8/2/09: Rt 132 east on the south side of the Gulf of the St. Lawrence to Rt. 197 south to Gaspe. Off segment; Grande Vallee, Quebec to Gaspe, Quebec; 60 miles.
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Damn did I – and I think WE – got our asses handed to us today! Good news though is that we just did the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic Ocean in 4650 miles!
But as usual, first, let’s get caught up with the rest of yesterday post internet café. We high tailed it up to a camping area up the road about a mile after our internet session, and got a spot right along the gulf. Very sweet – as you were not only just about on the water, but you could also hear the waves just pummeling the shoreline. Next step was to hit the eatery, and fill the old belly with more thick sauces and seafood. There was a restaurant just across the street from the campground, a motel restaurant. Now normally I avoid these kind of places like the plague. Motel restaurant……..no freaking way my friend, at least back home in the states. But here in Quebec, EVERY bloody place you go to has good food! A one star restaurant in Quebec is generally a 3 star restaurant back home. I’m not kidding here. I haven’t had the cash to do a real 3-4 star restaurant here in Quebec, but I’m willing to bet that it’s not a massive amount different from what we’ve been eating at thus far.
So we get our dinners in this motel restaurant and I get the seafood casserole, and shrimp crepes. Both homeruns. Barney bought a bottle of white wine and we all toasted to an amazing day of riding. Then we headed to downtown Grande Vallee for some sizzling nightlife. So we walked a good mile or so down Rt 132, back into town to the pub. Took us about 15-20 min to get there, and we climb the stairs to the second floor, open the door, and inside are about 4 people, who kind of look at us as if we’re aliens. So this is a Saturday night in downtown Grande Vallee? Pathetic to say the least. But I order two beers, and they have no good Quebec mirobrews, just the piss water Budwiser and such. The Canadian version of Bud is Molsons, so we got 2 Molsons EX, whatever that means. And the bill comes to $4.75, and I’m like, hell, that’s a pretty good deal despite the fact that these are crap beers. So Barney and I drink beer while Ryan has a water.
And this waitress with a tight, form fitting shirt, with her belly fat hanging over her hip bones, just does not want anything to do with us. She’s busy jabbering with her two buds at the bar, a chick who wraps her wine glass bottom with a napkin and rubber bands, and this dude who is singing every freaking classic 70’s rock song that comes on the air – the doors, the beatles, derrick and the dominos. It’s just totally obnoxious listening to this dude whistling and singing these old tunes. It’s like: “Dude, get freaking current here Pllllllllllleeeeeeeeeaaaaassssse.
So we’re goofing on this ridiculous scene we’re in, dude my age just belting out the oldies in totally broken English, chick with a napkin shoe on her drink glass, and chubby waitress with too tight cloths not giving a hoot about tending bar or even looking at us. So then Barney orders the second round, nearly having to fire off an M-80 to get her attention, and the waitress then asks for $9.50. He gave her a 20 and she gives him back like $10.50, and he does a double take. And he asks her why my round cost 4.75 and his cost 10.50? And she’s talking in French and I don’t have a freaking idea what the hell she’s saying, and he barely understands what’s going on. And then Classic Rock guy tells us in broken English that the waitress thought that I paid for just my beer, and not Barney’s and that the beer is $4.75 each. So that meant that I got one beer for the price of two. And she didn’t get it, and I didn’t get in, and Barney didn’t get it. Finally, I float another 5 spot to her to cover the “other free” beer and we’re even. At that point, game over. We chug our second beer and get the hell out of there. By this time it’s like 9pm, and one more person came into the pub, so we’re talking a total of us three and 3 others and the barmaid. This was Saturday night in Grande Vallee – listening to American classic rock and drinking cheap beer.
We hit the local grocery and got a 32oz microbrew beer for the campground and some munchies and walked back to camp. Barney and I got on the campground wifi, which is right next to the check-in booth, in this little gardening shack with a table and a couple of chairs inside, along with a whole host of tools and spare campground equipment. And we did some more internet duties, and I skyped Judy. Then, it was beddy bye Petey. No radio that night, just the sound of these waves breaking on the shoreline below us.
Woke up before Ryan……..amazing! Got up at 5:45, hit the shower and washed my cycling gear at the same time, and then threw them in the dryer, checked my emails, and went back and broke down my gear. Ryan was just rousting, and had a severe coffee jones on, saying he couldn’t go anywhere without his cup of java infused with 6 packets of sugar and 3 creams. Now I can go without my java if need be for a couple of hours, but it’s not what I want. Ryan, on the other hand, is a junkie, and can’t function without the java-sugar-cream infusion. Barney, I think he’s kind of like me. So I’m wondering if I’m going to take off solo or duo for the first hour or so, because we were told that the restaurants did not open until 9am here. Eventually we all get packed and head out, and wouldn’t you know it, but the restaurant we ate dinner at opened at 5am. So we’re there. I love to “tease” my appetite for an hour or two with some riding, but Barney and Ryan are not really down with that style of riding, so I was totally ok with feasting and then riding. I just know that a lot of burping is in my future while I climb.
Again, we hit the grand slam of house breakfasts, all of us ordering the two eggs, two toast, sausage, ham, bacon, hashbrowns, meat pie, fruit and coffee. Gone in 60 seconds! And I have to get into the peanut butter and the jelly packets for more food, using a spoon to spoon out the peanut butter and jelly into one spoonful at a time for more food. And I did two of these. Finally got on the bikes at 8:30am, our typical start time for riding, and were off. The lady at the campground had told Barney that the hills were not as bad to the east as what we had gone through yesterday. Now I just did this whole peninsula back in 07 by car, and I knew that we had some crushing stuff ahead of us, but again, people who don’t cycle really cannot conceive of the way it feels on a bike. So you get these different versions of a route. I KNEW, that we’d had a hard day, and I told the guys that there was no way we’d ride 72-80 miles like we did yesterday, with the climbing we had ahead of us today. Yesterday;s 16.5 average was yesterday, today…………..Ouch!
And right out of the gate we’re doing these wicked power climbs. Bloody relentless. That in itself told me that this was going to be a long day. From our day yesterday where we almost touched the hand of God, to today, where my legs were mushy noodles, not responding to anything, where my arse was tired and sore, where my brain wanted to see FIN to the day (French for finish). Funny how a trip like this works. On top of the world one day, and down at the bottom on the next. It ebbs and flows like life. Can’t fixate on any one day. You have to move on to the next and deal with it no matter how wonderful or how horrible it was. Game is that you have to make progress further down the road, closer to your goal, closer to finality, closer to getting that big hug from your loved ones and friends. Closer to the exclamation point on the year!
So we’ve got this tough day unfolding, and now add to that…….a substantial headwind out of the west. Yup, this was going to be a long day indeed. And we were dong these gnarly climbs where you’re shifing from big ring to middle ring to little ring, back up, and then shift again, through the whole gamut…..constantly. It was a shift fest. And then there was the “in the saddle/out of the saddle” repetitions, on and on and on. Then we began to hit the really crazy stuff, the 10, 12, 14, 15 percent climbs. And this was the first time in this trip that I can remember that I’d hit a sub-4 mph pace on a climb. I mean it was so steep that I was looking at 3.7mph on a climb, and I was worried that I was just going to topple over like Artie Johnson, just fall because I could not maintain a fast enough speed. Boom, over I go into a ditch. It was that steep. I was out of the saddle, in the easiest gear combination that my bike had, leaning over my handlebars, dripping sweat like a freaking rainstorm on my handlebar bag, and just hearing my own breathing cadence as I pushed on, up and up and up, over this massive wave crest of a hill climb. The sweat was just pouring down my face, and I had a clump of tissue in my shorts as I did yesterday, and would just wipe the hell out of my forehead, eye sockets and temples throughout the climb. It was crazy. My sweat rag was a mush of wet paper excrement after just two climbs, a big wet ball of gook.
And these big monsters just continued. Sometimes I would stop and shoot the fellers coming up, and going by. Other times I was just so tired that I wanted to just continue so as to end the agony, and not stop. Now Ryan and I had talked about getting a bite to eat and a coke at about 2 hours in, but at two hours there was nothing to stop at……..except at the top of climbs. And it took us until 3 hours in to get to a information center…….with another massive climb just 200 meters down the road. So I roll into the info center and talk to the young lady about many things, the first of which is food and drink. It happens that they have this little refrig in the place with soft drinks and candy bars, so I get a strawberry soda and a Pepsi and a candy bar. Ryan does the same. Then Barney rolls in, fresh off of a biff at slow speed while passing Ryan. He looked ok, just a bit scuffed on one side. And we just chill for a while trying to recover from the ass kicking we all had just received.
So we ask the young lady about the roads ahead, our choice of either taking Rt 132 east further up the line, or taking Rt 197 south straight to Gaspe. She tells us that there is more climbing, albeit rolling for the long way on 132, and flatter on 197. Now I love riding the coast, but we were just getting torched on this section of riding, and really not seeing anything but the crests of these massive climbs on every twist and turn. No shoreline riding here at all. So I suggested that we go south on 197 to Gaspe, and then take a day off there. This way we could dump gear and go back along 132 west and do some of the sightseeing without carrying the bloody gear. Both the guys liked this idea, so we decided to take 132 east to 197 south. But………we were told that there were 2 more BIG climbs prior to hitting the 197 junction in Riviere-de-Renald. So that was the plan. And right out of the gate, just past the info center, there it was, this totally sick climb, roaring off of the Gulf like a skyrocket into the stratosphere, straight up. And there I am again, sweating a rain of perspiration down onto my gear. I was literally jerking my head side to side to throw the sweat off of my brow so as to not let go of the handlebars, but to clear my eye sockets of sweat. I was going that slow, so trying to one-hand it while wiping the brow is not good on these climbs.
Get to the top, and just roll over one after another of the power climbs. Again, just relentless. You could descend down to a town, BUT, you knew that you were going to climb again. So the descents weren’t as sweet as they could be in the mountains. These descents spelled climbing. And today, climbing spelled pain. So finally we get to Riviere-de-Renald, and what do you know…….there’s road construction, and it’s gravel for about 3 miles descending into town. So I’m catching all this lime dust in my face as the cars are passing me, and I’m dodging chuckholes and large chunks of limestone, and loose gravel, and freaking cones. And it goes and goes and goes. At that point I was openly bitching out loud at how bullshit this was, the freaking gravel road, the loose crap that could take me down in a NY minute, the massive potholes, and the traffic behind me just itching for a chance to pass my sorry ass because I’m going too slow and I’m blocking the traffic flow in this construction zone. You get the pissed off guy who does his Mario Andretti impression as he passes you.
Got to the 197 junction and just chilled, waiting for Ryan and Barney. They arrived not too long after and we decided to get a bit to eat. Found a nice grocery, and I got shrimp, potato salad, Gatorade, and some papaya chunks. By this time it was about 80+ degrees out, and I was just roasting. We head outside of the store and sit on these big plastic fertilizer bags to eat our lunch. Ryan finished his food and just crashed on the sidewalk, while Barney and I were atop the bags. I finished my meal and then got a big 1.5 liter bottle of ice cold water – the first water of the trip that I bought, and I was damned ok with it to! I guzzled the water and crashed with my head leaning up against the next, higher stack of bags in the adjacent row. I was totally cooked. Could have fallen asleep there for sure. But finally, I suggest that we get going because PETE was on the edge of destruction!
And we got back on the road, Rt 197 south. And you just knew that despite what we’d been told, as always, that there was more to the story, more like………some additional climbing here. Not flat, not easy, but more climbing. And so it was. Ryan and I led it out and found that we were doing a very long and gradual climb….for miles……up. And I eventually pulled away, out of the saddle just chugging away in the big ring, and I eventually passed these French Canadian guys with gear, and they were doing their best Benny Hill impression (film speeded up to fast forward) to try not to have me pass them. By this sorry Yank’s ass was indeed going to pass them, and with a polite, “bonjour,” past I went, on my mission to get this damned day over with. And they kind of look at me like I’m a freak – no helmet, just bibs on with no top, sweat just flying off my body, up, out of the saddle banging away, pulling a damned U-haul trailer with a big mountain bike. I just had to giggle to myself as I stormed up this long climb.
Top out and I see Ryan back there, also doing his best to pass the French Canadians. Boom. Two Yanks go by. “Bonjour!” Then we just rip it the 5-6 miles down the descent to the bay. And there it is – the Atlantic Ocean. I’d talked about this day for a week now, and here it was. We’d just done our coast to coast. Ryan and I high fived each other, and then Barney joined us and gave us a very solid hand shake each. It took us 4650 miles to go coast to coast. But we still have at least 1350 miles left in the trip, so on to the city of Gaspe. We’d been told about a cheap motel/campground on the outskirts of Gaspe, but once we got up to it, we thought that it was way too far west of town, so we cycled up this last final kick in the ass hill. You know the hill, the one where you just don’t have a thing left in you and…….OOPS……just one more hill! So we grind it out a final time and then descend into town.
Gaspe is a nice little town. No strip mall crap here, just a nice little place with several pubs, restaurants, and a very cool wifi café. We’re told by a bus driver that the only cheap motel is the one we passed 8K ago, before the last hill. Same for the campground. And it’s almost 4:30pm and we’re all pretty tired. So Barney goes to information, much to the dismay of Ryan and I because it’s almost too late for the information center to be open on a Sunday. Ryan checks out hotels – all to expensive. Even a local bus driver tells us there’s not much available in town for cheap. Then Barney comes back and says we can get a room at the university for 80 bucks, and it’s 4 bedrooms! Bingo. This was a great deal, what with 4 bedrooms, a bath, separate toilet and a kitchen. As soon as we get in I say to Barney, “I buy you fly for beer?” And off he goes with my backpack, giddy as a six-year-old off to the candy store. Ryan did his subway thing.
Hi Pete. This is Barney's friend Norman in Sheffield. Good to meet you guys. Thanks for a great read. Congrats on the coast-to-coast triumph.
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