Well yesterday was amazing. After 2 months and 4000 miles I really needed more than a day off. Part of the challenge of doing a trip with someone off Petes caliber is challenging myself to push to my limits, but also realizing I am not a professional sports coach who has 35 years of cycling in his legs. I have been cycling for 2 years now and absolutely love it, but riding 10 days straight and staying up late and spending time with my parents=burned out for the Ry Guy. This is the kind of burn out that is not solved by a nap, good nights sleep, or a lot of food. So I just rode about 20 miles yesterday to a town called St.Jerome and went to this nice farmers fruit stand. I ate an apple and a pear and got directions into the old downtown area. These parts of town have stunning architecture that dates back hundreds of years. I found great food and coffee as I spent the afternoon relaxing and trying to learn French. I emailed Pete and let him know I was going to just take it easy and meet him in Quebec.
After I hung out at this café I got on my bike and immediately this 78 year old French guy named Danielle asked me where I was riding. I told him where I started and where I was going and he told me he had ridden across Canada when he was 65! Crazy. He insisted that I have dinner with him and stay at his house. On the way he told me he used to be a hair dresser and had an amazing graden full of flowers. I began to think-great I just got picked up by a distinguished, gay, french, flowery hairdressing cyclist named Danielle. He is going to take me to his house. Drug me. Lock me in his basement and torture me with stale baguettes. He was a super cool guy and none of my stereotypes fit him at all. He lived on the river. Had an amazing garden. He fed me soup, spaghetti, juice and bread. After dinner he told me he wanted to show me his favorite town called Saint Savaeur. It was about 20 minutes away by car. It resembled and Old European Skiing Village. This place was breathtaking. It had 52 restaurants in a small area. Each of them were packed with people enjoying the evening outside as the weather was gorgeous. It was the most densely populated place I have seen thus far. People everywhere in about a 2 block radius. He showed me the ski slopes. I had no idea that places this beautiful were so close to where we have been riding. Even on a trip of this length you only get to see places like this with a locals knowledge. We have learned on this trip to always ask the locals where to and how to get there. There advice is always the best. On the way home we stopped by this local meat place and Danielle told the guy who ran it what I was doing and he couldn’t believe it. He insisted that I try his best cut of meat. It was amazing. The farther along we get the more people sort of trip out that we have ridden our bikes 4000 miles. They trip out more when they find out we are pulling 75-80 pounds of gear. Then they trip out even more when they find out the route we have taken. Most people who go across Canada take the Queen Elizabeth Highway. It is the quickest, flattest, and most direct route. It also has the least amount of climbing possible. It starts in Vancouver. Pete put together the longest, toughest, most beautiful ride mostly on secondary roads. The ironic thing about the trip is that the harder the ride the more beautiful places you get to experience because most of the breathtaking places in this country have been in the hills with tremendous views of lakes, rivers, and beaches. You only get to see these places by climbing up them on your bike.
We got back to the house and watches Canadian football and had strawberry pie with ice cream. I was out like a light and had 10 hours of sleep. I got up today, said thanks to Danielle, and went to a café to do this journal and have coffee. Today I have no plans except to enjoy the day. Who knows where I will end up.
7/24/09: Segments 63, 64, and 65 http://www.4thehealthofit.net/segment_htmls/Segment63.html
http://www.4thehealthofit.net/segment_htmls/Segment64.html
http://www.4thehealthofit.net/segment_htmls/Segment65.html Berthierville, Quebec to Quebec City, Quebec; 116 miles.
The headwind from hell: Part III. If you’re not a cyclist, then the headwind is kind of immaterial to you, as you’ve never really experienced the pain and mental anguish the a severe HW can induce. If you ride, and ride a lot, then you’re familiar with headwinds, say for 5 miles at a crack, maybe 10, maybe even like 40 or 50 into a HW. The HW is this invisible entity that can really make you dig deep inside yourself to mentally and physically endure. It can beat you. It can crush you. It can make you temporarily insane. It can make you question every motivation you have to continue. It can test you on virtually every level. And that’s the theme for today’s blog.
Now to digress back to the start of the day. I slept sooooooo well last night. Got up about 6:45am, and the first thing I did was to open the curtains to see it if it was raining, which has been the forecast for the last 3 days – rain with an 80% chance for Thursday, Friday and Saturday. It was almost like I needed a drum roll before unveiling the curtain. Ok, drum roll please……..very cloudy, almost ominous looking…….but no rain. Ok, then gameplan set: I was going to shoot for Quebec City today. I hit the hotel continental breakfast for a quick dose of java, and some bagels, fresh fruit, and some OJ. Then back to the room real quick to change into my disgusting, stinky, repulsive, obnoxious cycling gear – sweat stained and foul from just two days of wear. But I couldn’t wash last night because I didn’t have enough tome to dry by morning. So I figured on wearing these sickening things one more day.
Got ready to roll by 7:45am, loaded the bike and set the yak on the bike in the hotel hall, and rolled her out before 8am. Once outside, it just smelled like rain, and the wind even felt like rain. Yup, wind, but not as bad as yesterday. So I got it going with a kind of singular focus on riding to Quebec. Now at that point I really did not know exactly how far it was from Bertheirville. Didn’t want to actually. But I was assuming it would be about 120 miles. So I headed out to Rt 138 east, right back into a headwind, not too bad though, and I was able to clip along at about 14.5 mph. Immediately hit a detour, which would have sent me another 2 miles to the north, and then 2 more miles to the south to get back on, and my thought process was: hell, I’m already looking at 100+ miles – no deal on detour. So I just plowed ahead, and had to walk through a field, and then ride through a field…BUT parallel with 138! I’m good. No additional mileage thanks.
It was a pleasant ride for the first 2 hours, as I passed produce and animal farms and just wonderful countryside. Then, as I entered the city of Trios-Rivieres the situation changed, and things got congested and urban. And slowly but surely it just turned into a cluster F, what with tons of traffic, terrible, cruddy road surfaces and a gazillion traffic lights. I had wanted to stop at the 3-hour mark to coke and candy my bloodstream, but not in this mess, so I just wanted to get the hell our of all of that. And this place was huge, with twists, turns, and lane changes for the next 40 min of riding. So I just kept it going. And I just always seem to do this to myself – where I go, go, get hungry, get the coke thirst going, and then just keep going some more, and more, and more. To find JUST the right place. My idea for this was to find a nice little store, with no traffic where I could by my liter of coke, my candybar, and sit on some steps for 10-15 min and relax. Trois-Rivieres, and all its environs did not fit that bill.
So I just kept it rolling, out of the city, out of the burbs, and out into the this wonderful stretch of road that shifted out of the farmlands and right along the St. Lawrence River. It was at this point that I saw my first sign for mileage to Quebec City: 122K. And the answer is: 75 miles. It was there that I was dead set on making it there today. With that set, I just relaxed, fought the light headwind, and enjoyed the scenery. And it was just gorgeous what with the wide river and these tiny little towns every 3-10K. Now these were my kind of places to take a rest break. So I just waited until I found a nice little town with a general store. I found it in the town of Saint Ann de la Perade. Cute little place with houses and small little businesses right along the river. Found that perfect storm of stops. Went into this little general store, got the liter of coke and two Kit Kat bars, and went out and sat on the steps to consume.
Finished up my snack and I was like, “damn am I tired…….long day ahead dude!” Got back on the bike and the old butt just did not like sitting. I’d get out of the saddle to stretch the legs and the shorts would just kind of stick to my arse, and I’d have to move from side to side to unstuck the cheeks. It’s a gnarly feeling. Part sticky, dirty shorts, part sweaty butt. The combination creates a super glue of sorts. That feeling is sickening to unstick the butt cheeks from the shorts. Kind of like pulling a layer of skin off of the butt. And I was doing it a lot. Now round about this time the wind really picked up, just about as bad as my horrible day on the Bruce Peninsula, where I was cussing and screaming at the wind. It was BAD. Canadian flags were standing full in the air. Weeds and leaves were bent over – all in my direction. My day just got exponentially tougher. And as each half hour went by the headwind got that much worse, until it was a freaking gale. Out of the saddle on the flats, just to pick up a half a mile per hour. In the saddle, gearing down, just to save my poor aching legs.
I’d do my best to sample the wonderful scenery along the river, but it always came back to that freaking headwind, just pushing, shoving, blasting me backwards. And there were stretches where I was out away from the river, out in the wide open farmlands where I felt as if I was dangling in a windstorm, being blasted into hell. So I had to do self talk many a time, just to kind of keep my sanity, especially when I know that I had a 100+ mile ride to look at. At least there were twists and turns in the road as it meandered along the river. That was a Godsend.
Pulled into a roadside rest about 6 hours into the ride to get water, and I noticed a couple of cyclist getting ready to hit the road. Went inside the restroom and just guzzled 2 bottles of water, like some dude on a deserted island who hadn’t had a drop in days. The humidity was starting to take a toll on me, as I usually don’t guzzle water like that unless it’s really humid out. My disheveled, brown stained, formally white Underarmor was totally soaked. I mean wringing wet. So I wanted to make sure I was drinking a bunch from there forward. I got the water Buda belly going, and get straight-away back on the road. And I could make out the pair of cyclist around each corner. I just kept my tempo pace and eventually caught them. They were a French Canadian couple from Montreal, and they were doing a Montreal to Quebec City ride over the course of several days. Luke and Lynn were they’re names, and they were very friendly. Luke was hoping to do the Trans Can next year, and as he and I were up front talking, side by side, we must have upped the pace too much because Lynn was off the back several times.
I accelerated out of the saddle at one point and PING……I knew from the sound that it was a spoke, and I looked down at the rear wheel, and sure enough it had a weeble to it. So there I was, wondering if this new wheel was going to ping and pong on me the rest of the trip. Just 3 days with the yak and a spoke is out. I still have just too much freaking weight – most notably the cases that house my computer and my good camera gear. This crap adds up to a good 25-30lbs. So from there forward I tried to not “jump” when I accelerated out of the saddle. It was this quick acceleration that I think popped the spoke. So anyway, I rode with Luke and Lynn for about a half hour, until we hit the hills, the hills that Luke told me were for the next 30 miles to Quebec. Luke kind of jumped me on the hill, and I was like, “dude, I’m pulling a bloody yak, if you think I’m going to race you up this hill, you’re crazy.” In the meantime, I shifted into the middle ring and just took it steady out of the saddle. Problem was that we both left Lynn high and dry, and WAY off the back.
So Luke turns around at the top of the climb and rides back down towards Lynn, and I can kind of hear them talking in French, with Lynn not sounding too happy. And THAT was the end of my riding with Luke and Lynn. I think Lynn gave old Luke shit about dropping her and pushing the pace. So I did the next 20 min and several climbs solo. Made my second real stop at a gas station/store, and couldn’t stomach the thought of another coke, so I got a Power Aid and a sandwich, which really went down well, and seemed to bring me back a bit.
Luke had told me that this summer has been crazy in that the winds are now blowing from the east, where as they normally always blow from the west. It’s been a cool, rainy, dreary summer thus far up here in the Quebec City-Montreal area according to him. And this freaking easterly headwind was just relentless. I could feel the energy just being sucked out of my body as if a vacuum were attached to my inters. As the day wore on, the wind just got stronger and stronger. And my muscles were beginning to ache and throb from trying to hold my 13 mph average. Signs for Quebec City: 37K, 30K, 22K 16K, and the wind was just relentless. The only savings grace was me being able to look over my right shoulder at the St. Lawrence River, and the bluffs on the other side. On this north side, at the top of the climbs the vistas were just splendid, with little cottages and homes perched atop the highlands with the river stretching out there below in this magnificent shimmering silver field. Look hard enough and you could see the whitecaps splashing and sloshing against the shoreline. This wind was brutal.
And then I see the sign for 10K to go, and I started to notice all these hotels along the way, and one in particular was called the Airport Hotel. Now this had significance because Barney was hoping to get a hotel near the airport, so he would have a short taxi ride. So I stopped, and sure enough I was right in proximity to the airport. So I thought about booking a room right then and there, to end my misery of headwind riding. But figured that I better check my emails and call him first just in case he could not make a flight today (he was flying on stand-by). Rode another 1 and there was a Subway. Went in, got a 12 incher, devoured it in 3 min, and then pulled my computer, plugged in the aircard and looked at my emails. And low and behold there was an email from Barney’s wife Valerie, saying that she had already booked a hotel room at the Super 8 on Rt 138 – a gift she said from her to us.
This was just too good to be true. And then I got an email from Ryan saying he was ok, and was just going to take it easy coming into Quebec City. I emailed back telling him about the hotel and that I made it to the city today. Then I asked the sub guy how far the Super 8 was from Subway, and he tells me it’s 3 blocks. Like – dream come true! Called Barney on Skype, and told him I was on my way to the hotel, and he said that he couldn’t get on the scheduled flight, but was getting the next one. Then off to the hotel. It was like a 3 minute bike ride. Checked in, called Valerie, called Judy, called Tom and Della. Then waited for Barney.
He arrived at about 8:30pm with bike in box but no luggage. It is hopefully on one of the next two flights. We hit a buffet next door – Chinese Buffet – and then almost argued with the manager about getting the buffet rather than alacart because it was “too late” they said. “Not enough food left” Bull freaking shit! Tons of food there I said, “I’ll take the buffet! Barney to. Then went through the same thing with the waitress – “not enough food left, too late,” she said. “Um, I’ll take the buffet!” I insisted. And buffet it was, much to their consternation. And I ate like a bloody pig. Barney, he just did a plate. But you wait, get 2, 3, 4, 5 days of riding in and the old gremlin with invade Barney’s body just like it did to Ryan and I.
No comments:
Post a Comment