Tired of I.T!

I’m afraid, the next 4 days is going to destroy my sanity, physical endurance, and more of my bike components – Northern Ontario, is one of the most scenic parts of the entire trip so far, sort of a cross of Vancouver Island meets Alaskan Highway in terms of views, amount of vehicle traffic, and weather. Except they aren’t as big as the Northern Rockies, but  rival them in every possible way – climbs of 250metres in 5km are frequent, sapping one’s energy, adding frustration, fatigue and demoralization each km . Take a peek at this elevation chart and see what I mean. I’m at the 300km mark, so today is going to be an “OK” day for riding, but what comes next is surely going to kick my ass hard. I’ve been wondering why when reading other peoples tour journals that when they get to Thunder Bay they head south into the USA until Sault Ste. Marie – but now I know why. However – My Canada does not include Minnesota, nor does it include Wisconsin, nor Michigan whatsoever, so I’m going to ride through this and feel like a champ at the end.

Thunder Bay to Sault Ste. Marie Elevation Chart

Riding away from Dryden was a welcome change, I found I didn’t have too good of a time in town and pedaled east down the Trans Canada Highway – Route 17 – Northern Ontario Route. Riding was slow and I found a park to have a little nap on a picnic bench. Tree Stumpers were in the area and woke me up about 30 minutes later and I found myself remarkably recharged and headed off before running into a young man named Ian pedaling the other way towards the west. We chatted for a while, and I found that he had the same sort of problems I did on my first tour, so I offered to help fix his bike up a bit, gave him a few pointers on routes to take to stay off the major highway and shared a couple laughs.

I ended up staying in a small town named Ignace, fairly uneventful but with a lot of warmth as opposed to the cold Dryden area. Cellular service has been becoming spotty along the way, and I typically will go for days without getting any bars on the phone, and have to rely on an unsecured wireless network in the vicinity to get on, grab email, talk to friends/family, and check weather reports. Luckily I checked the weather in Ignace, it prepared me for the upcoming storms.

60mm of rain was forecast for the upcoming morning, with another 40 in the afternoon and yet another 40 in the evening – surely something to change my thoughts about riding for the day. The weather report was right for the first time in a while, and it dumped down on me for a good 4 hours before lightening up giving me a chance to meet my 100km target into Upsala. I was soaked and managed to have the people who owned the Shell Gas station allow me to setup my tent behind their building in exchange for dinner and breakfast purchases and enjoyed my campsite alongside one of their other residents – a groundhog! This little guy was friendly, only appeared this year on their property and allowed me to get close to pet it, although I have no pictures to document such thing as this stage. Even better is when I woke up in the morning (early – I had crossed into Eastern Time Zone) is that all my food bag was still intact with no bite marks on it!

The rain again was forecasted for another 60mm and I caved a bit, catching a ride with a friend down the road to get me out of the mess. It helped, and sure was nice to talk with someone I hadn’t really had a good solid conversation with in a bit more than 6 years, catching up on news and events. We ended up hunting down a buffet at the Slovak Legion in Thunder Bay where we gorged on perogies, sausages, meatballs, and spaghetti for the low price of $10. What a deal. The break also gave me a chance to get some laundry done as things were starting to get a bit sideways, especially the shorts I had been wearing for _7_ days.

Afterwards I headed up a huge hill in Thunder Bay over to my host Melissa’s house – a medical librarian who was nice enough to answer the call of help from a friend in Yellowknife to let me hole up for a few days, recharge, and rest my muscles. I stayed for 2 days, checked out a farmers market, went for beer before noon, and tried finnish pancakes for the first time – tasty! The evenings were spent enjoying tasty food, sampling various wines and beers (and 10 year old gin!), and sharing alot of laughs. Melissa had an Apple IPad, and I fiddled and fudged around on it trying to see if it would be suitable for a bicycle tourist – At this stage, I’d say no. Bring on the laser keyboard, ability to upload photos from an SD card, and a bit more application support and I’ll think otherwise – however I don’t think we’re quite there yet.

Leaving Thunder Bay, I stopped at the beautiful Terry Fox memorial which overlooked the city of Thunder Bay, and Sleeping Giant Provincial Park. If you remember, I spoke of Terry Fox just outside of Valemont, BC 3.5 months ago. Terry had to stop his journey of running across Canada from Newfoundland due to sickness, never to complete his dream. I found it nice to see that the province had renamed a 150km stretch of the Trans Canada Highway to the “Highway of Courage”.

Ontario has been wonderful in terms of roads – wide shoulders and very smooth surfaces to ride on, signage – clear and concise letting you know where you need to be, alerting you of potential dangers, and numerous preventative signs for forest fires, fatigue, and alertness. If only all provinces could take Ontario’s lead, however with the population being 12 million with our overall 30 million population of the entire country it makes sense why things would be in better shape due to a higher tax base. One comment I’ve heard replayed over and over in the Northwest is that they should be a part of Manitoba, and would likely have their votes heard a bit better. Northwestern Ontario contains under 1 million people, so votes typically don’t count too much, and a feeling of isolation is regularly felt. I’m not sure if merging with Manitoba is the right thing to do on this one…

I’ve been riding along side one of the Great Lakes, Lake Superior which has offered beautiful views, and a wonderful wind to cool you down, providing its sunny of course – The weather shifts at a regular basis, and the typical 5 day forecast is only good for 1. I had one good sunny day heading into Nipigon, before being flagged down by a bunch of baseball players celebrating during the long weekend. They alerted me of a live band and fireworks down by the Marina, so I took it upon myself to head there, find a spot in the bush and setup for a free camp site – which worked out well. I had a chuckle as I’ve never heard renditions of AC/DC’s ‘Shook me all night long’, and Elvis Presley’s ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ the way I did through the thin walls of my tent. I skipped the fireworks and cozied up to a book.

Following that, was a day of climbs into Terrace Bay, (think the 100-200km mark on that elevation chart) destroying me in the hot sun, but giving me the reward of 66.4km top speeds heading back downhill, but certainly made me tired by the time I arrived in the “Lounge” to have a few beers, charge my laptop up, and converse with the locals – I met a man named Scott who invited me back to his place to have a sleep on his couch which I graciously accepted, shared a few stories with him and headed off to sleep. Scott gave me a new pair of waterproof gloves for riding as my SealSkinz that I ordered more than a month ago still haven’t arrived. I left early in the morning before saying goodbye to him and waged war in the crazy winds and rain that stuck with me for 6 hours of the day. Drained, I only made it 77km into Marathon, Ontario before calling it a day, panicking a bit on a hard deadline that I have to be in Quebec City for October 2nd.

stopped at the restaurant, met a man sitting across from me named Scott, who I had heard about from another cycling couple from Texas who has been walking across Canada since mid April. He’s going to make it to Montreal before he stops rides out the winter and continues forward again to St. John’s Newfoundland. He’s a younger guy, has lots of stories as I do and a great attitude. It sounds as if he’s burning the same amount of calories as well, but going through much more pairs of shoes. The mid 50′s couple from Texas told me I’d run into him in the next few days, also giving me advice on a free campsite in Sault Ste. Marie, and providing insight on trails on the eastern seaboard of the USA – something which has been running through my mind as of late that I’d like to check out before heading off this continent. More information on that as things develop I assume?

Pardon the braindump in this post, but if I didn’t get it out today, I’d forget about things… I hit the 5 month mark yesterday of riding – It just seems like yesterday that I left….

I’m sitting in my tent, in Dryden Ontario about 200km away from the Manitoba border. I’ll just start off and say it’s quite interesting to setup a tent when you’ve realized you’ve left your tent pegs somewhere. I tracked back as far as I can go and without success, so am using some backup pegs I had stashed away, and hex keys to fill the void for the remainder – Toronto is a ways away (2000km!) so I have to suck it up and buy some cheapo ones from Canadian Tire for the time being. But – I’m comfy in my tent, although gagging a bit from the smell.

I first noticed a smell in May coming out of my tent, first my Air Mattress collecting the sweat and grime from my daily travels – and I spent considerable time airing it out, washing it off and making sure it didn’t get packed away wet. In Winnipeg I thoroughly cleaned my tent and the mattress, but neglected to touch my sleeping bag. I stayed with someone for the past 2 days on their enclosed porch with the sleeping bag, and it stunk up the entire place. I’m a bit leery on washing the bag so soon in the journey, as I’m aware down filed bags start only have limited washing capabilities, but something has got to be done. I promise I’ll record the cleaning of the bag in the bathtub so you can see what sort of goop comes out of it. Dirt, Sweat, Mud, dead bugs, suntan lotion, bug spray, gold bond, you name it, this is going to be something you are not going to want to miss – or maybe you will.

I stocked up on food in Dryden tonight as opposed to in the morning, frustrated with unable to find a decent coffee shop to hook into the internet to take care of loose ends and fire up my Manitoba Statistics, and somehow wonder tonight if I will be visited by a creature as the food is in my vestibule, and its awfully aromatic. I ask for trouble sometimes, and this certainly invites them to me, even though I’m in a residential’ish’ area. The bears are back, however I have a feeling this time my bear encounters will be a bit more scary, as they will now be scrambling to get ready for the hibernation phase and a bit less fearless than in May/June.

I had a tough time with Winnipeg, which seemed to redeem itself on the day I left, Friday. I headed out early in the morning, said goodbye to a dear friend who I will not see for quite some time again and headed out east, into the shopping district, a large pocket called Transcona. Here I was puffing away on a clove cigarette when someone pulled up beside me to ask for a photo. I obliged and we ended up chatting away for close to a half an hour, and hope to see some of the photos he took. In the meantime a curious woman approached me and asked me a few questions before being invited out to share lunch with her. The meeting was brief however we shared some good stories and went off on our own way. By this time I was about 7km in my daily distance quota of 100km and realized it was 2pm, I still hadn’t gone for groceries, and it was turning into one of those things that I figured I should follow my instinct and connect with a new friend I met during the week as I felt we left things hanging, and found the feeling was mutual on the other end. So that’s what I did – I stayed an extra day with an artist who was Russian born, however moved to Israel during the time the USSR was disintegrating just-recently-moved to the city and looking to head out west for more excitement. I felt very comfortable speaking about things that I normally wouldn’t let out of my head and felt a bit more at ease from Winnipeg. All good things come to an end, so I ventured off early in the morning with my destination of who-knows-where, Manitoba.

The rain picked up for the first time in a couple days from what I gathered, as the roads were covered in white slime, and I took my first tumble on this tour – My back wheel slid out from underneath me and got caught in a train track, tipping me over with my right side of my body breaking my fall, until my bike fell on the left side. Yeah – it hurt, and the bruising isn’t as bad as I thought it would be, however things are a bit tender in the upper leg region. I also managed to do a number on my man bits due to the fact my saddle wasn’t adjusted correctly after the replacement I had to perform a couple days earlier on the seatpost ring. I rode the entire day (130km ish) with it out of wack and gave myself a soreness on one of my testicles, and caused some torturous pains to my prostate, something I have done research on, and is a very delicate and touchy area for those riding bikes for long distances. Some people laugh when they hear someone say “It hurts when I pee” – but goodness – this was something that makes me not want to look forward to being 60. I’ve sorted the issue out now and all is good. Ahh, add this to my broken toes, the chainring to the face, the chainring to the shin, and other numbness in fingers and digits and I’m just falling apart! This is what happens when you put yourself through extreme forms of physical exertion on a daily basis. No regrets. I feel great, and most people who saw me last week all said similar things that I looked alive as well. Cool!

The rain was a bit of a mess, but I kept going down a side road away from the busy highway traffic. I saw a few signs along the way while I was dodging frogs and snakes for “Bryce Fest” with some neat designs, alien heads and such on the side of the road. As I kept riding throughout the day I started hearing amazing amounts of low frequencies, and music. So I decided to stop in! Bryce, the owner of the property throws a party once a year, typically for the weekend and it turns into a big corn roast, meat roast, and hair flinging good time. They said it gets best at about 4-5am – and they offered me a beer and some food. It was raining so there wasn’t that many people around at the time, maybe 30 – but it was still early in the day for the shenanigans to start. I had a beer and one of the partiers took a few photos of me in my rain gear, before heading off another 40km eventually ending up in the town of Rennie. I needed a good night of strangers, so parked my bike in front of the bar, the only other business besides the general store and sat to charge my components, while tasting some of Manitoba’s beer for the last time for the foreseeable future. The UFC fight was going on, and there were a bunch of people getting all aggravated and yelly, while the people at the VLT’s were making considerable amounts of money in the triple digits repeatedly – sounds like a good night for the locals!

I ended up striking up conversation with a half dozen people throughout the night, and didn’t get to sleep until far too late, well after the bar had closed down – tent pitched right beside the bar, not worried about any of the locals harassing me, nor the police – as I had permission from the owner. I woke up a bit groggy in the morning to a nice sunny day, with only a kilometre of riding before I was in the Whiteshell Provincial Park, on a nice windy road, Historic Road Number 1 taking me through the Canadian shield with rock formations similar to what I saw up north on the way into Yellowknife. My heart ached a bit for some of the people that I met up in the area, as that was the only thing I found missing to the park, as all the people I encountered were either too caught up in gasing up their speedboats, not willing to look a stranger in the eye, or were caught up in dealing with the little ones causing trouble. I hung out at Westhawk lake for a bit and people watched before going through the final 10km push of Manitoba, to what turned out to be the worst roads I have ever ridden on in my life. Thank goodness as soon as you got out of the province and entered into Ontario the pavement was smooth, shoulders wide, and traffic double laned.

The first thing that was noticeable, were the hills – these guys are serious! The landscape changed dramatically as well, with lots of rockfaces, and an absolute tonne of lakes in the area. This is cottage country for the big city of Winnipeg, and I played a game of count the Manitoba license plates – I would say it was 90:1 in favor of Manitoba. All the folk I met at the gas station where I stopped to refill water, make lunch, and just make conversation were from the area as well and gave me good tips on what to do while getting into Kenora, my stop for the day. I noticed a definite increase in my speed and energy with new terrain, being able to take advantage of the descents into the next climb even though the heat was unbearable at some points. I met a cyclist on the road who was coming the other way, head down to the grindstone for the past month coming in from New York, with a goal to be heading to BC and finally terminating his trip in San Francisco. Turns out we know some of the same people, and he taught at a school with another cycle tourist who’s going into Antarctica right now – small world.

I wasn’t 6km away from my destination before the thunder and lightning came in, followed by intense raindrops soaking me in a matter of seconds. Too late for me to put on my rain gear, I rode into it, loving every moment of it, being cautious of the slippery pavement conditions that were occurring. it stopped about 1 minute before I arrived at my hosts cabin about 10km out of town. It was great to see this friend, someone who I had a business relationship in the past, and met the family and the significant other. We spent the first night conversing, gawking into the sky watching satellites pass over us, and got into some heavy geek speak. One of the people there had some history with computers and we fell into some fairly technical conversations, confusing the others around us. I saw parallel lives with this person, also who had left the IT industry as they wanted their hobby back, but heading towards a degree in linguistics instead of hopping on a bike. We spent the next day and a half hanging out on the porch, outside by the lake, and I got to ride in their boat – unfortunately it was too crappy to rove around in a kayak or drink beer in a lounge float-chair, but I got the rest I desperately needed, while eating bison, other meats, and vegetables. I also got to recharge my components, specifically my Kindle – the battery finally died from its charge in early June – not bad for reading 3 books, and being tossed around in a bag all day long!

I spent some time patching up some holes I found in my Ortlieb pannier, unfortunately the one that carries all my electronics. Nothing got wet, but this could have been a disaster if it did. Shoe Goo to the rescue, and I put the rest of the tube on my shoes, which are falling to pieces. I plan on sending off a letter to the company and asking about how long the life expectancy their shoes are to last as they aren’t meeting my expectations whatsoever.

I left Kenora bright and early heading with a huge tailwind pushing me along up and down the hills for 3/4 of the day – Speeds of 45km were not uncommon, and the average turned out to be 23km/h over 6 hours before getting into Dryden. For a town of 8,500 people I’m not impressed – it looks dirty with the exception of where City Hall is, it has a horrible layout to find amenities, and the people are flat out grouchy. Not all of them, but I noticed definite scowls from a good chunk of them.

I’ve decided for the next few days I’m going to ride on the Trans-Canada Highway to prepare myself for the upcoming hills after ThunderBay. It’s less hilly and the roads are in better condition, rather than shocking my system after riding on moderately flat terrain for the past bit through Saskatchewan and Manitoba. A friend in Yellowknife set me up with one of his friends in the city so I’ll get a chance to recharge before going for 14 days with minimal reception on anything technology related until reaching Kitchener/Greater Toronto area. This might be good for me. You’ll see an upcoming post shortly of my electronic components going up for sale anyways, as I prepare for the future – so this is just training grounds for me
I found a route that will let me get into a National Marine Park and let me take a ferry, which appeals to me greatly, with a small tax of 100km distance tacked onto the overall trip. It really means nothing. Let’s hope for continued Western winds to keep my energy stores up, no bugs, and a bit of clouds throughout the day to keep me from getting melanoma! Talk to you soon!