8/18/09: Off Segment. Rt 19 north and south on the Cabot Trail in Cape Breton Highlands National Park. Plesant Bay, Nova Scotia to Ingonish Campground, Nova Scotia. 53 miles.
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It’s already 10pm Atlantic time. I’m in my tent. I had a shit dinner. Bad service. Now I have no wifi. I’ve not had a shower to wisk away the 5 hours of salt and sweat away from the 90-degree weather. And I’m not a happy camper. So……..that’s the tone of the blog. But…..it was an absolutely stellar day of CLIMBING!
Reset…….Another Barney and Pete start to the day by waking up at 7:15am and then just being casual about getting it going. Ok with me for sure! So we woke up in the Ponderosa crew cabin. And I had my typical half roll of TP stuffed in my ears to prevent Barney’s B-52 impression from entering my brain. We walked down to the motel/restaurant and had our Grand Slam breakfast, which was quite good, and then walked back to the Ponderosa to pack up gear and get on the road. Finally got out around 10am. Now we knew that we’d have the stiffest climb of the Cabot Trail today, but shit, it came way too early – about 20 min into the ride. Damn! This thing just took off into the stratosphere from the start. It’s a 13% grade for 3K. For those of you who ride, that’s Oak Hill road, the steepest part, for nearly 2 miles. Out of the saddle, pulling 75 lbs of gear plus.
I was in the little cookie from the bottom. There were two parts where I shifted down to harder gears to go OTC, but that didn’t last long. Mostly it was OTC and ITC for the whole damned thing in the easiest gear that I had. The humidity was just as bad as yesterday, but the sun wasn’t out, it was shrouded by cloud cover, so it was just a notch better than yesterday. But did I sweat………it was just gushing off my head like a hanging waterfall. My hands were soaked and thus the grips were soaked, and like a slipper fish to handle, so the steering was precarious to say the least. Now today, I had legs. I had some guns to work with here rather than a couple of limp lumps of flesh spinning the pedals. And I felt strong and steady on the climb. This puppy just switched back and forth at that 13% grade damned near without yield. So I’d go up on the tip of the saddle and spin ITC, and then go for a rest by going OTS for several hundred meters. Back and forth. And I’m talking like I had some serious resistance on those pedals while OTS, not just “cloud walking” here, but some real climbing.
Topped out in 35 min. And let me tell you: this stretch of Cape Breton Highlands is some of the hardest climbing that I’ve done in 5600 miles. The only rival here to the severity of the pitch and the length of the climb is Sunwapta Pass in Alberta! These climbs are true ass kickers, and to have done this circle of the Highlands is a true accomplishment – not to pat myself on the back here because there a a number of cyclists doing this loop as I speak. One I’ll name is Ralph, who is camped out with us tonight, and who was at the hostel last night. He’s from the Niagra Falls area, and is riding a fully loaded bike with no toe clips or clipless pedals – he’s in tennis shoes! And this dude did it! That……..blows my mind. He, in my estimation is way beyond what I’m doing with all my fancy equipment. He’s like the essence of just getting on a bike and doing some crazy freaking ride for the challenge of doing it. Great guy. Great heart. Good man to hang with for sure. Ralph…….SALUTE!!
So we topped out and I was like completely and absolutely soaked to the bone with sweat. And the wind was blowing to beat the band, and it chilled me pretty quickly up top. So I put on my totally wasted white Underarmor top, and waited for Barney and took some shots and then we really got it going to get the hell of the top of the mountain, which didn’t last very long as we began descending almost as soon as we reached the top. The descent was hairy as hell, with switchbacks every several hundred meters. I just took the whole bloody lane since the speed limit was 30-35K going down. The descent was 2K longer than the accent, so there was a fair amount of down to this beast. Thank God for my hydraulic disk brakes, because when I tapped them, they responded big time. No heating up, no gooy pads to deal with. These things really were the bomb for sure. And let me tell you that looking down over the handlebars at this descent was intimidating. The whole ocean and valley below was just like in your face.
Made it down and the temp was warmer and the wind had died down considerabely. So I waited for Barney and we stopped in the town of North Cape to get a bite to eat. Originally we were going to camp here for the night, but we’d only done 1:45 hrs of riding at that point so we decided to just eat and then ride to Ingonish for the day. I ended up getting a rib sandwich, a coke and a chocolate truffle cake. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. So we kind of milked it for a while and then took off for Ingonish. We took an alternative “seaside route” rather than the Cabot Trail for a stretch, hoping to have some better scenery and less climbing. For a big, long, gradual climb lay ahead of us on the Cabot Trail. So we made the turn onto the seaside loop, and right from the gun we began doing these little cookie power climbs, and I mean gnarly ones. Ones that hurt the legs to the marrow each time you quickly downshifted to the granny gear. At that point I was thinking: “Ok Barney, you bastard, you wanted this, you bloody got it!” But the scenery was just so World Class that after a few of these I was totally stoked on doing the damned thing. We would have these vistas out in front of us of the ocean and these massive cliff faces. It was blue sky, blue ocean, and just amazing to witness. So I warmed into this route pretty quickly.
I stopped and took pics numerous times, until this last climb, which had to be a 14-16% grade for about 300 meters. My God, did this thing go up, and I was straining in my granny gear, OTS, leaning forward, just sweating like a garden hose over my handlebar bag. It was killer hard. Then I was right back to: “Barney you bastard!” Finally topped out and then road across this false flat summit for 4-5 miles doing 24mph with the tailwind. So I was good with the route again. I’m so fickle! Ended up descending down into the small little seaside communities of New Haven and Neils Harbor. Both outstanding scenic places. We rested in New Haven for a bit on some giant granite boulders along the ocean before we finished the ride to Neils Harbor and the junction back with Rt 19. Then it was a matter of doing a long stretch of newly paved highway along the ocean with these wonderful granite beaches and rugged coastline. Again, World Class scenery for sure.
We got to Ingonish, and hoped to find a campground and a pub to complete the day. I was riding ahead, and after a bit noticed that Barney was nowhere to be. I met with the French Canadian, Sebastian, and we talked a bit about our trips, our gear, our itinerary etc, but stil, no Barney. Sebastian is about 400 miles ahead of me in total mileage, having started in Alaska. I told him about Cape Spear in Newfoundland, which is the furthest point east in North America, and he wasn’t aware of that, so I had just lengthened his trip by about 10K from St. Johns! DONE. He was riding the extra distance. Anyway, we jabbered for a bit, waiting for Barney, but nothing. So I finally turned around and rode back towards him, thinking that maybe he stopped for a coke or something. But no, there he was, hands black and bloody from changing a tire and tube. He flatted and then noticed that the tire had this huge gash in it. When I got there he was just finishing up. So we rode onward, hoping to get to a campground without that rear tire just blowing up on him.
And it seemed like we were just continuing to ride with nothing in sight. We’d pass a few B&B’s, a few motels, a motel/restaurant etc, but no campgrounds. So we’d climb and descend, climb and descend. And I was getting a bit anxious about that rear tire. So I stopped up at a National Park campground and waited for Barney to catch up. We went in and asked the park attendant about the whereabouts of restaurants, pub, beer stores, wifi, and camping. We had all but the wifi here at the Ingonish Campground. So we booked a site…..right next to our fellow biker from Niagra…..Ralph. Got the site and I gave Barney my spare Shwalbe 700x36C for his rear tire. NOTE: Bill…….can you pick up a Shwalbe 700x36C tire at that bike shop place in Maine? We’ll reimburse you for it. We have no spares right now. So while Barney and Ralph were doing the tire replacement I went on a beer run. Came back and we just sat in the sun and soaked in the accomplishment of having cycled over some of the toughest terrain in the Maritimes.
Then it was dinner time, and we rode down, just out of the park to a restaurant. Looked good. Long line. Many people. But………..many empty tables inside and it was taking way too long to be seated. And we waited, and waited. Finally got seated and then the service was just total crap. No water on time that we ordered – and no refills. No wine for Barney. Waitress was on Pluto. Then she forgets an appetizer. Then the chowder is so-so. Then the veggies are cold. Then the entree is so-so. Then the waitress comes back and is kind of ambivelant about the whole deal. Then I leave her $3.67 on a $36 bill. Shit deserves shit! Same with Barney, same with Ralph. We ended up riding back to camp in the dark, but no hassles. I’m here in the tent right now hoping that my aircard with get this puppy out.
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