Tour Day 22 The First English In A Week Is A River July 16 2010

Let me start off with this. Wind is awesome if it is at you back and if the sky is clear. In any other case wind sucks. Case and point today. We had a nice back wind again which meant we could munch up the kilometres but it also caused the clouds to move faster then us. One minute we had nice beautiful sun the next minute we were in pouring rain blowing sideways. In total I had my rain gear on and off 5 times today there was not wining. The only constant was the curse that is on my booties. But we will get to that later.

The day started off pretty normal I woke up last as usual so I had to rush to take everything down as usual. Breakfast was the usual porage with a side of hot chocolate. Today however I spiced things up with a nice cinnamon bun because I knew it was going to be another up and down day in the Canadian Shield. When you look at you map and it zig zags all over the place you die a little inside and hope that you don’t have any super steep sections that zap the legs.

We got no more then 10mins into the ride when we ran into Lauren again. After talking we found out he was headed to inglace (our pit stop for the afternoon). Lauren as always was rocking a super high cadence to save his legs and was making Charles and Oliver laugh all day. It defiantly lightens the mood when you have three a group that speak the same language. The only minus of the morning is the fact that my bananas fell off of my bag so I was down half of my fruit. So at every stop instead of enjoying a nice snack I got the treat of nice soggy nuts. No one likes wet nuts, and I have found that out first hand.

Here is where the weather started to get funky. We were 2k outside of inglace and it starts to dribble so I turned up the speed a little. Then it starts to pour and Charles sprints past me rocketing for town. We stopped at the gas bar where the owner says “not a good place to park busy day guys”. To sum up my response it went like this. You live in a town or 1400 people and have 4 separate islands, unless everyone comes at once you should be ok. This town also had 12 restaurants, which was a little odd. We of course chose the one that was a truck stop for reasons beyond me.

The weather kept switching after lunch it was beautiful and sunny. I even put on my sunscreen. 5k into the second half to our ride it’s pouring again so I put on my gear. Then it gets sunny so thinking I am smart and stuff I leave it on see the dark clouds on the horizon. Well I was not smart because the wind was blowing the other way and I just cooked in my gear instead. The only constant was the fact that whenever I put on my booties it stopped raining within 2 minutes when I took them off it would start to rain again within about 15 minutes.

English bay is our stop for the night. It was not easy getting here, but once here we ran into you guessed it another Quebec bike tourist going west. He has found out how hard it is going the other way and is stopping in Winnipeg not in Vancouver.

The place we are staying at is a little weird in the sense that she is charging us for a piece of grass and Internet. But the site has not bathroom and not running water. Priorities seem to be in the wrong places. As well the storefront closes at 5pm. While writing the blog I have seen 5 people come in and drive away just because it’s closed.
Trip Distance: 168km
Ride Time: 6:28hr
Avg. Speed: 26.02kméh
Total Distance: 3122km
Total Ride Time: 145hr
Destination: English River, Ontario.


I have been doing somethinking as well becaus ethe fund raising aspect of this trip is not living up to what I had hoped it would. This is primarily because i didnt have things rolling till a month before the trip. What has been going through my head is a plan b of coming home after canada saving nearly double the cost per day in the states and training to compete in raam (race across america) next year. We will see but i wanted to keep you guys in the loop as to what im thinking.