KRAC Tour!: Day41 - Back in the saddle again...

As is sort of my MO, I got a late start again. I was up at 05:30 but certainly wasn't going to get up then - so back to sleep and the 07:30 alarm was not gentle with me at all. Up by 08:00, I wandered down into Old Town one last time (though it did cross my mind that I could very easily just extend my stay for another couple of days) and hit up Cafe Crepe Breton for petit dejeuner. Then a quick stop at Paillard for some road fuel, and I was headed back to my room by just after 09:00. The Old Town of Quebec City seems to get a bit of a late start, seemingly hung over each morning from the previous night's revelry. It's not quite shopkeepers hosing down the sidewalks to get rid of the vomit from last night's excess a la New Orleans, but there is a definite feeling of most stores opening late because the majority of customers simply don't show up early - preferring to stay out late instead. I walked right into a half-empty restaurant shortly after 08:00, but when I left a little before 09:00 there was a line out the door and down the sidewalk.

Back to my room to pack up and I was rolling shortly after 11:00. It was ~10min to the ferry terminal, where I bought a ticket and then had to wait for the 11:45 ferry. It's a short ride, and I was off the boat by ~noon. There were a lot of people with bikes on the boat. A few tourers, a few roadies, and what appeared to be some people just out for a ride. When I got off the boat all the people with bikes made a beeline for the bike path. Me being me, I naturally opted for the road and followed the signs to lead the cars to the highways. Here's a tip: if you find yourself in a new area with a lot of cyclists and NONE of them are going the same way that you are, there might be a reason for that. The street leading away from the ferry terminal goes straight up a very steep pitch. It levels off to a false flat for 15-20m, and then straight up again. The 30-odd pounds I gained in Quebec were probably laughing at me, but I couldn't hear anything over my desperate wheezing and the sound of my heart trying to rip through my chest. It was a nasty climb made even worse by my not having had any warmup (a 10min downhill/flat roll to the ferry terminal followed by ~50min of waiting around). I reached the top and it was a good 25min before I stopped trying to throw up a lung. Though definitely not recommended for people with a history of heart or lung problems, I'm pretty sure I got the most direct route of all the cyclists. :p

The wind was strong today, but from my hotel room I couldn't tell the direction - there were flags blowing in all directions depending on where in th city they were placed. As it turned out, it was a SouthWest. Nice! Finally some tailwind. I "made hay", hammering out ~70k in the first 2:40 or so. The road on the S side of the St Lawrence is really nice, and though it rolls a bit it isn't terribly hilly. I stopped for a drink and to use the restroom, but the depanneur that I chose didn't have any facillities - so I had to backtrack (about 50m) to a rest area. There I met a girl who was riding solo - so I went over to say hi (en Francais) and she paid me the best compliment I've had al tour - saying that she hadn't realized that I was an Anglophone. Well - for the first little while a least until she asked me a question that I didn't quite understand, I guessed at what she was asking, guessed wrong, and my answer to her made no sense whatsoever. :p Then she asked "parlez vous Anglais?" and it turns out that she's Anglophone as well - though her French seems to be excellent (she does live here). This is the kind of gal that Leo would absolutely flip his lid over: extremely cute, bright, very passionate about ecology, vegan (I assume - that's the vibe I got and she mentioned vegan food a couple of times in a very short span, which non vegans wouldn't likely do), confident, "earthy", and a little quirky. She's taking a course some 300km from Quebec and decided to ride there - just because she can. She is also growing a "bike garden" - something that she thinks she might have invented because she didn't find any Google hits on it. Essentially she puts some seeds in cheesecloth and wraps various parts of her bike with it. Then she waters it ~15x/day while touring, and the plants grow on the bike. Yep - toally Leo. We chatted a bit about routes, daily mileage, things to see along the way, etc, and then we parted company - me hammering on down the road and her doing her thing at a leisurely pace (her end goal for the day was ~25k away). We were going more or less in the same direction, but I just can't move at that pace.

Not terribly long after that the wind shifted (it always does), and I got hit with a cross/head/cross for most of the rest of the day. I stopped for ice cream (en Francais!), and carried on to St Pascal - the largest of the three towns clustered near the 150/180k mark. It had gotten cold and was threatening to rain, so I wanted to get off the road. St Pascal didn't seem to have much in the way of motel options, and as I neared the edge of the opposite side of town I was thinking that I might have to press on. I saw a car about to pull out of his driveway so I did a quick u-turn and asked (en Francais!) if there were any hotels in town. The two men in the car had a brief convcersation and decided to lead me to the motel "we'll go slow". They did go slow, in fact, and in fact I had to ride the brakes downhill :p - but I was very grateful for their generosity with their time. Checked in (en Francais!) and plan to make an early night of it. No internet might make that a bit easier for me. :p

Stats:

Total Elapsed Time: 8:20
Actual Ride Time: 6:28
Total Distance: 159 km
Avg Speed: 24.5 kph
Max Speed: 55.1 kph

Cafe Maison: