Days 44 & 45

Day44

I awoke to the sound of a happy infant, babbling to herself.  I dunno about you guys, but to me that's a pretty pleasant way to wake up.  I got a very slow start to the day using the hostel internet access to TCB, so I got a very late start - rolling out by noon.  Campbellton is right on the sea, and the old highway that follows the coast is quite nice.  I ended up riding through a closed road where a parade was about to go through, the cop waiving me on as bicycles don't count as traffic - so I got to ride down a street lined with people waiting for a parade and not entirely sure what to make of me.  :p  Not a lot of hills, though there was one NASTY sucker that sneaks up on you as you make a 90degree right hand turn first, and don't see it until you're stopped at the signal - so there's no time to gear down. 

It was WINDY.  WINDY WINDY WINDY WINDY WINDY.  Just think - in a couple of weeks you'll be back at work.  Enjoy it, dammit!  More wind, more wind, more wind.  I love this.  Truly, I do. 

About 40k out of Miramichi it got hilly.  Pretty significantly so, actually.  It was dark again, so although I could see the road very well I had no real sense of perspective - but they were definitely hills, and not small ones.  One just outside Miramichi I swear was a 10min climb - and that was me climbing well, not grinding. 

I had made arrangements to stay at another hostel this morning.  Hosteling gives me a different perspective than does hoteling/moteling, or camping.  In this particular case the hostel was owned by a Donald Sutherland lookalike, who was very friendly and tried very hard.  It turned out that I was one of two customers, and the only one he liked.  :p  The other, my roommate, was a drunk guy who got up on occasion to ramble and then would wander off - or pass out again.  He's from Miramichi but was staying in a hostel for reasons unknown to me.  Remember when I said that I was having a hard time understanding the French out here?  Now I'm having difficulty with the English...


Stats:

Total Elapsed Time: 10:40
Actual Ride Time: 9:47
Total Distance: 199.58 km
Avg Speed: 20.3 kph
Max Speed: 60.1 kph




Day45

Today should have been a very easy day.  A large part of the route followed the coastal highway, so it shouldn't be terribly hilly.  The wind is always a question, but there's not much one can do about that.  It was windy, but the larger problem was me.  I was just tired, and feeling like a Spanish Chevy ("no va").  There were some hills, but nothing significant.  I had a couple of mediocre meals (disappointng, really given that I'm finally on the ocean again) but I was pretty happy to be on the ocean again.  I'd been told that the beaches and camping in Shediac are fantastic, but when I got there I saw rows of trailers and campers spaced 4m apart, and tents about 1.5m apart.  Mostly in fenced in fields.  Maybe the campsites down by the water are much better, but that sucks if you ask me.  I found a halfway decent motel and checked in hoping for an early night. 

I was also fortunate that I spotted and resolved a fair sized scheduling issue before it royally messed things up for me.


Stats:

Total Elapsed Time: 8:15
Actual Ride Time: 6:34
Total Distance: 136.49 km
Avg Speed: 20.7 kph
Max Speed: 39.7 kph


The last "round number" milestone...

Day43 - Just Rollin'

I woke up very tired, to the sound of a baby crying in the room next to me. The very same child that had been crying the night before. Breakfast was a pretty weak buffet, but it was included in the price of the hotel - so I choked down what I could and after a slow pack was rolling by 11:20.


The winds weren't terribly strong, but it was a head/head cross. The interior of NB is extremely hilly. Some of them are moderate rolling hills. Others, steep and nasty. Others made me wonder if I was back in BC - they were LONG, not terribly steep (5-6%), and did I mention long? I was feeling decent. Not completely flat, but not peppy either. It was a fairly long day (especially given what time I'd started) and I wanted to move quickly but conserve as much energy as possible. The wind and hills weren't helping...


I passed the most awesome mailbox in the history of the free world, and stopped to take a picture. Some people across the street yelled at me in French, but I couldn't understand them. As I move farther from Quebec and deeper into NB, the French gets harder and harder to understand.


More rolling, and more people yelling at me from a lawn. I waived, and they yelled more - urgently. So I circled back to see what was up and a lady came down and addressed me in French. I didn't understand a damned thing she said. A couple of older guys from back up where they were all sitting yelled something unintelligible. She switched to English. They had guests from Ontario over and were roasting corn on the cob - and wondered if I wanted some. The guys up on the lawn had been yelling "ble d'inde", which aparently is French for corn on the cob. Corn sounded pretty awesome, but I had ~55k to go, less than an hour of daylight, and a lot of hills in front of me. I went up to chat with them anyhow, as they seemed so friendly and curious. A bunch of them took pictures of/with me, and they offerred me wine as well. I laughed and told them if I had wine I'd end up under one of their trees. In retrospect I'm sure they would have been happy to feed me and let me camp there - if not even offered me a bed. Sometimes "touring" still escapes me. :p They warned me about a big hill, the dangers of moose, and I was on my way.


The daylight was fading and I was getting cold. I stopped to put on my rain jacket and turn on my rear flashers. The headlight was already on. I hit the big hill that they had warned me about, and was surprised to find myself feathering my brakes. Normally I wouldn't touch them on a decent like this, but I was really tired, pretty cold, and not 100% confident about my "sharpness". Better safe than sorry. After the descent there's a long section of false flat that really sucks the life out of you, and then it's about an aeon into town. I rolled into town well after full darkness had hit, ever thankful for my super awesome headlight and dynohub. I've not made a tonne of use of this thing, but it's been well worth the cost and weight of the system.


I also saw another moose! It was standing near the side of the road, and I passed it at ~10m. I stopped a little farther than that (just in case) for a picture, and then continued on my way.


Once in town I spotted an area where I could stealth camp if I had to, but I really didn't want to camp tonight. I was cold, tired, and in need of warmth and comfort. There were four coaches parked outside the Quality Inn. Not a good sign. I rolled on and stopped at a gas station for chocolate milk, and to see what my options were. Quality Inn, Super 8, and a HoJo. Cool. I rolled to the HoJo and they were completely full. Damn. On to the Super8, which was also full. The guy working there wasn't terribly friendly or helpful, and told me that I should have made a reservation. "It's high season - you should have reserved. Everyone in town is completely sold out. There's nothing left. You need to reserve in advance." Yes, thanks for that buddy. Time for the pathetic cyclist angle. I pointed to the next town on my map and asked how far it was, and if there were hotels there. "About 15min, but they might be full as well - we've been turning people away for a long time now". "Hmmmm... 15min on the highway is 1, maybe 1.5hrs for me. Do you have a number for them?" He was surprised to learn that I had come by bicycle (all the way from Vancouver!) and all of a sudden got very helpful. He called the hotel in the next town and they were sold out. So he called a few other places that "he was keeping as backup" and they were also sold out. Then he told me: "There's a lighthouse..." "a lighthouse?" "Yes. They have a room there. Sometimes they'll let you sleep there." "Okay..." "A friend of mine used to work there. You have an inflatable bed? If you have nowhere else to go, come back here. You can sleep in one of the meeting rooms - somewhere inside." Score another one for the pathetic cyclist routine! Apparently (at least in NB), being on a bike makes one a target for sympathy. I'll take it. :D


The lighthouse turned out to be a hostel, (attached to the lighthouse), and I got a bed in a dorm for $25. But they had hot showers, internet access, laundry (though it was too late for me to care about that), and a kitchen. The room was also quite empty - just another guy and his 1yr old daughter in a crib. (mom was in the women's dorm, but baby was in the men's because it was pretty much empty).



Stats:


Total Elapsed Time: 10:40

Actual Ride Time: 9:50

Total Distance: 206.88 km

Avg Speed: 21.0 kph

Max Speed: 71.9 kph



My hostel - "The Lighthouse"

Moose #2:

The greatest mailbox ever!

Day42 - Leaving Quebec

I was a bit confused this morning because the clock in my room was set incorrectly when I checked in, and in my fatigued state last night I set it to PST (my blackberry doesn't pick up local time from the transmitter - "World Edition" indeed).  On the road and rolling by 10:00, yesterday's brief respite from the wind proved to be just that - brief.  I slowly chugged along thinking: "Soon I'm going to make a 90 degree turn, which will turn this head/cross into a tail/cross".  Apparently someone in the weather department didn't get the memo as to how these things are supposed to work.  The wind stayed in my face, but rather than the more or less flat path that I had been following along the St Lawrence I was now faced with hills.  The same sort of relentless rolling hills that I had the pleasure of battling all through Southern Ontario.  I think that the rest of the trip will be more or like this, so I guess I'd better get used to it already. 

Nothing terribly exciting to report about the majority of the ride.  Climbing into a headwind, descending into a headwind, occasional blasts of side or tailwind when the road turned a bit; but for the most part it was a "grinder day".  I stopped at a rest stop for some chips (I must say, the Province of Quebec does a really nice job with these), at a depanneur for some Powerade, and at a bar later for ice cream. 

I crossed the border into New Brunswick with very little fanfare, and the rolling seemed to get steeper.  Some of the hills in Quebec were a fair size - 5 or so steps.  So far all of the ones I've found in NB haven't been overly large, but they have often been quite steep. 

Some kid who appeared to be learning to drive in a home-built muscle car scared me enough to take refuge in a driveway while she spun all over the road for a bit, and an old man with similar throttle control problems put me on alert for a little while.  But all in all, a halfway decent day on the road.  Pat's right about the women here, though...  quite the contrast from Quebec!

I ended up in Edmunston - a mill town (that smells like a mill town) that's apparently having some sort of big festival this weekend.  All of the hotels in town were booked up.  The gal at the check-in desk (the only attractive woman I've seen since entering NB) told me that there should be hotels in Grand Falls - "only about 40min down the highway".  Then she took note of what I was wearing, and asked if I was on a bicycle.  Yes.  From where?  Vancouver.  She was pretty shocked at that (a common reaction) and called over to her coworker that I had ridden here from Vancouver.  He told her to give me a room, and when she said that there weren't any, he hit a few keys on the computer and one magically appeared.  He grinned at me and said "we usually keep a few in reserve just in case there are mix ups - or if we feel sorry for someone like you".  She was happy to give me the gov't rate, and I'm thankfully on the side of the building facing away from the area where the grandstand/stage is set up for this weekend's festivities.  It's loud enough to be heard for a ~12 block radius, but there's nothing to reflect the sound back from the North - so it's nice and quiet in my room.  :D  Well - except for the crying baby next door.  Can't win 'em all...

In the movie "Leaving Las Vegas", Nicolas Cage goes to Las Vegas to drink himself to death.  I sort of attempted that in QC with food; but it appears upon having left that fine city, that it was good food that has died.  Dinner tonight was a "less than interesting" affair.  Probably the most boring meal I've eaten since leaving Vancouver - including camp meals and just chocolate milk when I'm too tired to bother with finding real food.  This place was recommended by the front desk, and in addition to the usual menu, purportedly has "the best Chinese food in town".  It seems that nearly all of the restaurants in town append with "and Chinese".  I can't imagine what sort of logic spawned such a movement, but even though it's been six weeks I'm not hard up enough to try it just yet (though strangely enough, I was daydreaming of laksa and curry maifun earlier today...).  That turned out to be a good thing - another couple ordered from the Chinese menu and got massive plates of deep fried hell.  I swear I'd do better at "Golden Panda" or whatever at the local mall...  They seemed to enjoy it however, and in between bites the man boasted loudly to the restaurant about how important he was, etc etc, under the guise of talking to (at) hs wife.  They appeared to be having a fine time.  I ordered the grilled chicken and got a gigantic grilled chicken breast, with a leaf of iceberg and two sad looking tomato slices, and some mashed potatoes (my selection).  My fault - I was thinking of "roasted chicken" as that's what's on all the menus in Quebec.  I'll see if the hotel restaurant makes a decent breakfast tomorrow and then I'm out of here.



Stats:

Total Elapsed Time: 8:40
Actual Ride Time: 7:52
Total Distance: 160.48 km
Avg Speed: 20.3 kph
Max Speed: 61.1 kph



Pretty much the only cool thing I saw all day.  Cutting the grass is a boring chore, even with a riding mower.  Many people alleviate the boredom by riding with a beer in hand.  This guy took a somewhat different tack, which I think is awesome.  Unknown father, I salute you.

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:

Crepe avec champignons, bacon, fromage mozzarella, et oignon

 NED!!!

 A few shots of the city from the ferry

 After six weeks on tour on day on / day off rotation (and ~ 4 years of irregular use beforehand), my shorts are starting to die.  Both pair.
 

 Just doin' what comes naturally...

 Aerodywhaaa?  Salt: check.  Caloric density: check.  Recovery fuel: check.  Emergency top-up: check.

Day40 - je suis parti mon coeur à Québec

I made the decision to stick around for another day last night.  Quebec City is just tool cool to rush away after only one day, and I've still got a lot to explore.  Really, I could probably spend a full week here easily.  I slept in, chatted with the concierge about what to see and do, and was off for a tres petit petit dejeuner.  It was 11:00 already, and I didn't want to spoil my lunch.  :p

I wandered down past the walled part of Old Town to Petit Champlain and Place Royale, and then out to Vieux Port.  This part of town is pretty much all retail, but it's less of the "crappy tourist trinket" stuff and more of the "upscale artesianal" tourist stuff.  Local artists hawking their wares, boutiques and galleries, loads of restaurants, etc.  I had a goal for lunch - le buffet de l'Antiquaine.  The concierge had told me that this was an inexpensive place where they served traditional Quebequois food - "like grandma would serve".  Sounds good to me.  He was also a big beer fan, and pointed out a few different options where I should stop for various brews.  Lunch was decent.  HUGE, and while not anything magnificent, all in all not bad.  After lunch I found a really cool kitchen store that was actually two stores - a large, beautiful, open "traditional" type of store with pretty displays and overpriced celebrity branded junk, and a cramped, hot, sweaty, dusty "professional" store where restauranteurs go for supplies, etc.  I spent a good chunk of time in the latter store and scored some great stuff for next to nothing.  I'm sure such a place exists in Vancouver - I just have no idea where it might be.  (and being in Vancouver, it's probably much pricier)

On to the Marche de Vieux Port where I picked up some other stuff to send home (I'm not going to carry all this stuff with me...), and then back to the post office - where I was reminded that off-the-cuff literal translations don't always go over.  I asked the lady: "s'il vous plait, donnez mois une pistol ruban" and she looked at me as if I'd just asked her to change my diaper.  So I switched to English, and she was happy to lend me a tape gun.  :p  I don't think it was purely a language barrier however, as when I went back and asked (in English) for scissors, the guy at the counter (another customer) had to help her understand what I meant - and it's the same damned word.  By the time I had packed up my box and was ready, the gal from yesterday was there in her place - and she remembered me.  She's a real sweetheart and asked (en Francais) if I hadn't just shipped a box yesterday.  This was a little over my abilities en Francais, so she switched to English and I replied - "ah, ouis".  Then she asked "en Englais, ou Francais"?  I sort of shrugged and said "je parle un peu Francais, tres mal".  To which she gave me a smile that could have convinced me to join the army and said "en Francais"!  We continued the rest of the transaction en Francais, with only a little difficulty on my part.  Pat mentioned that they ship all the ugly women in Trois Rivieres to New Brunswick, but this does not account for the rest of the province.  I really can't understand what's going on here but (tourists aside - they're ugly everywhere) all of the women under 40 are at least somewhat attractive.  It's really quite odd.  I'm not complaining, but it's somewhat eerie...  Anyway, no sonnets will be written about my unrequited love for this lovely post office agent - but she was extremely pretty, very friendly, and had an incredibly warm and engaging smile that could turn around anyone's day.  C'est tout.

It was hot, humid, and raining - so I went back to the hotel to take a shower and relax for a bit before souper.  This will very likely be my last night in town, so I left the "tourist district" and went down to "new Quebec" (where the locals hang out).  On the recommendation of the concierge I hit up "Joe Smoked Meat" for the best smoked meat in Quebec City (remember that sad excuse for a smoked meat platter I had in ON?  This was redemption.  As Seb would say, it's like GoBots vs Transformers) - and then wandered down to a local microbrewery called Korrigane, for a couple of pints of their "biere noir" - a rich, heavily coffee flavoured stout.  One last stop at a little depanneur that specilizes in microbrews for the road, and back to the hotel for a somewhat early night.  Tomorrow I'll (try to) get up early for a nice breakfast and then hit the road at a reasonable hour.  It's ~300km to Van Buren, Maine where Karen and Max are supposed to be spending the summer.  If I can get hold of them I'll cross the border and hang out with them for a bit, otherwise I'll head North to Dalhousie and skirt the coast for the final leg of my journey.  2+ weeks and counting...

More buildings & stuff...

One bad-ass kitchen store...  (yes, that is a wall of immersion blenders)

Tres petit, petit dejeuner

dejeuner

souper

gras - the ONLY way to order smoked meat!

la glace!

biere

Day39 - Je rentre en matières grasses!

petit dejeuner

pain au chocolat
chausson pommes
biscuit trois chocolat
cafe Americano


dejeuner

soup a l'onion gratinee
tourtiere
tarte sirop d'erable
verre de vin


casse-croute

poutine dulton saucisses
root biere


souper

canard confit avec frites et salad
deux verres de vin
pain au beurre
cafe
les profiteroles



Oh yeah, I walked around and saw a bunch of buildings and stuff, too...

A row of defensive shooting positions...

The view from behind the musket

A sculpture, tucked in a random narrow alleyway...

people lined up for crepes

petit dejeuner (chez Paillard)

dejeuner (chez Anciens Canadienes)

caisse-croute (chez AshTon)

Souper (chez l'entrecote Saint-Jean)

 Excessif?  Vraiment.  Beaucoup trop.  Mais, excessiv a la perfection.  :D