**DISPATCH #5 from Toronto: Days 36 through 66**
(March 1, 1998)
The ride ended only 5 months ago, but already it seems
like an experience from another lifetime. Yet random memories from the
trip continue to flash into my consciousness without notice. The familiar
sight of a yellow Ryder rental truck -- our summer mothership -- will always
remind me of it. (I even find myself inspecting them for traces of the
makeshift cardboard TDC sign that briefly adorned the rear roll-up door
of "our" Ryder.) I haven’t ridden very much since returning, just a few
one-hour winter outings. None of the hills around here intimidate me the
way they used to . . . I don’t think they ever will.
My current day-to-day existence bears little resemblance
to my life prior to the trip. Both my working and living situations have
dramatically changed. As a contract consultant (to the graphics industry),
I’m living without a regular paycheque for the first time in 17 years.
Jennifer and I are busy making a new home together in our first house.
We threw a TDC97 party here last night. It brought together most of the
Toronto-area people from the trip. We were so busy enjoying each other’s
company that we never got around to showing the video that Henry created.
We were all happy to hear that Tim and Celia would be marrying in the spring.
Their wedding will be the occasion for another get-together. Mandy and
Rick are still going strong -- they’re now living together just outside
of Toronto. And I learned last night that yet another TDC-inspired romance
has blossomed in the aftermath of the trip.
I intend to ride the TDC again, perhaps in 2 or 3 years.
The next time around, the riding will take a back-seat to a fuller appreciation
of all that which lies beyond the road’s shoulder. I encourage anyone who
entertains the dream of riding
the TDC to do whatever it takes to make it happen. You will never regret
it.
The support I derived from the other riders was indispensable to my success in completing the trip. We did it together. Many of us remain in touch with each, one way or another. But we’re pretty scattered and even more caught up in our lives. I would like to thank and congratulate everyone who made it happen:
Back on the road, I came upon Sam examining his upturned bike on the shoulder. His rear wheel was seriously untrue (warped), causing the rim to rub against the brake pads on every revolution. We determined that a broken spoke was the culprit, so we removed it, tightened the adjoining spokes and loosened the rear brakes. Given the state of his bike, I decided to accompany Sam for the remainder of the day. We hadn’t been riding for more than a half hour when I heard the discouraging sound of air escaping my rear tire: pfffffssssssssss . . . my first flat of the trip. We replaced the punctured tube with a spare and pushed on with only minimal breaks in order to make up for lost time. The two of us were late into camp that night, arriving halfway through dinner.
Afterwards, I was amused to overhear Bob proudly exclaiming to Cecil: "I wasn’t the last one into camp today!" As our eldest rider (73), Bob had unbounded fortitude (and relentless optimism). His days started earlier, lasted longer, and had the fewest sightseeing stops of any of us. On an earlier occasion he described himself to me as "like a tortoise, slow but steady". He deserves an award.
There wasn’t much time between dinner and nightfall. Matthew
took on the task of repairing Sam’s wrangy wheel. I removed my bad tire
and put on a new one purchased from Jeff’s inventory in the back of the
truck. Celia and Tim were busily stuffing newspapers into their shoes.
We spent a chilly, damp night camped on the sandy beach of Pancake Bay.
DAY 39
Turning south onto Highway 6, we passed by the billowing smoke-stacks of a pulp mill at the northern perimeter of Espanola. I decided to stop at a motel restaurant for a quick fuel injection (ham, eggs, toast, pancakes drenched in syrup and whipped creamery butter, OJ and tea). When I resumed riding, the sun had burnt off the cloud cover, vividly illuminating the rugged countryside on the road to Manitoulan. Cycling up and down this winding, hilly stretch of highway invigorated me thoroughly. There was plenty of new blacktop in evidence, but it didn't include a paved shoulder, so I was forced onto the rough gravel several times by intermittent waves of cars and motorcycles.
I arrived at the narrow wooden swing bridge leading onto Manitoulin Island just as it was completing its hourly 180 degree rotation to allow boats through the channel. Like many of Manitoulin's structures, it hadn't been refurbished for some time. It's worn planks allow only 1 lane of traffic through, one direction at a time (hence the above-mentioned waves). Once on the other side, I met up with other TDC riders and broke for lunch at a picnic table outside Farquar's famous ice cream shop.
It was good to arrive early at camp for a change, but
our numbers were beginning to dwindle with the approach to the Bruce Peninsula
and southern Ontario. Several riders have made alternate arrangements over
the next few days to visit relatives along the way. Others have planned
a detour from the scheduled tour in order to hit Toronto.
DAY 41
DAY 42
DAY 43
DAY 44
DAY 45
DAY 46
DAY 47
DAY 48
Tuesday 12 August. Rest Day in Ottawa
DAY 49
DAY 50
DAY 51
DAY 52
The rural towns of Quebec possess more character than similarly-sized places in Ontario. Bright, colour-coordinated homes and wooden farm structures are dominated by a big old church (set on a hill if available). The churches were clearly built in the same period and always incorporate imposing spires and bell towers. Many of the towns are bicycle-friendly, with appropriately marked lanes.
We were in sight of the river and the opposite shore throughout
our ride, with a good view of sprawling, industrial Trois-Riviere early
in the morning. Near the end of our day, we crossed the mighty St. Lawrence
on the sturdy heavy metal of the 80-year-old Pont de Quebec. What a contrast
with the spare elegance of the more recent Pierre Laporte suspension bridge,
just 500 m away! In crossing the river, we were rapidly shifting gears
from sleepy countryside to booming big city. We ended our ride and began
our rest day at the dorms of Laval University in the Quebec City suburb
of Ste. Foy.
DAY 53
Sunday 17 August. Rest Day in Quebec City
DAY 54
DAY 55
DAY 56
DAY 57
DAY 58
Saturday 23 August. Rest day in Saint-Louis-de-Kent
DISJOINTED POINT FORM NOTES: Some went lobster fishing
at 5:00 a.m. in the morning with Mark Hebert's father. Sam's last question
re: Dramamine. Me: laundry, nap, poutine rappee. Dinner in town with fast-Mark,
Rob, Henry. 3 bottles of wine. Motorcycles revving their engines on a Saturday
night. Valmont, the operator of the campground driving us into town. His
small world: Bangor, Maine, Quebec, PEI, Nova Scotia. Born on a farm: work,
work, work 7 days a week. High unemployment. Discussed lots of bicycle
stuff, people's pedalling styles, etc. Acadian dessert with cranberries,
apples, pastry and syrup.
DAY 60
DAY 61
Friday 29 August. Ferry from North Sydney to Argentia, Newfoundland
I awoke around 5:00, my breathing passages strained from the hot dry air inside the terminal. I was not among those who had wisely decided to spend the night in the cool fresh ocean breeze on the roof outside. Scores of transport trucks, queued up since last night, were gunning their engines for the 6:00 a.m. boarding. Foot passengers like ourselves were shuttled onto one of the lower decks of the massive boat in cramped little vans.
The "Joseph and Clara Smallwood" provided a host of diversions to entertain its passengers during the 14-hour crossing: videos & big-screen movies, live music, game & gambling arcades, shopping, fine dining, a bar and a large cafeteria. But all of this was not enough to relieve the pervasive boredom. The lounges warehoused the bleary-eyed human cargo -- slumped over in their seats, vacantly staring at the video monitors or quietly reading in the high-backed airline-style seats. We made our base in one such area on the 7th deck. With the rumbling vibration of the ship’s engines always in the background, I passed the day sleeping, eating, wandering, writing postcards and working on Rob’s laptop computer.
It was almost 10:00 p.m. (Newfoundland time) when we debarked in Argentia, on the west side of the Avalon Peninsula. We quickly made our way to the truck to retrieve our bikes. Then, with the truck in the lead, we rode as a group through the pitch darkness to the gatehouse of an abandoned US naval base a couple of kilometres away. There had been some kind of communication breakdown -- the guard was not expecting us. A phone call was made, and we were soon informed that our contact was on his way. We were to sleep inside a school building previously used to educate the children of American sailors.
It was a frustrating wait in the dark and cold. After
a long day on the boat, and with the forecast calling for a major storm
with heavy easterly winds tomorrow, most of us were anxious to make our
bed and call it a day. The frustration level remained high even after our
contact finally arrived to open up the school. It turned out that the place
had no potable water, seriously limiting our hygiene and breakfast options.
But we made the best of it, scattering our sleeping pads throughout the
classrooms, gyms and offices of the "ghost" school. It was nearly midnight
before I dropped off.
According to Environment Canada, the winds reached speeds of 67 km/hr today. I didn’t know this statistic at the time of course, but I knew that I had never experienced headwinds even half as strong as these, and never so laden with rain. I reasoned that if after 2 months of outdoor cycling I wasn’t ready for these conditions, I never would be. For nearly a hour, "fast" Mark, Greg and myself fought our way through 12 brutal kilometres to the first restaurant we saw. (The colloquial use of the term "brutal" is a distinct Canadianism, unknown to either the American or New Zealander among us.) We peeled off our outer layers and took stock of the situation. I ordered the heartiest breakfast on the menu (steak, eggs, toast, pancakes, etc.) and tried to psyche myself up for 120+ more grueling kilometres.
A little while later, Sam joined us, and then Thomas, Nicola and Rob. I had never seen Thomas so vocal. He was one of the strongest cyclists among us, but he argued persuasively that riding in these conditions was pure craziness. He had contacted a local courier who offered to take a small group of us along with our bikes to St. John’s for $100. Thomas said that it boiled down to a question of common sense vs. pride. I could see his point. Sam and Nicola were considering it, and I was wavering, but I had never been so motivated. After all, it was the last day, and I had managed to cycle every inch of the way from Vancouver to this point.
I opened the front door and looked outside. Shrubs were waving wildly in the wind, pine trees were bent over diagonally, rain was pouring down in sheets, nearly on the horizontal. But it wasn’t cold, traffic was light and the shoulders were good. I wasn’t ready to throw in the towel just yet. As I mounted my bicycle outside the restaurant, the proprietor warned that the winds would become stronger upon reaching the top of the long hill just ahead. And indeed they did. Every pedal stroke was hard work; the hills were the least of it. I remember looking at my speedometer while pedaling hard down a hill: 11 km/hr. Of course, downhills were the exception and big chunks of the day were spent at speeds as low as 7 km/hr.
At 40 km out, I developed a cramp in my right foot. No sooner had I stopped on the side of the highway to work it out than a helpful guy in a pickup truck offered me and my bike a lift. I declined, and in explaining my story to him, I reinforced my own determination to persevere. At 45 km, I hit the junction to Hwy. #1, the Trans-Canada. There I met up with Rick, Mandy, Braden and Nicola in a gas station restaurant. What a soggy, dazed bunch we were! They stopped for lunch, but with my belly still full of breakfast, I headed out into the blizzard after wolfing down a peanut butter sandwich. As soon as I stepped outside, I began shivering. The only way to stay warm was to hop on my bike and keep going. I pressed on, wind-whipped and wet. My face hurt from the sting of a thousand raindrop pricks. I was in the soup, as they say, and eventually I began to adapt to the harshness of my hostile environment. Apart from the hard work and physical discomfort, it felt good to be conquering such extreme elements. At around the 70 km point, the rain began to fade, and for a while, the wind did so as well.
The rest of the day’s ride was no picnic – there were lots of hills and the headwinds returned with a vengeance, but the rain never regained the force of its earlier assault. I took a break in the town of Hollyrood, wringing out my socks in a convenience store washroom. At one point I felt like a character caught in a Hitchcock movie: everywhere around me were ordinary people carrying on with the details of their lives, oblivious to the drama of my situation.
As instructed on our map, we stopped at a Tim Horton’s restaurant on the outskirts of St. John’s. The initial plan was to congregate there and then head down to the waterfront as a group to dip our front wheels into the waters of the Atlantic Ocean. Following that, we were to ride victoriously up to the lighthouse at the top of Signal Hill, Canada’s most easterly point. But there was to be no triumphant "Ride of the Valkyries" climax to the Tour du Canada this year. Drenched, exhausted and way behind schedule, everyone wanted to get to the hotel as soon as possible. So we skipped the dip, and made our way up the steep slopes of Signal Hill in small groups, taking pictures of each other on the foggy summit. In the end, 17 of us had completed the day’s full distance on our own power.
Signal Hill is an historic spot, and I’m not just referring to our modest achievement of crossing the country on bicycles. The inventor Marconi conducted the first trans-Atlantic radio broadcast from this point in the early 1900s. The Battery Hotel lay near the base of the Hill. When I arrived there at 7:00, people had already begun dismantling and boxing their bikes for air travel. Mine would make the trip back to Toronto inside the truck, so I was spared this chore. I cleared out my belongings from the back of the truck, carrying them to my assigned room. I then jumped under a hot shower – I had been looking forward to it all day.
It was an uncharacteristically subdued group that gathered
in the nondescript banquet cavern in the basement of the hotel shortly
after 9:00 p.m. We seated ourselves around 3 circular tables for the occasion
of our last meal all together. We congratulated each other, wished each
other well, took lots of pictures, and raised our champagne glasses in
heartfelt toasts. Matthew was presented with an engraved rosewood canoe
paddle, a token of our thanks for his selfless assistance in troubleshooting
and fixing our mechanical problems throughout the trip. Thomas presented
a surrealistic drawing of a cyclist (incorporating some component of each
rider) to the retirees among us. Jeff, our driver, was honoured by all
for his unique combination of professionalism and laid-back style. We all
recognized that his low-key approach to the challenges of the trip helped
make for the best of all possible journeys. There was plenty of laughter
as people stood up to recall their favourite "Jeff moment". We were loosening
up a bit, and soon it was time for the final group photograph. David generously
distributed Jeff’s cigarettes for us to pose with, perfectly capturing
the spirit of the moment. I finished the Tour du Canada feeling tired,
moved and very satisfied.