Tour Day 31 Christams in July? July25 2010

This morning something funny happened. I am sitting in the washing brushing my teeth when I hear the shower turn on next to me. This was at 6 in the morning so we were the only ones up. I go to the campsite and see Olivier and ask, why is your dad taking another shower”? His response was “He used that bathroom and has to after”. I chuckled to myself and continued to pack up all my stuff.

The first few kilometres were rough. I could tell that I pushed it a little to hard the day before. We were set on going to Sudbury though and I knew that my muscles would warm up and start to feel less then horrible… I wont say well.

It is kind of cool because you can watch as your body settles into the bike for the day. You can watch you average speed go from 20km/h up to 25km/h in a matter if minutes. It also helped that the wind was at our backs and was pushing us forward.

Getting into Sudbury all you see are two HUGE stacks that dominate the landscape. Fortunately we made the most illegal manoeuvre in the world by cutting across the highway to get to the site of the worlds largest nickel. This is when I clued in that Sudbury was a nickel-producing town. Infact it is the second largest in the world as I found out. The first is owned by the same company in Brazil. This company has a monopoly on the world’s supply of nickel, which is good for them but bad for the rest of us.

The town itself well lets just say the roads were so rough that it popped my fuel canister out from my triple overlapped bungee cord. It felt as is we were dodging mines we had to swerve so much.

Lunch was at a little motel restaurant. It was packed so we knew that something had to be up. Low and behold it is the only restaurant in town that had an entire staff of French speaking Canadians. So intern it attracts a lot of French speaking people. I do not know how Charles picks this up because he told Olivier “no don’t go to the tim hortons” just a block away. It was almost like he knew that this place was around.

We set off from Sudbury for our destination, which was 80k away in sturgeon falls. It was getting hot by this time and we did not have the fortune of seeing clouds on the horizon, so we knew that it was going to be a long hot end to the day.

The heat was starting to get to us around km 40 so we stopped in a little side town for some chocolate milk and ice cream. Now I do not know if it was that, something I ate, or not drinking enough water during the day but my stomach turned in a knot. I tried ignoring it and continue pedaling but it was getting worse and worse. By the end I was hunched over on the bike like I lived in a bell tower. This promoted me to shout out “pull over right here”. Luckily we were right near a gas station and you can guess what happened next.

Today was also shopping day, which is always strangely thrilling. I find it exciting deciding what fruit I want to enjoy for the next couple days. I even enjoy being a math geek and crunching the number to figure out down to the gram and cent, which is going to give me the most products. This works as a plus and a minus though. The plus is it saves me money in the long run. The minus is that I am left strapping food onto the top of my bags. I was a little sceptical at first of this because last time I tried this my bananas ended up on the road never to see my palate. Adding to that was the fact that the road to the campsite was complete wacked. I actually liked the unpaved part more then the paved part.

The campsite is amazing. We strolling in tired and fully loaded to a crowd of people say “take some food your just in time”. It turns out we stumbled upon Christmas in July at deutrisac cottages and campsite. It was awesome the people were very friendly, and the food was a great way to end the day. After 4 hot dogs and 2 hamburgers I was ready to sleep, but I had to set up camp. This is where we meet out neighbours. Again a very welcoming ground that were willing to give there lives to us if we needed them. I also came to a realization here. I do not like country music. However I do like the people who listen to country music.

So from here in sturgeon falls merry Christmas in July.
Trip Distance: 162km
Ride Time: 7:19hr
Avg. Speed: 22.11km/h
Total Distance: 4519km
Total Ride Time: 209hr
Destination: Sturgeon Falls, Ontario

Ps It is the simply things that make the days fun. Today as I sit here in the little store front blogging were being pestered by the fastest flies in the east. I managed to kill on and released one oif the biggest “wooooo’s” yet. The girl next to me just shook her head and left.