Tour Day 30 Rough Day For The Emotions July 24 2010

I am going to start off with the big news of the day. Over lunch Charles says to me “Evan I have changed my plan”. I simply thought we were going a little further today or something of that nature, but that was not the case. The next sentence was “I go home”. That is all he needed to say. I felt my heart sink as soon as those words came out of his mouth. At first I was thinking of myself what will happen at night? I am going to have to start knocking on doors asking to use a backyard some nights. Who will I spend my meals with? Man, I am going to be by myself a lot. This is going to get a lot harder and a lot lonelier very soon. This is just a sample of the 1000 ideas that rang through my head all at once

After that I started to think about us as a group. Reflecting back on what we have accomplished so far. I am sitting here on a plastic chair in a shower room and just thinking about it again has brought me to tears. We have come so far, seen so much, and learnt so much about each other. I have spent every hour with these people for a month. I am going to miss waking up to Charles snoring. I am going to miss all of the small things that made turning over the pedals a little easier. They have let me into their lives and I have let them into mine. Even with our language barrier I feel as close to Charles and Olivier as I do to my family. I am not looking forward to this goodbye even though I knew it was going to come eventually.

In all honesty the rest of the day I was simply thinking of that. I zoned out on the bike I was looking about 20feet in front of me staring blankly as the road goes by. The radio was simply background noise to the thoughts going through my head.

The km’s came easy my legs felt good and I was pulling for most of the day. We pulled into one of the small town visitor centres to ask about camping in Espinosa a town about 30k away from where we were, and a town that would make our day a good 170k. Things were looking good so we went into the town and asked the city folk where we could find said campsite. Well they informed us the campsite we were talking about was not one. That the closest site was a 5k backtrack to highway 17 then about 15k down the road. I was gutted again. By this point my legs were dead and I was as hungry as a beaver. On the plus side Charles got a couple new tubes because he had two flats today and vice grips to fix his bike from his crash in the campsite last night; so the trip into town was not for nothing.

I am actually glad that the campsite was further away because Espinosa is a paper town. All you see and smell from anywhere is this plant that is constantly pumping out sheets and rolls of paper.

The campsite could not have come soon enough. It was starting to rain so we attempted to book it double time, but because we were so sore our double time was only 23km/h. The campsite well it has a toilet that has one door with two toilets in it. I have to say it does not get more relaxed then poo'ing next to someone.


Anyways I am a bit of a mess today and need to get some rest because it was a long day on the bike. Remember if life is worth living it is worth recording.
Trip Distance: 193km
Ride Time: 7:50hr
Avg. Speed: 24.70km/h
Total Distance: 4357km
Total Ride Time: 202hr
Destination: 12k east of Espinosa, Ontario