Day 9 - Appreciations

miles today: 103 total miles: 544
km today: 166 total km: 877

In case y’all sitting on your couch at home reading this and thinking wow, Mike and Chandra’ bike tour looks pretty cushy . . . pontoon boating with Jason and Jovo, watching world cup soccer at the Fairmont Royal York in Toronto, and cold lamping with the fabulous Hayes family in Belleville. Today was the kind of day you know is coming on a long bike tour.

It started just fine. We slept poorly but late, not getting up until nearly 7:00 AM. We moved fast after that, taking down camp, hanging a quick clothes line to air things out (enough cannot be said about the usefulness of a length of rope and knowledge of a few knots), downing coffee and oatmeal for breakfast, getting in our daily 5-minute yoga-stretch session, and having an interesting conversation with an older woman at the park who had done a fair amont of solo-bike touring in her younger days. We eventually got on the road just after 9:00 AM.

We had another great tail wind and nice weather for the morning, so we made great time. Flat #1 happened just before 11:00 AM. No big deal. When we flat, we have a set dance of removing the trunk, then the panniers, then the trailer, then I hold up the bike so that Mike can remove the wheel, then Mike strips out the bad tube and replaces it with a new one, while I patch the tube for a future flat. Since this was the second flat of the trip, we were installing a tube that I had patched previously. Unfortunately, the patches didn’t hold, which meant that we had to replace the tube a second time, this time using a new tube. All told, in less than 20 minutes, we were back rolling with a tail wind and sunshine.

We rolled into Morrisburg (around 55 km) and Mike was feeling a bit peckish, so we stopped at a Tim Horton’s for a quick snack. This was my first time at a Tim Hortons (they are ubiquitous in Canada), but Mike and the Searchlights crew regularly stopped for a coffee and donut hole (here, called a Timbite) while they were on their Canada tour. We pulled in and parked the bike along the front of the shop. Boy Howdy, did we give the rest of the customers something to talk about. The guy in front of me in line wanted to know where we were from and whether we were afraid of getting rained on. The guy in line behind Mike wanted to know where we were going. We got our coffee and donut and the ROMEOs at the table next to us immediately started asking us all sorts of questions. And then, a woman named Lyndsay came over and we found out that she has traveled all over the world for multi-year bike tours. She had a great story about how she went to the Galapagos Islands and there’s a post-office box with postcards that people visiting have left. The tradition is that you look through the postcards to find ones addressed to someone in your area and then take them with you and personally deliver the postcard to the recipient. So people were rifling through the postcards looking for ones addressed to someone in their hometown and she hears someone say Ireland and says that she will take that one . . . and then she takes a second Ireland-addressed postcard . . . and then a third. She didn’t have any plans to visit Ireland, but after taking possession of the three postcards, she planned a bike tour there and personally (by bike) delivered all three postcards. This is what just happens when we bike tour and I love it everytime it happens.

Okay, so we are just past 1:00 pm at this point with about 65 of 166 km under our belts. And then, the weather hits. We feel a few rain drops hit us and the wind shift. We are on the open road but now that the storm that we have been tracking has finally caught us. Luckily, Mike spies a carport attached to a some-what run-down motel across the road, and we make a snap decision to pull in for shelter. Within seconds of pulling in . . .

Fifteen minutes later, the storm cell clears and we are on our way again feeling lucky that we dodged the storm and are not quite dry, but also not soaking wet. A few kilometers later and we turn off into one of the prettiest segments of the day, Long Sault Parkway, a series of small islands connected by a 3km bike-friendly road.



As we exit the scenic parkway, the weather starts to turn rainy again. It is now around 2:00 pm and we are halfway to our destination. We settle in for the afternoon grind, which today means grinding out another 85 km in the rain. It isn’t too bad and we make good time for about 10 km through Cornwall. I wanted to get a picture of the City of Cornwall sign since I have family in (and fond memories of visiting Cornwall, England), but it was raining and we were moving so I missed the sign.

But we didn’t miss the sign for Quebec!!! We are now officially in French-speaking Canada (and wishing we brushed up on some basic French phrases)!

Then bam, flat #2. Mike missed a rock with the front wheel but the rear went right over it. This time we are tired, grimy, and wet, and with us in the storm, we lost the tailwind so that the mosquitoes are on us in hoards. We do our flat dance along a busy road, this time jumping up and down and swatting three mosquitos at a time while trying to change the tube. Again, the previously patched tube (from this morning’s flat) fails to hold pressure. Mike is starting to question my patching abilties. but he installs a new tube (the last one we are carrying) and we push on.

About 2 km later (or what seems like an instant), we hit an unavoidable crack in the road and bam, flat #3. Still tired, grimy and wet, we walk the bike to the shelter of a PetroPlus and do the bike discombulation for the third time. Now, we are both nervous. We have two tubes, both of which have two pinch-flat holes in them. Whichever tube we patch will require two patches, and guess how many patches we have left???? Exactly TWO! And both of my previous patches have failed. This is not good as we are 18 km from our destination and there’s not a bike shop or other form of rescue available.

Mike reminds me that we have been in this position before and just to take my time patching the tube. I do (plus say a little prayer) and luckily, the tube holds pressure and we are on our way with only 18 km left in the day.

We pull into town. Mike does the shopping, while I use google translate to help me assemble something that a Quebecer might understand to navigate getting our campsite. I’m feeling good about being able to pull off “Nous avon besoin d’un emcampment de camping pour ce soir.” We bike the last few km to the Municipal Campsite. This was the one site that Mike was not able to secure a reservation, and when we get there, we learn why. The campground is basically a city site for locals to permanently store and use their RVs for boat access. It is not a campground at all. No sites, no showers, no bathrooms, no water. Just RVs, cars, and strangely, no people. A friendly local who lives nearby, Pierre, comes over to explain the situation to us. He also explains that there is no campground in town and he doesn’t know about hotels, since after all, he is a local.

It’s now 8:30 and we have been on the road for almost 12 hours. But we did notice that there was a hotel across from the grocery store, so we head there.


Today was hard, but at the end, I have an appreciation for a 1-star hotel that is clean that has a shower with great pressure and hot water, for a glass of red wine and a delicious ravioli meal, for the husband that cooked on the picnic table outside of Room #15, and for the patched tube that got us here.

So now, we are encamped at Hotel Lac Riviere. Clean, tired, wined and dined and surrounded by all of our slightly damp gear. I could not be happier.

BIKE BETA: Do not attempt to camp in this town. Bring lots of patches and tubes, the roads here are brutal.