7/22/09: Segment 61 and part of segment 62 http://www.4thehealthofit.net/segment_htmls/Segment61.html http://www.4thehealthofit.net/segment_htmls/Segment62.html Ottawa, Ontario to Lachute, Quebec; 80 miles.
First, just wanted to say hi to Greg B., and wish him all the best on his new job down in Columbus. Judy tells me that Greg reads the blog with his coffee first thing in the morning. Thanks much Greg, and glad to have you along for the ride.
Back at it. One day’s rest just seems so……unfair, so unjust. And people are often amazed that we don’t take more time, because, hey, we have 3.5 months to do this thing. Should be plenty of time, right? Then you start to do the math…….and 100 58-60 mile days = 5800-6000 miles. That’s one hundred days in a row to do the route we’ve chosen to do. Now had we just gone for the straight line across Canada, using almost all QEW freeways as many of the Trans Can riders do, sure, we could probably knock off 20 or so days on this thing and/or take more time off. But hell, you can do that QEW thing in a car for goodness sake. Our whole gig on this was to do as much as of the country as we possibly could on secondary and tertiary roads, so as to get a good feel for the OTHER side of Canada. Not just all freeway cities.
So, that adds probably 2000 miles to the trip, and more time, and less rest. Plain and simple. That’s the trade off here. So with yesterday’s rest day we’ve now had 7 total rest/rain days in just about 9 weeks of riding. And we’re about 4.5 days ahead of schedule. So anyway, I just wanted to give some of you perspective on this thing. I’d just LOVE to spend 2-3 days in Jasper, 3 days here, 2 there, 1 here. But it’s just not in the cards. Hell, it was tough enough getting this thing put together for 3.5 months, let alone 5-6 months.
Soooooooooooo back on the bikes and back with the yaks. It wasn’t really that bad hooking up those beasts again. Took all but about 30 min to get used to the load again. But let’s backtrack just a bit. Woke at about 6:45am and to Cock A Doodle Ryan and his “rise at the crack of dawn” internal clock. He went to a local java café for coffee, while I opted for the little packets of hotel coffee in the min coffee brewer in our room. It’s fast, convenient, and I can work in my skivvies while I drinking my coffee. Got a fair bit of computer work done by the time Ryan got back, and then we turned the live Tour De France feed on my computer and watched and listened to today’s stage, seeing that we were planning on a late ETD, and seeing that it was raining out when we awoke. I dashed down to the local bakery and bought a variety of filled and plain croissants to eat in the hotel room while listening to the the Tour. It was fun to really relax and drink coffee, eat breakfast with no early morning push off.
And we were glued to listening to the Tour on my computer. Nine O’clock goes by, and I start to pack the yak and my front panniers. Nine thirty comes and goes and we’re still listening. I finish my packing, and get my cycling garb on by 10am. Pump up all the tires and do a round of tightening on the spokes on the new back wheel around 10:10am. And we finally have to pull ourselves away from the computer so I can pack it. We end with the final big climb yet to come. Damn! But we had to get going. So we were out the door of the hotel and rolling down Elgin Street towards the Parliament at 10:30am. Crossed the Ottawa River and shazam, we were in our fifth province, Quebec. It was a bit tenuous crossing the bridge what with it being a metal grate and being just a touch wet. I was holding my breath – no to mention a GREAT line – as we did the 400 meter crossing. I can only imagine sliding a wheel and then doing the meat grinder across the metal grated surface!
Got to the other side and veered to the right to hit some bike trail. We had been told that Quebec has a huge amount of bike and hike, and that we might have access to some as we move northeast along the Ottawa River up towards Quebec City. So we jumped on it. And we flagged down another cyclist to ask directions on this trail. Funny, cross the bridge, enter Quebec just 1 mile away from Ottawa, and the gentleman could barely speak a lick of English. I did my best to use some basic French expressions to communicate, but it was primitive at best. He was very friendly, but just did not have much of an English vocab, as we had even less of a French vocab. We did manage to come away with information to get us out of Hull, Quebec, and to the northeast.
Couple miles later flagged another guy down on the trail, and this fellow could speak English, but did not know the trail system very well. So we just kept it moving on the trail system in what we assumed was the proper direction. Hell, all you have to do is keep the river on your right shoulder…….right? Then we passed a group of cyclists, and as I stopped to take some pics of the bridge crossing over the Gatineau River, one of the gentleman riders stopped to ask me where we were coming from. He spoke great English and was very interested to hear that we had come from Vancouver. I then took the liberty to quiz him on directions. He was totally on with his directions, and had us stay on the bike trail when it veered off of the Rt 148, and then get back on 148 when they joined back up. Said it would take us all the way to Montreal. And his directions meshed with our route, which was indeed 148 east, so having a little here and there on the bike trail was a very nice reprieve from riding with traffic.
But alas, the bike trail merged with 148 and it was back with traffic within an hour of hitting Hull, Quebec. Nice thing was that the berm on this road was as big as a lane, and it had bicycle insignias painted on in to indicate that riders share the road with the vehicles. Very nice indeed. Now the road still have the bike trail sign on it from time to time, but it was more like the Buckeye Trail back home, where the majority of the trail is along the berms of roads. No biggie. We had some nice scenery along the way what with all the farmland and fields, and then the Ottawa River off to the right. Only real negative was the gnarly clouds that hung over us like they were ready to just let loose with rain at any time. The local forecast for Ottawa for the next several days is for rain, rain, and more rain, so this could be a wet three and a half days to Quebec City – where we have to make to in order to meet with Barney on Friday or Saturday eve. No off days for rain for this segment of the trip.
Once we really left the bike trail and got on the big berm I got into a nice rhythm with the yaks back aboard, and just started to hit my tempo nice and easy. The roads are really pretty flat our here as were riding right along the river at points, and there are only a few little out of the saddle sections here and there. Once we passed Thurso, about 2.25 hours in, Ryan was hit by the gremlin, and then by Montebello, he needed to stop for a map and for food. I had a good rhythm going so I told him I’d ride up to 3 hrs in and then take a food break and wait for him. So I kept it rolling on my own for a bit. Didn’t take long before I had my 3 hrs of ride time in, and I stopped at a little grocery store. It was kind of a dump, what with the place just packed to the gills with stuff to the point to where you could barely move inside the place. I grabbed a liter of coke, two cookies and a Mars bar. Did my best with the French to pay the cashier, and then she smiled and spoke English to me.
So I went out on a picnic table across from the store to drink and munch and wait for Ryan, but the gnats were so bad as the tables were along the woods, that I had to move out across the street and to a church. I just parked the bike against the wall and sat on the steps right in front of Rt 148 to wait. After about a half hour it began to drizzle, and the sky was pretty dark. Then the drizzle turned to more of a steady rain, and I moved myself to under the over-hang of the roof to stay dry, in addition to putting on my long sleeve cycling jersey. Then Ryan comes by and we get rolling, and the rain turns to a very steady rain. The rooster tails begin and the spray off of the front wheel clicks in. Now we were talking about a real soaker here. And we just kept it rolling. Within another half hour the steady rain downgrades to a drizzle, and I peel the long sleeve off while I’m riding. We agreed to make Lachute our day’s destination, and we had just about 12 miles to go once the rain stopped.
After riding through a miserable traffic construction jam, as we just cruised on our berm past 2 miles of traffic, I was a bit ahead or Ryan and just decided to get the final 10 miles done with in a fast manner, so I clicked down a gear or two and got her up to the 16-17 mph range. Made Lachute in a total ride time of 5:27 with a 14.6 average. Once Ryan got in we just noodled through town in search of a Subway. And within 2 miles – BANG, found one. Now a couple of the servers did not speak English, so ordering our usual was a bit comical as we mimed and pointed our way through the whole process. The cashier was pretty good with English so that was a breeze doing money thing. I mean it’s just French only here, all the info board and menus in Subway were in French, so our cold cut combo was something I cannot even pronounce. We just recognized it based on seeing the same menu board for the past two months with the same order of the subs. Point here and there, and walla – got your sub.
I finished my subs and Ryan crossed the street to find some free lodging, and he came back like one minute later and say we have a spot in back of a house, just across the street from the Subway, and one door down from a Tim Horton’s. This guy’s on fire today, and good thing because we rolled into town at 5pm, and didn’t finish eating until 5:30. Rolled across the street, and set up. This is a house that’s being renovated, and the renovators said that we were welcome to use the back and side yards to camp. There’s no one in the house, but the electric and water are on. So we strung my extension cord to our tents and had the electric for the computers. Then I fire my mac up and find that I have wifi in my tent – awesome wifi as a matter of fact. So good that I skyped my parents, Judy, and I’ll skype a client when I’m done blogging here. This is just so cool sitting here in Hotel Hillie doing internet as we’re doing. Everything seemed to click today.
Tomorrow we get on Rt 158, and take that to the northeast, past Montreal, and just continue towards Quebec City. We’ve been told that the mileage is such that it will take us 3 more 80-mile rides to get there, so Barney: looks like we’re there mid to late Saturday afternoon……..unless I can coerce Ryan to do a couple of monster days to shorten Saturday. I guess weather will also play a role in all of this to. Well, it’s almost 9pm here in Hotel Hillie, it’s dark, and I’m listening to the radio – in English – and I need to take advantage of the Skyping I can do here, so I’ll bid you all goodnight and hope to have another blog for you tomorrow night……..as it all depends on the wifi situation. All the best………pete
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