Kingston... tomorrow?!

It seems kind of surreal, but we're going to be home tomorrow! I realize there's a bit of a narrative gap between Nipigon and the buggy, hilly (but scenic) north shores of Lake Superior, and our current location of Trenton (a mere 96km from home!). I blame the Blackberry. Despite its awesomeness, it unilaterally decided to stop working with the mobile posting system I'd set up, so we had no way of keeping this thing up to date for the last little while. I'll keep the recap brief.

From Nipigon, we chugged along through the rugged terrain north of Lake Superior for about 5 more days before we escaped the monster hills, stopping in White River (original home of Winnie the Pooh, the actual bear), Wawa (home of some really big goose statues), Montreal River (home of 24 people), and Sault St. Marie (home of... nothing particularly interesting, as far as we saw).

To make sure we kept our geek quota for the trip, we stopped at a Walmart on our way into Sault St. Marie and each bought a copy of the new Harry Potter. We both read it in two days, pausing (reluctantly) only to sleep, eat, and bike. It is goooood.

After Sault St. Marie, we met some great people on the road, including a recent retiree who had biked there from Portland, Oregon. He offered to pull for a while (for the non-cyclists out there, pulling is just slang for biking first in a line of cyclists so the others can draft behind you) since he had a support car, and thus no heavy baggage, and he was a very entertaining conversationalist, so we agreed. He then proceeded to absolutely embarass us. Seriously, this guy was in his late 50's/early 60's, and keeping up with him for 20 minutes was enough to completely destroy our legs for the rest of the day. Lesson learned: we are still not real cyclists.

Later on that day, we met a very nice woman at a gas station whose daughter apparently does trips like ours all the time. By "like ours", I'm inferring she meant "crazy". In any case, she said she appreciates how tough it can be to have adventures like this on a student budget (true), and then offered to pay for our camp site for the night! We politely declined, but she was very insistent, and really, who were we to resist such generosty? So wherever you are, thanks anonymous woman from the gas station east of Sault St. Marie!

After that, we pedaled our way on down through Manitoulin Island, onto the Bruce Peninsula, and then down towards Markdale, where the trip got about 100 times more fun. Andrew's dad VERY generously offered to take a few days and be our support car for our trip through southern Ontario. That means two major things: first, we are no longer hauling around 50 pounds worth of travel gear, and biking an unloaded bike is waaaaay more fun than one buried under panniers. It's like the difference between riding a graceful, elegant racehorse or a surly, overweight rhinocerous. Secondly, we have cold drinks and snacks (bananas!) waiting for us every 40km or so. Ever since our support car arrived, we've added about 50% to our daily average, and we absolutely tore through southern Ontario, doing 480km in 3 consecutive days. Andrew's mom also made the trip up to meet us on the Bruce Peninsula, which was our first contact with people from our lives outside the past 50 days of cycling. It was pretty awesome.

Our friend Jamie McIntyre met up with us in Owen Sound for a few days of cycling, and accompanied us from there to the Whitby Go train station. He's headed back to finish up a masters thesis, which is apparently what a lot of grad students spend their time doing... strange. It was great cycling with Jamie who, despite his claims, is a great cyclist (even after months of being holed up in a lab).

I'll wrap this post up for now, but I'll probably tack up a trip summary tomorrow or the day after, once I've had time to tally up all the interesting stats, and convert them to graphs. Yep, that's right, I spent about 15 minutes of cycling time today figuring out the best way to graphically represent the data we've generated on this trip. There may be a histogram. I have 2 months of pent-up math geekiness to catch up on, gimme a break.

You may have noticed there's another, far less impressive tour finishing up tomorrow as well, but there are a few key differences between the Tour de Canada, and the French alternative. For starters, ours is way longer than the tour those "professional" slackers are doing. Secondly, we carried all our own gear without the benefit of an air conditioned vehicle (last 3 days mercifully excepted). Third, Johnson St. will be our Champs d'Elysees, and really, does it get any more majestic than Johnson St.? I think not. I suppose there are some similarities between the tours though... We both have millions of adoring fans from all over the world, we both lost riders due to doping (sure, Donna will claim she returned to Vancouver to work on her masters, but we all know the real truth: anabolics), and both tours will finish with champagne (why mess with a good thing?).

Alrighty, off to hit the sack... one more day!!!

Nipigon

The last few days have been great riding. Nice cool temperatures, mostly tailwinds, and decent roads got us to Thunder Bay yesterday with enough time to check out the late showing of the new Harry Potter movie (verdict: awesome). We're now camping just outside of Nipigon, on the north side of Lake Superior.

Over the past few days, we've made some fairly major transitions. First off, for the last week or two, all the water we've seen has been headed to the Arctic Ocean, one way or another, but as of yesterday afternoon, we've crossed into the massive Atlantic Watershed, meaning all the streams/rivers/lakes we see now are headed to the Atlantic sooner or later. Not a terribly significant difference from a day-to-day biking perspective, but it feels like we're a little closer to home. Secondly, we're back in Eastern Standard Time! At last, the clock on my bike computer (which I never figured out how to change) is accurate again! Speaking of bike computers, we crossed the 3500km threshold today! Within a week, we'll have biked 1/10th of the way around the planet. I think that is a pretty cool stat.

A few things have been going steadily downhill for the past 2 days. First off, the roads on Highway 17 have been getting progressively worse. As of now, it is just slightly smoother than if we were biking down the centre of the railroad tracks that follow the highway. Also, the bugs. Oh man, the bugs. I figured they'd be worst up north around Kenora/Dryden, and then would sort of taper off towards southern Ontario, but we have hit some kind of black fly Mecca in the last 48 hours. They are crazy. My legs are looking pretty ravaged right now, and I've even sustained a few deer fly bites, which leave a big bloody mess behind that makes me long for the small, well-behaved mosquitoes of southeastern Ontario. Ah well, more motivation to bike faster.

As far as the bikes themselves go, they've been pretty well behaved. No major malfunctions to speak of, and our Home Depot hose clamp/electrical tape repair on Andrew's pannier rack is holding up beautifully.

We've got 600km to go until we hit Sault St. Marie, which is essentially our last major stretch of remoteness. After that, we begin the final, southern Ontario leg of the trip. Yep, I just referred to Sault St. Marie as southern Ontario. It's all a matter of perspective.

Time to go brave the blackflies and put up the tent!

Lousy weather

We're currently taking it easy in Ignace, Ontario. We'd planned on biking to Upsala today, but two factors made us decide to stick around.

First, the weather is not great. In fact, if the weather were a fruit, it would be an inclementine.

Zing!

It's been raining pretty much nonstop since early this morning, and didn't stop all day. That, coupled with some cold, cold wind made for some very unappealing biking weather.

Secondly, I suffered a minor, and I emphasize minor, injury yesterday just before rolling into Ignace. I had clipped into my pedals with some dirt on the bottom of my shoes, which sometimes makes it harder to un-clip when need be. We stopped at the top of a hill on a bit of a slant, and I tried to uncleat. Unfortunately, instead of releasing my right foot, I instead began a very slow rightward drift. I took 5 or 6 seconds to fall, and probably looked pretty funny, and I ended up with a skinned right knee that was feeling a bit stiff this morning. Nothing major, but it can probably use a rest. Moral of the story: keep your shoes clean.

We'll be hitting the road early tomorrow morning, rain or shine. Two days to Thunder Bay!
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Dryden

This is the first real on-the-road post to be made from my Blackberry! I'm feeling pretty clever for getting it all figured out, even though it basically amounted to sending an email. Unfortunately I can't get rid of those "sent from my Blackberry" signature things at the bottom of my messages without some software I don't have access to, so you'll just have to bear with 'em.

Today we (somewhat reluctantly) left our extremely comfortable accomodations near Kenora and got back on the road. Thanks again to the Parrott family for generously opening up their home (and fridge) to two ragged looking cyclists, we had a great time!

Unfortunately, no sooner did we get back on the highway than the skies opened up and completely drenched us with a monster thunderstorm that followed us for two full hours. There was even a brief stretch with a fair amount of hail, which was a rather painful first for the trip. At that point, we could barely feel our hands (the temperature dropped to what felt like single digits), and things were looking pretty bleak, but we suddenly came across a gas station/restaurant in the middle of nowhere and decided that it was time for some shelter and hot drinks. The restaurant was called Willard's, and based on our experience there, I'd guess their motto is "The customer's always... well, kind of a nuisance, really". The owner (Willard?) made us take off our shoes and jackets and leave them at the front door, then proceeded to mop angrily under our table two or three times while complaining that "we brought half the lake in with us". Oh well, at least it was dry.

The weather eventually cleared up, and we made it to Dryden for a total distance of about 128km today. Tomorrow we're heading into some of the more, uh, "remote" areas of northern Ontario. Our map is showing some big 100km stretches without a trace of civilization, which'll make keeping our water bottles full a bit of a challenge. I'll keep you posted!
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

Blogging from the Blackberry

This is me attempting to step my blogging game up a notch and figure out a way to post from my Blackberry. If this works, I'll be able to post without a computer, which means I'd be able to keep this fresh with up-to-the-minute tales of cycling adventure!
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

On to Ontario

First things first, I should apologize for the appalling lack of posts over the last few days... we did not have stellar luck finding internet access in Manitoba. To keep things brief yet comprehensive, here's a bunch of bullet points to bring things back up to speed:

• We set a trip distance and speed record about a week ago crossing from Saskatchewan to Manitoba... 196km in one day, at an average speed of 30.4km/h! Not too shabby!
• We planned our trip through Winnipeg to include time to check out the new Transformers movie. It had giant robot fights between Optimus Prime and Megatron, which was pretty much all I could have asked for.
• Winnipeg gave us an opportunity to practice our newfound expertise at "Hotel Room Economics" (or: "How to justify a $100 hotel room on a student budget"). The trick is staying in a central location so you save money you would have spent on cabs (to go see Transformers), and staying somewhere with free breakfast. If it's a free all you can eat breakfast, we most definitely come out on top. We can eat lots.
• Our only major bike issue over the last few hundred kilometres has been the rear pannier on Andrew's bike, which broke as we were leaving Winnipeg. Luckily, a nearby Home Depot meant that we were able to rig up a solution using two hose clamps, half of the old broken clamp, and half a roll of orange electrical tape. I maintain my suspicion that Andrew's bike is the subject of some sort of Gypsy curse.
• Roads in Manitoba/Ontario are not great. Not only are paved shoulders much more scarce, in some spots the ditch starts about two feet into the right-hand lane.
• We are now near Kenora, staying with the Parrott family at the generous offer of Adam Parrott, a friend of ours from Queen's. So far they've taken extremely good care of us with some delicious meals, beds, and a trip around the huge-and-gorgeous Lake of the Woods in their sailboat. If they keep this up, they might never get rid of us.
• 2000km to go!

Unintended rest days, part 2

It looks like we're once again going to be taking an unplanned rest day or two here in Regina. More accurately, we're camping 1km east of Regina just off highway 1. The reason for our extended stay is that at some point yesterday afternoon, Andrew's bike developed a voracious appetite for tubes, and he went through all four of his spares in a single day. The first (rear wheel) was a rock, the second (front) was a staple, the third was the same staple, which was small enough to miss our rigorous inspection of the tire after the last flat, and the fourth seems to have just been a defective tube (pinhole leak near the valve right out of the box).

Normally, this wouldn't be the end of the world. We'd just saunter over to the nearest bike shop, pick up a few extras and be on our way. Things aren't quite so simple on Canada Day, unfortunately. Every single bike shop in Regina is closed today, and the only places open (Walmart, Canadian Tire, Sport Chek) are all very mountain-bike-centric. There's not a lot of love for the road cyclist at the big chain stores, it would appear.

At first we were pretty irked, but our campsite for the night is looking pretty swank right now. It's got a slushee machine, a pool table, a lounge with a bigscreen TV with satellite reception, comfy couches, and the piece de resistance (for my inner 10 year old, at least): an 8-piece vintage early 90's video game arcade. And all the machines take single quarters. Hey, if you're going to take an unintended rest day, you might as well make the most of it!

Hopefully we'll be able to find some spare tubes early tomorrow morning and be on our way. 220km to Manitoba!