So last night I crawled into my sleeping bag and listened to a song called changes by kings of Leon. The reason I turned that song in particular is because it reminds me of home. It reminds me of riding down the road with kev with our mountain bikes on back of his little red civic beating up a service road. As much as these days are pack with activity you do get the urge to get back into what normal used to be. Those thoughts are what put me to sleep… until Charles let the loudest fart I have ever heard go. To put it in prospective I can sleep through a train going by behind my tent, but I can evidently not sleep through a Charles fart in a small hotel room.
95% of the ride today sucked. It started from the get go when we did not eat breakfast before we started riding. We decided as a group to ride to thunder bay and eat breakfast there. Before we hit the road though we stopped at the shell where everyone but me picked up a muffin and coffee. Now I have no excuse for not eating because I was hungry I was simply too cheap and though “well I can man up and make it to thunder bay”. Well I did not make it to thunder bay in one piece. I was so hungry that I started to sweat. All I could focus on was the hungry. I ate what little I had in my top bag but it did nothing. I drank a bottle of water and still nothing. I was drafting off of Lauren and struggling to hole this 60 year old mans wheel. We passed the 16km to thunder bay and I was crushed.
Once we got to thunder bay we started passing restaurants and all I could think was please let us stop here. We were pretty much out of Thunder Bay when we decided to stop at a small bistro. Here is where I downed 3 breakfast’s in the time it took Lauren to eat 1. I was finally starting to feel good when we hit the road again.
Well that good feeling sure did not last. I very quickly realized that food was one of the issues and my legs were the other. The days of small rolling hills had zapped them for the larger hills that we encountered today. They simply did not want to turn over. I kept standing up out of the saddle to try to get some more leverage but as soon as I sat down I lost all of my speed.
The wind was the other issue it was abusing me. Because I had trouble keeping the wheel I would keep getting dropped and would then be forced to ride solo in a direct head wind. For 5 kilometres I saw the gap getting larger and larger and I could not do anything about it. Thankfully Charles looked back and saw I was struggling and told them to slow down to let me catch up.
Lunch could not come fast enough. That esso station seemed so far away when you are going so slow, and watching your distance down to the meter. I had my usually lunch for two but changed things up with milk today and boy did that do the trick. I was like the tv commercial. Right after lunch I was back at the front puling with Olivier who had been doing all the work all day. We were doing our usual match sprints up the hills and sweating like beavers on this lovely overcast day.
We were rolling onto the destination when we came to a sudden halt. Oliver had got a bee stuck in his lip that then proceed to bite him. I did the nice thing and said “it does not look to bad” when really his lip looked like mike Tyson had punched him in the face then bit his lip off.
That brings us to our stop in Nipigon, which I would say was the highlight of the day. We pull in and are greeted by a campsite right near the water filled with only bike tourists. By filled I mean 4 other bike tourists. It is odd because we are all the same type of person, it is odd how we all get along so well, and it is odd that conversations do not start off with hello what’s you name but rather where are you coming from. I actually had to stop after talking for about 30 minutes and say “I think we forgot to introduce ourselves”. We were also met by a character named Jim a local here that talked a mile a minute and never seemed to finish a statement he started. It was like having dinner and a show. I would love to tell you what he had to say but even I had trouble fallowing it at points. All I know is that we all had a good laugh about it after. Anyways I have to free up one of the 8 outlets because we all need to charge everything we have.
As a side note thank you to the women at the visitor centre here in nipigon they were some of the most helpful people we have met thus far.
Trip Distance: 148km
Ride Time: 6:55hr
Avg. Speed: 21.41km/h
Total Distance: 3439km
Total Ride Time: 159hr
Destination: Nipigon, Ontario
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment