8/14/09: Segments 84 & 85.
http://www.4thehealthofit.net/segment_htmls/Segment84.html
http://www.4thehealthofit.net/segment_htmls/Segment85.html Pictou, Nova Scotia to Antigonish, Nova Scotia. 58 miles.
Check out Barney’s blog on http://www.nwpassage2.blogspot.com/
Today I was a noodle, with legs that refused to listen to the brain. Tough day indeed. And thank goodness Barney is a good sort, because we cut the ride by 30 miles, finishing at about 4 pm rather than 6 pm. It was hot, humid, and I just had nothing. First, let’s review last night, because it was rather interesting.
I got done blogging, got our my radio and listened to CBC for a bit to “lull” me to sleep. Then I woke up to noises, wild animal noises, intense squealing wild animal noises! And it was…….well………ahhh…….the chick next site over……..You get the picture? Now let me tell you something, we had to listen to her laugh from the time we returned from dinner right through the time I blogged and turned my radio on. THAT was half the reason I turned my radio on was to block out her most amazing, annoying, horrible laugh. Do you remember the show “The Nanny”? Well, take that laugh, the cigarette smoking, dry throat, obnoxious laugh, and just hit the endless loop on a tape player, every 3 minutes, over and over and over. I just wanted to shout: “Shut the freaking hell up you dodo!” But both Barney and I kept our cool and cocooned in our tents. But she was right across the drive from us, so we still heard her loud, annoying cackling inside our tents.
So anyway, I fell asleep, and then woke up to her making a different kind of noise…….moaning, groaning, panting shouting. And I’m NOT kidding. It’s like the whole campground was privy to the show. I was beginning to believe that I was at the “Art Theater” in downtown Akron. So that kept me up for a while. I just turned up my radio and hoped to have talk radio lull me back to sleep. So I got up in the morning, and I was just dieing to see what the hell this chick looked like, and in my mind I’d nicknamed her “Mona”, what with the gravely, cigarette smoking laugh, and then the extracurricular “night talk” voice. So I’m tearing down the tent, and look over there every once in a while, and finally…….here she comes…….here is the infamous Mona. Ouch!! Bad movie indeed.
Well, I got up and just didn’t feel right., kind of like out of sorts, with an upset stomach and a headache, and I was really hoping that this wasn’t the start of something gnarly. It was one of those moments where I was like “damn, this is going to be a very long day, long and hard.” So we packed, and I ate the rest of the cookies and muffins, and that just made things worse. Real upset stomach now. Great. So we get going and ride back into town for some breakfast. And that ride into town – that was one of the longest 10K’s I’ve done in 5300 miles. God did I feel like just getting off of my bike and walking a couple of those power climbs. Barney was GONE! Me, I was noodling up every climb like a newbie on his first bike ride in 20 years. We got into town, and then rode down the wrong way on a one-way – right in time to meet the town’s mayor and his buds sitting outside the Timmy Horton’s pee house. They joked with us that we were riding the wrong way, and we stopped and kind of goofed with them. The mayor then pulled out a couple of buttons with the town insignia and gave us each one.
So we ride back up to a place called Debby’s. Very nice little piece of Nova Scotia, this town and the Debby’s breakfast restaurant – all hometown people in there eating, and everyone was very friendly to us. Was banking on breaky getting through this sick feeling I’d had all morning, so I get the “Grand Slam” plus a grilled ham and cheese sandwich. Great stuff, and it did perk me up a bit. So we finished, and then went to the library and did some quick internetting, and then did a brief tour of the seaside portion of the town. Wish we would have had more time last night to enjoy this town, because there were a lot of neat little Irish and Scottish pubs, and a couple of nice seaside restaurants down along the water. So as usual, we got a pretty late start, leaving town at around 9:30am. Then it was off to the information center at the end of town to pick up some Nova Scotia maps, so now add another 30 min, and we’ll on the road at 10am, with the sun just blazing.
Summer has definitely arrived in the Maritimes. The sky was blue, not a cloud to be seen, and the morning temps were such that I went topless from the info center onward. Now this is a race occurrence for the trip for me, because for the better part of 5000 miles it’s been a cool summer everywhere we’ve been – across the plains, through Ontario, across Quebec. Only over the last week has the temps really begun to pick up. And now everyone out here has been saying the summer has FINALLY arrived. I had my trusty little “sweat rag” tucked into my second layer of cycling shorts to wipe my face of sweat like a windshield wiper, and I sure needed it today! We had to do a stretch on the freeways to start the day off, and it was Rt 106 and 104, before we could get off and get on the secondary’s and tertiary’s. While on the freeway we would do these looooooooooooooong climbs, and then gradual descents, over and over. And my legs just felt like they had been beaten with a meat tenderizer. No zip, no zing. Just had to endure.
And Barney, he was having a great day, saying he felt like a “Zulu Man.” And he was just charging up these long climbs. Happy for him, shit for me. I was in my own little world of hurt. And at the top of each of these behemoths I’d pull out the old sweat rag and just wipe my face down, as sweat was dripping like a faucet off of my forehead and temples, filling my eye sockets and burning my eyes. I’d have to take my sunglasses off because droplets of sweat would just drip down across the lenses. Finally, after transferring from Rt 106 to 104 for a stretch, we got to Rt 4 east, and exited with glee from the freeway. Again, how some of the trans can cyclists can do just freeway across the country just amazes me. Because as soon as we got off it was just paradise. Now the riding was a bit longer, with respect to the total straight-line distance, and there was more climbing, though not as long. But it was just so serene and quiet. You could ride in the middle of the road and just relax and take in the wonderful scenery. It was so peaceful to ride on this stretch of road compared to the freeways. Freeways faster – but you pay the price in missing a WHOLE lot.
This backroad section really took my mind off of the bad day I was having, and I think Barney, aka “Sir Zulu” really enjoyed this to. So about 2 hours in Barney was craving some sugar, and I was craving an ice cold coke. But the problem was that we’d come to a sign for a town, but there’d be no town, just a few houses along the road, and then back to country road out in the middle of nowhere. This happened time and again, to the point to where we realized that there was NO stores, gas stations, no nothing until we got to the city of Antigonish – 25K away. I stopped and waited for Barney at a point to where we had to reenter Rt 104 freeway for several miles. And Barney at least had a couple of emergency power bars or something in his bag. I had eaten all my emergency stuff way back in Pointe-a-la-Cloix. So I told Barney I’d just keep plugging away until I came to something where I could grab a coke and food.
Kept it rolling up along Rt 104, and then back onto the backroads for a truly stellar stretch of riding along a railway. The backcountry out here is just wonderful, and reminds me of the Adirondacks in New York. By this time I was having those “mirages” of an ice cold coke out there in front of me. I had killed my two bottles of water, wiped a liter of sweat from my face, and was covered with a fine salt powder on my legs and around my neck and shoulders. But with Antigonish so close, I wasn’t in a crisis mode by any means. Finally got into the outskirts of Antigonish and waited for Barney at a big grocery superstore. We decided to go into town and find a bakery, but when I saw the Subway sign after exiting I was home! I told Barney that I HAD to go to the Subway to get my endless fountain coke and a sub. He was cool enough to go with the program.
We pulled in and I was ready to just fill my waterbottle with coke and ice, but held back and placed my order. Once I got my seafood and crab 12-incher, I stood at the fountain and drank 2-21 oz cokes right on the spot. After that I had 3 more 21 oz refills. It was here that I kind of suggested that I was very good with making Antigonish a day, but could push on further if need be. But my heart was on making this the day. The forecast is for great weather for the next 5 days, and I’m confident that we can do a very good job of doing the Cape, and being in North Sidney on time to meet the gang even with a ¾ day today. Again, Barney was very cool about calling it a day. So we decided to go to the information center outside of town and see what’s available for camping, or if the U in town has a good rate for the dorm rooms. Found a campground right in the middle of town called Whidden Park, and decided to go there. By this time it was 4pm, and I just couldn’t fathom riding for another 2 hours on toasted legs.
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