down with free water bottles and stickers and stuff. That had to be about the best bike shop experience of my life. I would definitely recommend anyone that finds themselves touring in Ontario to check that shop out.
Ian had shown me a good route that would take me to my intended destination, Perry Sound, where I hoped to rejoin highway 69 which runs along the Georgian Bay coast. North of Perry Sound the road shrank from a four lane expressway to a two lane highway, where bikes are allowed to ride. The roads that he sent me on were quite scenic, and they would have been a blast to ride on under normal circumstances. But the ride was a bit difficult as loaded down with gear as I was. The road continued to cut through and over the bed rock and boulders as the road I had been on in the morning had, but now the hills were getting much taller. If anything, the rocky terrain was growing more prominent. My feet were killing me after all of the climbing of the last two days. I have some pretty crappy low end MTB shoes that I’ve been using for the last couple of years, which are a slight improvement over the shoes that I wore for my cross country trip in 2003, which were a half size too small for me. The screws that I had used to install the cleat in my left shoe were too long so they ended up sticking slightly into the bottom of my foot. For shorter rides up to a century in length the screws don’t tend to bother me much. But they were starting to become excruciating on this ride. I finally stopped at the top of a hill and applied a couple of strips of mole skin to the inside of my shoe to try to keep the screws from digging into my foot. My foot still hurt quite a bit when I put my shoe back on, but I could no longer feel the screw. I would later realize that the mole skin was actually causing more harm than good, causing the pressure point on my foot to be even more significant, but that realization wouldn’t come for several days.
I hit Perry Sound at right around the century mark for the day‘s ride, with my legs burning from the difficult riding of the day. It was getting on towards dinner time, and I thought I might stop for a bite to eat in town. I tried to stop at a chips shop in town, but they were just closing down for the night. These little chip shops are everywhere in the more populated areas of Ontario. I imagine they are modeled after the English fish and chips stands, though the Canadian versions always advertise fresh cut fries, and they serve poutine, which I doubt the English have ever heard of. I don’t know why fresh cut fries would be superior to their less fresh brethren, but it must make a difference to Canadians. The shops remind me of the little stand alone espresso shops that are all over the place in the Pacific Northwest.
I ended up settling for some fries and a milkshake at a dairy queen at the far end of town, where the service was slow due to a large crush of customers. I couldn’t believe how many people were going there for dinner.
I was back on the road for a couple of more hours after dinner. The terrain was spectacular and barren as I rode on the highway north from Perry Sound. The folds of the bedrock had become the dominant feature of the terrain. There was really very little soil at all, between the big ridges of rock. There was just enough in places for the coniferous trees to cling to flat areas and crevices in the rock. In between the rock ridges were expansive cattail swamps and streams. There were hardly any cross roads between the isolated communities that were separated by dozens of miles in many cases. Aside from widely scattered motels and gas stations I passed very few signs of human habitation for quite a while.
Dusk was setting in heavily when I entered Pt. Au Beril, where I knew there was a provincial park. I took a wrong turn when I got into town and ended up riding three miles down a residential street that dead ended after winding along a rocky bay. As I rode along I passed below a decent sized eight point buck that stood on a commanding perch above the road. I wondered if it was a real deer, as I’m not sure when exactly in the year buck deer get their antlers, but it sure did seem lifelike if it was a fake. Near the end of the road a local resident informed me that I was going the wrong way, so I headed back to the highway.
I finally reached the Sturgeon Bay Provincial Park as the last fleeting light was fading from the sky. There were no attendants present at the entrance to the campground, so it looked like I was going to be able to camp for free. I quickly pitched my tent and ate a hasty meal before setting out in the dark in search of shower facilities. I was getting eaten alive by mosquitoes. That was one of the most mosquito infested campgrounds I’ve ever seen. I walked the entire campground, finding only outhouses. Discouraged, I was about to head to bed without a shower, but I stopped by the campground office and found a map that indicated the presence of showers on the opposite side of the road from the campground. Even inside the shower there were tons of mosquitoes. I washed hastily and didn’t bother to even clean my riding clothes. It was an hour after dark by the time I laid down in my sleeping bag, and I was asleep rather quickly, despite some noisy neighbors.
Wednesday, August 16
I was still a bit sore from the previous day’s ride when I awoke and I didn’t exactly feel refreshed. The mosquitoes returned right on cue to torment me as I broke camp in the morning. I was back on the road a little after seven, at my usual time.
Again the scenery was spectacular. The exposed bedrock stretched on for miles and miles. I never had a glimpse of Georgian Bay as I rode along, but there were numerous smaller lakes and streams along the way.
I stopped for breakfast in a town that was so small that it barely existed after putting in around forty miles of riding. The waitress left me sitting around waiting to pay my bill long after I had finished my food. I had picked up a newspaper to read, but I was ready to go. Despite the shoddy service I gave her a decent tip before heading back on the road.
I passed south of Sudbury and onto the highway that would take me west, along the northern shore of Georgian Bay and the rest of Lake Huron. All that I really saw of Sudbury were the smokestacks of coal power plants in the city as I rode by. Before I was out of view of the city I got a flat tire. As I patched the tube a local that was out for a bike ride, traveling in the opposite direction stopped to see if I was okay. After confirming that I had all of the requisite equipment to patch the tube she explained to me that I would have to get off the highway for a fifteen mile stretch a small distance ahead. I thanked her for the info as she took off to continue on her ride. A couple of other cyclists stopped briefly to see if I was okay before heading on.
With the tire fixed I continued down the road. I detoured off the highway successfully and got back on without any problems. After a bit of late afternoon struggle my ride concluded at Chutes Provincial Park. The campground was situated above a quaint little waterfall that could just barely be heard from my campsite when the roar of the trucks on the nearby highway wasn’t audible, which was rare indeed.
Thursday, August 17
I was up and ready for my last day in Canada (I hoped). The winds were really light but they were mostly behind me as I set out in the morning. Before noon I came across a couple of touring cyclists, the first that I had seen since leaving home on this tour. They had thick French Canadian accents and their names were Jean-gee (that’s how he pronounced it, and the gee was with a hard “g”, as in ghee, but I didn’t ask what the spelling was) and Natalie. The French pronunciation of Natalie is so beautiful I just wanted to kiss her right there. And we were talking about bike equipment on the side of the road and Jean-gee mentioned something about his panniers and I just about wanted to kiss him. That was the first time I have ever heard someone pronounce that word properly. When I was touring through the US in 2003 I had tried to convince several of my American touring brethren that it is a French word, thus it should be pronounced as the French would pronounce it, with a silent “r”. While many acknowledged that the word was indeed French in origin, they continued to use the bastardized English pronunciation: “pan-ears”.
Jean-gee and Natalie were traveling from Whitehorse, near the Alaskan border in the Yukon territory to their home in Montreal. I didn’t mention that I had spent a night in Whitehorse once, twelve years before. But I had been traveling by car on that particular vacation. They were heading south, through Manitoulin Island and taking the ferry across Georgian Bay. I wished them good luck and we parted ways.
An hour later I came across a solo touring cyclist. Her name was Carol, or something like that. I know her name started with a C at least. She had a pretty thick Maine accent. She had been traveling with three friends from Fairbanks, Alaska who had just left her the day before to head south through Michigan on their way home. She was continuing on the northern tier route because it would take her more directly to her home in Maine. She seemed pretty disappointed to be by herself on the open road, but I tried to offer my philosophy on why it’s so great to tour alone. I’m not sure if she bought it, but I’m quite convinced that she was going to do just fine by herself. She had that air about her of a tough minded independent woman that could get anything done that she set her mind to, rather like my aunt Joyce.
Later that day there was another solo touring cyclist, who was heading to the east like all the rest had been. I was surprised to see so many in one day. His name was Reece. He had been traveling by himself from Vancouver and was only a couple of days away from his final destination, which was a town that was out east of Sudbury. Reece sounded like he was doing pretty well out there by himself, but I was the first touring cyclist he’d come across in all of the time that he’d been on the road. I assured him it was because he was on the trans-Canada highway. If he’d dropped a bit south and gone through the northern US he would have come across plenty of other cyclists. But I’d come across four in one day, so they can’t be all that rare in Canada.
As I rode on the wind shifted around. It wasn’t behind me, but it wasn’t hindering my progress much either. I was getting closer and closer to the United States. The ride was going pretty well, other than the usual complaints about soreness in my feet, hands and ass, but that almost goes without saying. When I determined that I was about an hour away from the American border I pulled out my ipod. Beethoven’s ninth was the order of the day. I timed the beginning so that it would end around the time that I entered into the US again. I had first heard the symphony in it’s entirety when I was biking west in 2003, crossing the border from Minnesota to North Dakota. The music had made the ride seem so monumental, it had been a truly special day and it marked the moment of my conversion to being a real classical music fan from being a curious dabbler. Of course much of North Dakota was just as flat and boring as Minnesota, and the head winds were just as brutal. But it was a milestone at least, that proved that I was indeed making progress despite the unrelenting westerly winds that fought me every day in the plains.