Day 73

8/3/09: Off day in Gaspe, Quebec.

Check out Barney’s blog on http://www.nwpassage2.blogspot.com/        

Man, I was just knocked out tired yesterday. And it kind of goes like that, and you know that you’re on your last leg at the end of 6, 7, 8, 9-10 days of straight riding when the body just rebels the next morning. Yep, that’s where I was today. Bad thing was that I had told Barney yesterday when we made plans for an off-day here, that we could do some “gearless” riding today as an off-day, and ride over to Forillion National Park, on the other side of the bay. Trouble was that my legs are like jelly today – knew it getting up, knew it walking into the café this morning, knew it when I noodled on the bike later. I really just needed a total day away from the bike.

         Ryan got up at the crack of dawn and headed out to get his coffee/sugar/cream vascular infusion. Now once I awake, I’m up. No going back for another hour or two of sleep. I can play the snooze alarm thing but I never truly get back to sleeping again, so I went with the flow and decided to get ahead on my business work of completing workouts for clients, so I headed upstairs to our kitchen/dining area of the apartment to work on the computer as Ryan was heading out the door. Looked outside and wow, what a perfect day to take as an off day, as it was gloomy, grey and raining. We had gotten away with a week of riding and not waking up to a steady rain of any sort, so this was like a Godsend. Worked for a bout 2 hours before Barney rousted, and then we went downtown, just about 3 blocks from the University lodging we’re in. We hit this awesome little wifi café, situated right along the bay. It has indoor/outdoor seating…..and the view is just great. Judy and I found this place back in 07 when we were up here, and I’ve looked forward for the last 2 weeks of stopping here and dining.

         So I get there and I see Ryan’s bike parked there. Walk in and he’s at a window table on his computer just grinning ear to ear, as he knows a GREAT café when he sees one! This place is just the bomb. Forget the franchise crap with the “theme” in virtually every town you go through. This place was unique as could be, with their own brand of coffee, grinding machines, great local menue, local breads and pastries, and a wifi signal that’s free and strong as a bullox. Can we PLEASE have a place like this back home in Hudson? So I order two breakfasts for a lovely waitress who speaks great English. I had asked her what the locals really like, and she suggested two different breakfasts – they did not have the ‘dejure Grandslam” breakfasts that we’ve come to expect, but the selection here was very good nonetheless. So I told her I was pretty hungry, and I’d take BOTH the breakfasts! She laughed and came back with a great cup of black java.

         I did my email gig sending our workouts and doing some skyping. The signal was so good here that I could have two browsers going at once with skype on to. Then comes the breakfasts – a nice big croissant sandwich with ham, sausage, egg, mao, and a kind of egg dish where the egg is in a bowl cooked with cheese that’s bubbled over the dish (a bit like French onion soup) and filled with meats and vegetables. They both were great. Oh how I’m going to miss Quebec cuisine when we leave this province in the next three days. We all hung here for a good two hours. Finally, Barney and I went back to the U to change into biking garb and to get our bikes. At that point I was still mulling over a half day’s ride to Forillion Park. But once we got on the bikes and headed back into town, and I did even the easiest grade up, I knew that my future lay back at our apartment, taking a nap and just resting. I was just so tired. So Barney and I tooled to the information center, with me hoping big time that there was a ferry service across the bay to the park. Nope. It was a 27K ride one way to the perimeter of the park. Fifty-four K ……………30 + miles of riding on dead legs, and having to go back up that final damned hill we climbed and descended as we entered town yesterday.

         So I encouraged Barney to go without me. He’s riding great, feeling great, and he’s on a vacation to, so I was really hoping he’d go seize the day on his own and enjoy this area. I’d been up through that area back in 07, and it’s stunning, and I’ve got some really neat pics to show for it, so I was content to miss out on the pic opps today in leu of napping on a bed and trying to recover for the next session of cycling. We stopped at the local train station briefly to check out train fees for Ryan and his trip back to Monkton, NB, and then Barney headed out to the other side of the bay while I rode to a local fish market and bought 10 bucks worth of smoked salmon. This fresh stuff is just mouth watering, and I bought two small pieces, while I could have gotten ………oh……maybe like 70 bucks worth. By this time the sun had come out and it was shaping up to be a pretty decent day. So I was happy that Barney could get out to Forillion for the day without overcast and rain.

         Rode back near the U, and was actually about to scope out another fish market that the info center lad had told us about when I ran into Ryan coming out of…….drum roll please………Subway. I was laughing out loud for gosh’s sake. Dude is on this eating roll that just won’t end today. Me, oh yea, I’m eating like a machine, but I tend to “tease” my appetite by waiting until the gremlin is doing summersaults in my belly, whereas Ryan is just from one place to the next, from one food to the next eating away. Now I probably consume as much or more food because when I sit down to eat I’m eating portions that will feed a small tribe of hunter/gatherers! I eat to the point of buda belly. Ryan grazes all day long and never gets that protruding belly that I tend to get around 6pm. And I tell him that I’m on the food prowl and that I’d just eating 10 bucks worth of salmon and I’m still killer hungry. He tells me to go in Subway, but I decided to do the “tease” until dinner time. That’s where I would do my damage. So I told him about the train stuff and suggested he go there and check out schedules and fares.

         Came back here to the appt. and just snoozed in my cycling shorts and top, on top of the bed, dead to the world for about 1.5 hours. I wake up to a disco program on CBC radio, look out the window and see Ryan doing the sun worshipping thing in the back of the U, in this big grassy stretch behind our appts. We finally came to a point in the trip where Ryan has to say adios, having planned to leave to take his daughter to So Cal to visit family and friends for a week. He’ll join back up on Aug 21 to go across to NFLD and finish the trip with me to Cape Spear. We knew this day would come for the past 8 months, and tomorrow it’s here. I’m especially happy as a clam to have made up so much ground on our trip that we got him to the Atlantic Ocean – coast to coast. Originally we were looking at him going home after Quebec City, but we were able to do the whole north shore of the Gaspe Peninsula and get down here to the Atlantic Ocean since we put in those crazy blitzing days in the prairie and through Ontario.

         This is going to be so amazingly different not having this guy on the trip now. Two and a half months together, laughing, goofing, sweating, suffering, hammering, climbing, loving this insane gypsy’s life on the road, meeting awesome people, and having experiences that will last a lifetime. How do you just turn that off? It’s a bittersweet kind of thing – happy to see him getting to go back to Hudson and So Cal to see his daughter after 2.5 months on the road, sad so see our duoship end tomorrow for the next 2.5 weeks. He’s going to bus it to Monkton, and then fly to Toronto, and bus it to Cleveland. But……he’ll be back with Judy and Bill to do NFLD with me, and hopefully with Barney. We sorted through his gear, and I got any of the tools and parts I may need for the remainder of out trip prior to NFLD.

         I’m very happy to have our newest recruit, Barney, to ride with as I move forward to the end of this adventure. He fits into this nutty group like a third pea in a pod. Now I don’t know if he’s proud of that, but I sure am. We’re having a great time with Barney, and I really hope he can continue to Cape Spear.

Barney just got back from his little trip to Forillion and had a great time. Right now we’re sitting up in the kitchen at the table, having some new Quebec mirobrews, eating unshelled peanuts, all three of us sitting here BS’ing and talking about the trip, training, you name it. We’re just chilling and enjoying our last bit of time together for a bit. I’ll shut it down for a bit and maybe pick up later after we dine tonight.

Listened to Kill Hannah for about a CD’s worth of songs with Ryan before we hit din din. Then we walked a block to a pretty nice place with very good food and very poor service. Kind of angry French Canadian waitress. We were all pretty floored at how she did her best to avoid us. Got a 2 buck tip from me on a 32 dollar bill. If she weren’t cashing me out it could well have been my first 0.00 tip in years. Anyway, will sit here with Barney and have a few more beers and then hit the hay. Ryan is to bed early as he has to get up at 3am to get ready and catch a bus out of here. Phase II of the trip begins tomorrow sans Ryan. Playing a little King Crimson to end the evening…..Epitaph………Goodnight………..Pete