7/13/09: Parts of Segments 50 and 51 http://www.4thehealthofit.net/segment_htmls/Segment50.html http://www.4thehealthofit.net/segment_htmls/Segment51.html Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario to Blind River, Ontario; 92 miles.
What a crazy wonderful day. Ok, so it started like this: I got up this morning almost as if I were going to see a doctor for an appt. I had an unsettling feeling as to just what the final prognosis was going to be with my rear wheel. Would they indeed have what I need in the way of a complete wheel; could they replace rim and respoke the wheel; was I SOL? Many questions as to what I’ll run into today. And then there was the matter of trying to stay on schedule. Would this bike thing take all day…….half the day………no time at all. Would we even get out of the Soo today. I woke up with all these questions. The morning was cool, but very beautiful.
Oh yea, last night we were awoken by this nitwit, knucklehead, A-hole that pulled in to a site next to ours last night, and proceeded to talk very loudly to his wife at 1am in the morning. Couple that with some yahoo who was playing country and western music so loud it sounded like a concert. And I just couldn’t go to sleep. I was just a hair away from going our and yelling at the guy talking, when he suddenly became silent. About 5 min later so to was the goof with the concert speakers. Found out in the morning, that Ryan’s dad, Neil, got out of his tent and set the guy straight who was talking. The country concert dude must have gotten the message as he to put his gig to rest. So we were talking about this this morning and kind of going off on the idiots who had absolutely no clue about camp ethics.
Go up and got some coffee and then headed out alone to the Velorution cycling shop in the Soo. Ryan and his folks stayed for a bit at the campground for breakfast and such, since they kind of had to wait for me to get this whole rear wheel thing straightened out before we moved forward. I got to the shop a bit early. The crew cycled in and invited me in. These two young guys were just fantastic – very knowledgeable bike guys, great senses of humor, and totally dialed into riding. These were bikies for sure. The one fellow remembered my call from 4 days earlier from Terrace Bay. First off, no rim in there that was a 28 spoke rim. They just had 32 spoke rims for my 29er. So only choice for me was to buy a new wheel, switch out my rear brake rotor and tire and freewheel. Hey, I was thrilled that we could get this thing done and get me off of that death trap of a rim I’d been riding.
So, choice made he proceeded to pull my tire, rotor and freewheel off of my old wheel. And he walks over to me, with the tire and tube off of the old rim and he’s shaking his head. He lifts that wheel up to my face and shows me a crack on the inside of the rim……….a crack the completely circles the whole rim……every single spoke hole was joined by this never-ending crack. I was drop jawed. I rode on this thing that was really on the verge of splitting in half, from the inside out – for 4 days! Had I known this at any time during the 350 miles between where I noticed the outside crack, up to today – I’d never had ridden that damned thing another foot!! Total and utter disbelief. Wow.
Well, it was all a matter of putting the new wheel back together again, and that didn’t take long at all. In the meantime I did a TV interview with a chick from the Soo, doing a story on another chick who’s riding across Canada for a cause – Ethiopian children I think. This Velorution shop is a big stopover for the Trans Can folks, and the cause chick was here. So the TV chick interviewed me and the bike mechanic guy about the Trans Can and how hard it is and what kind of dedication it took. And my reply was that all people who do this should be congratulated, whether cause or no cause, and that people of all ages are doing it, and doing it well. It was interesting. I’ll have to tune into CBC TV out of the Soo to see this, but we’re probably way too late tonight to catch it. Oh well, maybe on the net?
So I got the bike fixed, and Ryan and his folks arrived about 11am. By 11:30 we were ready to ride, but how far with half a day gone? And then we meet this gal next to the bike shop, and she tells us about a short cut to the Manatoulin Islands, and also says that today and tomorrow will be stellar days. She says that the wind is out of the west today at 30K. And probably the same for tomorrow. Now Ryan and I are kind of looking at each other, and we were thinking of just doing 60 miles to Thesselon. But then we start to think greedier – like Blind River, some 90-100 miles away. No gear……killer tail wind…….what the hell! So we tell Ryan’s parents we’ll meet them at Thesselon and decide there if we want to go the extra 30 for the day. Deal, and we started to ride.
Now we had to continue south for a bit out of the Soo, and the crosswind was really brutal, but we were able to maintain a solid 18mph pace – now remember we’re riding with NO yaks. And this southward trend to the road continued for about an hour, and we just keep hoping that the road trends to the east more – a curve to the left – HARD. And we talked about when the damned road was going to take that hard left. And we did moderate big ring out of the saddle climbing against the crosswind for mile upon mile. And then, there it was……the HARD turn to the left. And we hit this left curve and it was if we had a giant hand pushing us. Went from 18 mph to 25 mph. Boom. We were jamming.
And when we’d hit a hill, I’d just get out of the saddle and just lay it down to get up and over and still hold 20 mph. By God, my goal became averaging 20+ mph for this ride. So I got low on the bars, hard on the pedals, and just put it into cruise control. And it was here that we decided that: the hell with Thesselon, we’re going for Blind River. Done deal. Let’s get in 90+ and have a great day and take advantage of that killer tail wind! So we made Thesselon at a 19 mph average to hook up with Neil and Cheryl. We get there about 30 min to 45 min before we were supposed to. And we vered into town to hunt for Ryan’s folks. And they’re nowhere. So I tell Ryan that we probably beat them there, as they were not expecting us to get there that fast.
We look around a bit. Nothing. So we stopped and got cokes and cookies and muffins. Back on the bike for 30 more miles. And I wanted to crush this thing in under 1:30 hours. The first 15 min back on the bike from a stop is tough, that’s why I really hate stopping. And this stop put the gnarlies on us both. So it was slow going to get it reved up again. And Ryan had a particularly tough time with this. I waited a couple of times, and then on a false flat, he faded again. At that point I decided to just push on alone. And put it in the TT mode and really got low on the bars and hammered. And there were times when I had it up to 31 mph, but held a pretty consistent 24 mph, except on the climbs. The miles just flew by, and before long I’m one hour in and I see a sign for Blind River that says it’s 20 K away. Again, crush time on the pedals, and I dipped out on occasion to catch a draft from a semi just to get that extra pull.
Before long I see a Subway sign – 5 min ahead. Oh yea! Five miles to paradise. And it was like ……..Zoom…….I was there. And I pulled in and looked at my cyclo computer – 4:27 hours for 92 miles at 20.5 mph. YES. I shlepped on in and got my 2 12’s and and proceeded to drink 3 32 oz fountain cokes, and then another 32 oz of water. I munched to full Buda belly. Then Ryan rolls in about 10 min later. He did a FANTASTIC job of riding today. Epic ride for both of us.
Then Ryan left a message for his folks to tell them we rode through Thesselon. They called Subway for gosh’s sake and got a hold of Ryan. We met at a hotel in Blind River. Ryan’s mom asked the hotel guy if we could camp behind the hotel, and we were good to go there. So we rode the quarter mile east to the hotel, and I just crashed in the front lawn of the hotel while we waited. They arrived in about 30 min, and then we went out to dinner after a well deserved shower. Yup, we ate even more – like a Whitefish dinner at the local pier. The dinner was just fabulous.
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