8/21/09: Off Segment and on Segment.. http://www.4thehealthofit.net/segment_htmls/Segment88.html Port aux Basques, NFLD, to Crabs River, NFLD. 60 miles.
Check out Barney’s blog on http://www.nwpassage2.blogspot.com/
So a very nasty recap on last night. It was the good, the bad and the ugly. The good, met the gang at the check-in station at around 8:45pm. Great reunition, as I hadn’t seen Judy for nearly three months. Just wonderful to reunite after so, so long on the road. So then we had to break down our gear to get on the van. And it was a royal pain in the rump. Just couldn’t get four bikes to fit on the 4-bike rack despite it being…….. A FOUR BIKE RACK! So we ended up putting two bikes in the van, with the two yaks, with five people’s gear. Needless to say the gear and everything was stacked to the ceiling. But we squeezed all five people in and boarded the ship. So we head upstairs to the entertainment area/pub room and waited for the ship to depart before the show started.
Now this couple who were our entertainers for the eve, I thought they’d be a “lounge act” by the looks of it. But quite the contrary. The guy was a great fiddle, guitar, mandolin and accordion player. Not to mention great on the spoons. His wife was a singer, and the weaker of the two, but add this dude’s great Newfie humor and jokes, and it was pretty good. Unfortunately the entertainment only went to 1am, and then it was lights out – not really because the lights were always kept on. And for those of us poor souls who were in the “steerage” section and not a berth, well, we had to find some sort of bedroom for the evening, to last the entire 8 hours of the crossing to NFLD. For most of us it was these narrow couches that were about twenty feet long. Some slept on chairs, some on a combination of chair and narrow couch. Some went up a deck and slept in these airline simulation rooms with airline seats that reclined. But that choice was just plain disgusting - with people just lying all over the freaking place like a mass suicide had just taken place. Not for any of us.
So back to the narrow couches for the evening, with the lights on, with TV’s blaring in the background, with people talking, snoring, dribbling saliva from there hanging heads, and the occational farting. It was just pure HELL. And to add to my, and our misery, I have just come down with my usual sinus infection. So I’m all plugged up, sniffing, coughing, feeling like my head was going to explode. So my situation just added to the crazy atmosphere of all these poor bastards trying to get in a night of sleep in the most sleep unfriendly setting you can imagine. It’s worse than trying to catch Z’s on an airline for sure. I really never did anything but doze off for 10 min or so at a time. And then the tempurature in this place was like a meat locker. Judy and I were just freezing. I went so far as to go in the men’s room, push on the hand dryer, over and over again and just leaned against it for warmth. Finally, after several people came in to use the facilities saw my huddled there, hogging the hand dryer, I relinquished and went back the freezer for more punishment. We talked about this situation this evening, and it’s almost as if the Atlantic Company is forcing you go buy a berth for the night, just to avoid this journey into hell.
So the sun finally comes up, the PA announces that we will deboard in about a half hour, and I feel like I’ve been beaten with ball bats all night long. I was nearly hypothermic, my head was aching like a throbbing tooth-ache, and my body felt limp and lifeless. Me, no, all of us felt like that. You could just look at the faces of all these people who had endured this night of living hell on board the ferry. Or should I say the night of the living dead! We all filed out of the stalog and down the several flights of stairs like comatose cattle down to the slaughter. We drove off with me at the wheel for the first time in over three months, looking for a breakfast spot to take the sting out of our aching heads. Drove all around the downtown Port aux Basques, and nothing was open for breakfast – on a Friday morning! Now we were getting that “bitch hungry” thing going. Ok, so on past Timmy Horton’s pee house, and up to a mall. Nothing. Then to a hotel. Bingo. Restaurant inside. But…….we walk in and there are dishes all over the open tables, and the lady asks us to wait in the lobby until the tables are cleaned. So we wait, and let me tell you – in Newfoundland, in a restaurant, you can wait, and wait, and wait. No hurry here. So we waited about 25 min, and finally Barney, who’s going through his morning coffee withdrawl by this point, goes back in to see how things are going. Still, we have to wait just a tad longer. Meanwhile, Ryan is totally crashed out in the lobby. Bill could not wake him.
Finally, after an eternity of waiting, we get seated, and then the waitress is kind of mater of fact with us about getting the coffee quickly. Says she has to take care of the gentleman over at another table first. By the time she pours the first cup of coffee, it had been a solid 40 min wait. But she warms up as all Newfie folks do, and is quite ok after we get the ball rolling with the orders and the coffee. Judy and I got the fish cake and eggs. Very good meal, and quite filling. We finally leave and head to the vistior’s center just past the hotel. This was to be our trailhead to begin the trek across NFLD. We got maps, reorganized the bikes and gear, got dressed and finally shoved off at 10:30.
Decided to try out the Tran Can trail, the first 12 miles of which were considered pretty good to ride a bike on. The rest of this ancient rail bed is pretty much only suitable for the ATV folks who poplulate this thing like the New York Thruway. Judy and I had ridden on it back in 05, and it was pretty nice, kind of like the Towpath in the valley. But now, 4 years later……a bloody mess, what with loose gravel everywhere, potholes, big cobbles. Just nothing like we remembered it. So this thing was a complete disaster to ride on. But we plowed ahead, with Judy and Barney having a terrible time trying to stay in the upright position with all the loose gravel fields to wander through. The scenery – world class……if…you could move your head away from watching the trail of madness unfold in front of you. Hit a gravel pile wrong, and you’re down for the count. So we really could not enjoy the stellar sights along the way this time through. I had numerous near biffs. Judy to. Barney had two small biffs that scuffed up his right leg.
So by the time we got thirteen miles in, and right up alongside the freeway, Rt 1 QEW, we were all ready to fly the white flag on this mess. We pushed our bikes up the embankment, and onto the berm of Rt 1, the Trans Can Highway to St. John’s. No more trail, not on this trip. So Judy rode back west to the van to do some things in town, while the four of us continued on down the highway to the east, trying to make something out of this day where we were all totally beat from no sleep, and pretty wiped out from nearly 2 hours of gravel hell for our paltry 13 miles. Judy was to just drive east when she was done and pick us all up. We’d find camping somewhere along the way in the meantime. So we rode, with a nice tailwind for a bit, over some very wonderful terrain, with the mountains on our right shoulder, and the ocean on our left. We were able to maintain a good 17-20 mph with no gear on the bikes, a pretty flat to rolling road, and a nice tailwind.
But things changed about 2.5 hours into the ride, when we began to hit more low angle climbing, and then some middle cookie climbing. That’s when the endurance climbathon began, and it will continue all the way to St. John’s, about 500 miles east of here. We would climb, descent, climb, descent over and over. And sometimes that friendly tailwind would turn into a cross headwind or a headwind, without us having changed our orientation an iota. That’s the nature of the swirling winds along this portion of the island nicknamed “wreckhouse” for all the trains and tractor trailers that have been blown over over the years. The winds here can just be monumental. And we were seeing just a smidge of what they’re potential could be with the changing, swirling wind patterns. Ryan and I ended up riding tandem for the last 2 hours what with the ever increasing hill climbing and the shifting wind patterns.
Now just by coincedence Ryan got some kind of sinus infection from all his air travel over the last couple of weeks, so we’re both just suffering like dogs by that point of the ride. Each feeling like his head was going to explode with the next climb. So we agreed to go just 60 miles for the day, call it quits and find a campground. And wouldn’t you know it, at exactly 60 we came across a camping area. I checked rates and found it to be pretty good, so when Judy and Bill arrived in the van, seeing us sitting up at the camp entrance, they to agreed on finishing the day there. Same with Barney.
Even Bill and Barney had had enough for the day, what with zero sleep last night, so we were all totally good to just cash the day in and leave it at that. Got our site, set up camp, and then off to dinner at this like hole in the wall way out in the middle of nowhere. There were like 5 people there on a Friday night. Place is owned operated by an oriental guy who cooks, takes the orders, and operates on a totally different plane than most of us – slowly….very slowly.
We got our meals, and they’re pretty good. Now the dude cooked the food, served us, and then never came back again. Judy had to go tell one of the bar patrons to pass on to the owner that we’re ready for our bill. Then he goofs up Barney’s Visa charge and has to start over. Not a bad thing, and pretty funny actually, but wow, life moves along at a totally different pace here in Western Newfoundland. So here we are back at camp. We’re all inside our abodes. Bill is using my Hillie, while I’m in the Hotel Dodge Ram 1500 with Judy now, from here on in. The gnats are just too intense outside to even try to sit around. So we’re all settled in our spaces. Ryan slept for a good 5 hours, skipping dinner to just crash in his Hillie. Him and I are just feeling horrible right about now with these sinus infections. Should be a rather interesting next 6 days of riding if this nastyness continues.
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