Today was unreal. A perfect day. Woke up to sunshine coming into my tent flap when I opened it. Cruised down and got coffee and this greasy spoon place right by our campground. After my 1st cup I mosied back to my tent to pack up. I told Pete and Barney of our Breakfast spot. The food was amazing and it overlooked the ocean. Just spectacular. We started riding and it was Sunny. Tailwind. Spectacular Coastal riding. It reminded me of one of those days surfing back home where I would just pinch myself because of the epic conditions. I was soft pedaling next to Pete at 23.9 mph laughing and talking about life. We would ride for a while and have pastry and a coke. Then we rode some more and had a sub and some chips. This continued until we had about 12 miles until we got to our destination for the day. THEN it happened. Our hardest hour of climbing since we did Sunwapta Pass some 2 months ago. The grade was 14% and Pete took the pictures to prove it so you don’t think this is some wild fisherman story. 14% is a big boy climb for sure. I was in my smallest gear. I was amazed at how easy it was for me. Perhaps I ate the right combination of foods or something. It is one of the most interesting things that I have yet to figure out about cycling. I am convinced that Exercise, Nutrition, and Rest go together and play off of each other. I just wish I knew how to properly mix them together so that the climbing would feel as easy as it did today. I climbed massive hills for about 45 minutes and barely felt winded at all. I made sure to not raise my heart rate to much and I found a great rythym.
I am sitting here in this cool little Café right on the ocean in Quebec and I cant believe that I am staring at actual waves. Dad-if I had your longboard I would be out there right now having fun on some sloppy 1 footers just like I used to on a bad day at Bolsa with you and Lloyd. More tomorrow. I'm out.
8/1/09: Rt 132 east on the south side of the Gulf of the St. Lawrence. Off segment and segment 74 http://www.4thehealthofit.net/segment_htmls/Segment74.html Sainte-Anne-des-Monts, Quebec to Grande Vallee, Quebec; 72 miles.
Hey, when you get done reading our blog, check out Barney’s blog on http://www.nwpassage2.blogspot.com/ He’s got a great sense of humor and a very good recollection of some of the many things that I completely miss. It’s fun to read how Barney viewed the day. Anyway, now you have two blogs to read!
Ok, last night. Well, we blogged and blogged and I worked on my computer for a while. And then it was time to eat. I’d waited long enough, and I wanted to don another Quebec night of feasting high cholesterol, high fat, creamy, buttery, delicious foods that are wonderful to taste and oh so fattening! So we walked down the boardwalk out of the campground, to the east into town, right along the Gulf. Stopped at a pub at first and had a beer. It was an ok Quebec beer, but nothing to write home about. And we looked at the menu. Nope. It had none of the seafood that this little restaurant had when we first got to town. This restaurant is joined with a fish market, so the stuff is very fresh indeed. And we had gone inside and checked the menu out prior to getting our campsite. It looked good. And besides, it had CHOWDER. So, it was pretty much a done deal as far as where we were going to dine. The pub’s menu just didn’t stack up. So we walk down another quarter mile to the seafood restaurant. And it was pretty packed. Good sign!
Go in and I just wanted to order like 50-60 bucks worth of stuff off of the menu. And then Barney pointed out the “Specials” section, and on it was two of the three things I wanted, at like half the price. Again, done deal. So I ordered the clam chowder with the seafood pancakes and the sugar pie for dessert. Man I was just on fire starving, and I even contemplated ordering a 2-pound side of muscles, but my wallet convinced me otherwise. So my chowder comes. It’s very good, but not the homerun that we had the night before. Very good though, and a homer in any place back in the states. But up here, chowder is taken into the stratosphere. And then comes my entrée – the seafood pancakes – actually crepes. It was mouth watering, amazingly great. Damn, filled with shrimp, cod, scallops, and crab, all tucked inside this massive crepe, with a thick, wonderful, cream sauce. It was just beautiful!
Then came the sugar pie. Again, wow. It just exploded in my mouth. I have not eaten like this for a long, long time. Subway – going to have to say goodbye to you for a while, because on the Quebec seafood train right now. We finish and watch this spectacular sunset from the restaurant. And it just goes and goes. So we finally get outside and there’s still a bit of red glow in the sky, right over the Gulf. It’s one of the best I’ve seen on this trip and I didn’t have my good camera and tripod, so I just did these crazy hand held shots with a super high ASA. Got some very neat stuff. Asked Barney if he was key for another beer at the pub. He was done for the night, which was good for me to, so we just wandered back to the campground along the boardwalk and I just hit the hay. Turned on the radio and listened to a station out of Boston, I think it was WBZ, and I was gone. Turned the radio off at about 2am, and then slept again until 6am. The early sunrise is just amazing, and it’s blinding in the tent even at 6am. So I was up and in the gameroom checking my emails for about 15 min, then broke the tent down and packed gear.
We all got it going around 7:30am, and rode just across the bridge to a little diner right on the Gulf. It was already pretty toasty out, almost too hot to sit inside, but we opted to sit in there because the westerly wind was just humming outside. And again, we ordered the big boy, the king of breakfasts, the holy grail of the house – two eggs, sausages, bacon, ham, toast and home-make jam. Add 3 cups of java to the mix and that was my breakfast, and so to for Barney and Ryan. The morning was bright, blue and sunshine. Awesome day to ride. So we were on the road by 8:30am, joking about another massive Quebec breakfast.
Did a smallish climb out of town and then it was down along the Gulf, for miles and miles, on this wonderful berm that was nearly a lane wide. We had a tailwind that was letting us softpedal at about 20mph on the flats. Sos we’d get these amazing flats right along the Gulf that would go from anywhere from 5-8 miles at a stretch, and then you’d do a small climb up and over a cape, and then right back down along the Gulf again. Now I’ve seen some pretty amazing landscapes on this trip, but I’d have to say that today was one of the most spectacular rides of the trip. It was the perfect storm of good karma – Beautiful cloudless sky, awesome tailwind, spectacular scenery and great company. Ryan was just going crazy, holding his arms up in the air and saluting as we were cruising along the Gulf with waves breaking on the breakwall right up against the left hand side of the road. I mean the water was just 20 meters away, and the smell of the sea just permeated the air. I’m an Ohio boy, but the smell of kelp, salt, fish, I just love it, and I was just sucking it up on this ride.
And we’re all in a state of ecstasy at this point, each on his own personal high. I mean this is what I live for, this is the exclamation point on life, this is what I pedaled 4500 miles for, enduring freaking bulldogs, rain, cold, miles and miles of mountain climbing, flats that would never end, and legs that were so tired that I didn’t think I could pedal another pedal stroke. It all came to me at this point. And I was on cloud nine. The raw beauty of this place is beyond description. Now if any of you would ever like to take a walk on the wild side, I garentee that this place, going around the Gaspe Peninsula is grade A spectacular and a must-see on any cyclist’s hit list. It WILL blow your mind! Barney had told Ryan that he’d have to get the smile on his face surgically removed after today. It was THAT amazing.
Now we were expecting a ton of hill climbing today, and I’d just been here in a car 2 years ago, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember all the these flat stretches along the Gulf that we were riding today. I think that just goes to show that doing something like this in a car is so totally different than doing it on the bike. On the bike you feel the wind, smell the sea air, and experience the environment in all it’s good and bad. You’re not confined to this little temperature controlled shell, where you just watch the scenery go by like you’re watching a movie in fast forward. It’s just such a totally different deal.
So anyway this ride thus far was like a gift from the Gods. We would cycle through these awesome little towns that are right smack dab on the Gulf, with amazing little commercial buildings, cute little houses and cabins, sandy and rocky beaches, and these massive black cliffs of shale towering over us all along the way. You’d see warning signs about watch for falling rocks, you’d see signs warning of the waves knocking cars off of the road (seriously: I have pics to back this one up). It was just one totally off of the charts stretch of riding – World Class! So we finally saw this big shimmering ribbon of highway off in the distance, going straight up the mountain, as the mountains along the coast here are part of the Chic Chok range. Ok guys, party’s over! And this was a climb, probably 9-10-11% grade, forcing us to hit the little cookie and just hammer out of the saddle for about 5 min to surmount it. And just before the climb was a little town, and I was praying that Barney would not want to stop for food and drink prior to the climb. That would have spelled disaster for my legs. Nope. We all hit the climb and just pushed like hell, all of us together going over the top. It was a ball buster to be sure, a gnarly little power climb, and a total shock to the legs after doing all those flat miles along the Gulf.
We got to the top and there was this little town up there with a general store. We pulled in and started to feed the little gremlin that was complaining in each of our stomachs. I ended up getting the cooked shrimp, some crab legs, a cole slaw, and a Gatorade. Bam gone. Then I went back in and got my coke. After that Ryan and I just lay out on this porch that was adjacent to the store, laying in the warm August sun. And it hit me today…..we’ve been gone for 2.5 months. Good gosh, we started on the last week of May, and now it’s August. And we’re 4500+ miles in, and essentially we’ve gone ocean to ocean, but we won’t celebrate that until we reach Perce on the tip of the Gaspe peninsula, out there in the Atlantic. We’re in our own little world, getting up each morning, packing gear, riding and riding and riding, and then finding a place to sleep and eat, and then doing it all over again. It’s like a gypsy’s life. All you know is you’re more than likely to do a ride the next day and it’s a ride you’ve never done before. It’s excitement, anticipation, caution, revelations, wonderment and adventure. Coming back home to a stable life is going to be………weird. But I just cannot wait to see friends and family. And now the countdown is on for Judy and Bill to meet us at the ferry docks at North Sidney, NS, for that final stretch on the island of Newfoundland.
So all of that is streaming through my head as I’m taking my “nooner” in the hot Quebec sun. And I was telling Ryan how I dreamt of this moment way back on 08, when we were doing training rides out into the hinterlands of Portage and Geauga Counties. And now, there we were, way the hell out on the eastern tip of the Gaspe Peninsula. Spectacular. Well, we finally get going, and get the cobwebs out of the legs. There was a sign for Grand Vallee – 20K. We weren’t sure if we’d get more easy riding along the Gulf……….or…………climbing. And I guess you know what we got. Yup, climbing, and this was some of the most challenging climbing since we left the Icefields Parkway up in Alberta. This stuff was steep, long, challenging, and unrelenting. The first of the series of climbs was just a monster, and we could see it from miles away, a shimmering ribbon going up into the mountains like a freaking elevator. And I commented to Barney that this was how I first viewed Sunwapta Pass on the Parkway. It looked so steep that I thought it was a vista road, or something other than the main highway. Wrong! Such was the case with this monster.
You know it’s going to be a big climb when you’re already in the little cookie, and the easiest gear in the back, right from the get-go. Such was the case here. I mean I was in my pie-plate, out of the saddle, in the saddle, out, in, out, in. Amazing. You feel as though you’re riding in slow motion, creeping along at a snail’s pace, never really able to reach the top. And just when you think you’re at the top, it’s a false flat, and you just continue to climb even higher. Again and again and again. Barney and Ryan were climbing really strong today. And a guy who we had hooked up with on the flats, Chin who is riding around the peninsula, was gone in no time. All three of us were riding really well. The three musketeers were cranking, despite the severe nature of this beast. Ryan’s laughing and shouting from behind, totally amazed at the steepness and length of this thing, and Barney is just putting it down, having finally found a grade and length of hill that is now giving him a good go.
So we’d pseudo top out, then do a little woop-de-do descent, and then climb like hell again for 5-10-15 min. Up and up and up. This was 20 K of pure climbing, and the hardest climbing we’ve done since Alberta and the Canadian Rockies! I’d stop, take some pics of the guys coming up, and then climb again. Over and over. And there was a point were I was just feeling totally in the groove, kind of like the day when we kicked ass on Kicking Horse Pass coming up to Banff. The out of the saddle felt really good, and with the wind behind my back it was just wonderful. The only down point was me as a sweat machine – with sweat dripping down my face so bad that my front handlebar bag was getting drenched. Looked like a rainstorm was hammering it. And I’d occasionally pull out this clump of napkin that I got from the store, and totally wipe down my forehead, eye sockets, and brow. This little clump of napkin was now a sodden, soaking mess. I’m a bloody sweat machine in this kind of heat.
No comments:
Post a Comment