total km: 6868.2
It's comfy on the inside though.Frustration. That’s the word of the day. We’re back to the hate side of the love/hate relationship with the wind. It was strong, relentless and in our faces for the whole day.
Realizing right from the get go that it was going to be a difficult day, we followed up our breakfast of left over stir fry with an Olympian meal at McDonalds. Did we mention it was 200 m (downhill) from our campsite. It seems like ever McDonalds comes with it’s own unique army of old men who meet every morning for coffee, perch in the same seats and discuss who knows what. Today the discussion revolved around two crazy bikers from Vancouver. It was almost entirely in French, but we’re pretty sure we laughed at all of the appropriate moments.
Only 15 km into our day we took our first, and already necessary, break. It was a nice oceanside lookout complete with the contrasting addition of a swaggering beer drinking bum, who also happened to be on a bike. With obvious common ground between us, we ensued a very entertaining conversation involving broken English, a lot more broken French and a lot of charades. He told us he has an “anglaise francaise speak (talking hand-puppet action) sisser in Vancouver.” He then pointed us towards a good spot for “take pitchers,” where we did, in deed take some pictures:
After returning to our bikes we thanked our new slurring friend for the advice and for “pour la trois......helmet saves” (thrice did he retrieve Brandon’s helmet after the wind had blown it down an embankment). He gave an understanding laugh, and we carried on.
He insisted that he take a pitcher of us.No sooner had we taken off, we stopped again. This time for lunch. It was just one of those days.
We had wanted to make it to New Richmond, however, even after pedaling for 5 1/2 hours straight (that’s only pedal time too) we could only make it as far a New Carlisle a mere 75 km away. Making use of the fool proof formula in which towns marked in bold on tourist maps are large enough to include all necessary amenities. New Carlisle is typed in bold. It does not have all of the necessary amenities, most important being the grocery store. Dinner was 3 cans of family sized pea soup, 3 cans of pork and beans and 1 can of mixed vegetables all purchased from the “Ultra Deppaneur” (a convenience store). Thank goodness it was “Ultra.”
Descending a hill at 10km/h moments before the rains hit us. B&K
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