Day 18: Hills, Headwinds and Half-Baked Heat Advisories

---

Where are we now? We are currently writing this inside of our tent with what little daylight is left still peeking through a cloudy sky at 6:34 pm in New Brunswick, in Canaan Forks, about two thirds of the way between Fredericton and Moncton.

Where is our tent? It is on the porch of a house of some random guy who owns this place, but actually lives in another house, and is in the process of moving. We know this because he told us when we asked if we could pitch a tent on his yard for the night. As we were biking down the old Trans Canada Highway at about 5:30 pm, the rain went from bad to worse, and we knew it was time to stop. In the hopes that some nice family would invite us in to use their guest room, or couch, or even floor for the night, and possibly even provide us with a nice warm meal, we knocked on the door of a nice looking house. There was a dog in a dog-house out back, and a cat in the window, so we had high hopes that someone was home, and that they were friendly, and would take pity on us. Sadly, there was no answer at the door, so we continued down the road. At the next house we tried again - feeling quite desperate and cold. This time there was an answer. The guy who answered said we could definitely pitch our tent on his lawn, or even on his mostly covered porch. He would be leaving for the night to go to his new house he said, but we were welcome to stay. Sadly there was no invite inside, or for a nice meal, but we weren't going to pass a dry porch up, so we happily accepted.

To be fair, we knew we would probably be in a situation like this when we passed a campground about 20 km back. Heading from Fredericton this morning to Moncton tomorrow we had roughly 180 km to cover. We knew that was too much to cover in one day, and we wouldn't be making it tonight. The last place that Google maps showed any sort of accommodations listed was approximately 95 km past Fredericton, and still 85 km from Moncton - and then nothing the rest of the way there. On the one hand, it might make sense to split our two days up fairly evenly and stop at that campground, but on the other hand, we wanted to spend some time in Moncton, yet didn't want to take another full day off so soon after Fredericton, and so close to Charlottetown. It made sense to us to have a long day today, and a short day tomorrow, ending early in Moncton, and having the afternoon to explore. The unfortunate downside of this decision was that we would probably have to go camping at a random place in the middle of nowhere. We had known this was coming for a while, and actually the prospect of camping at a random clearing near the side of the road seemed like a an exciting adventure (and inexpensive!). The alternative of stopping to ask a random farmer to take pity on us was even more appealing if it worked out. All this imagining however involved sun and warmth.

When we passed the campgrounds, we were well aware that the sun and warmth we were expecting was not going to happen. It had been cool and grey, and spitting for a while. Since the rain still wasn't that bad, and we really wanted tomorrow to be a short day, we decided to continue anyway, knowing what could be in store. We had taken stock of our situation back at the information centre, and figured it might come to this, and since the rain hadn't gotten any worse yet, pushing on seemed like the right thing to do. Unfortunately, the rain continued slowly and steadily for the next while, slowly picking up more and more until it was too heavy and we needed to stop and try to ask someone to camp on their property.

Our afternoon was fairly slow, much slower than the morning. After our lunch break and short nap under the tree, the roads transitioned from completely flat to rolling hills. We hadn't really known what to expect in between Fredericton and Moncton. While most people we spoke to said that the Trans Canada was fairly hilly, we had mixed reports of either very flat or rolling hills between the two cities along the old highway, with multiple people supporting each report. Well, it seemed that those who claimed it was flat only knew about the first 50 km, and those who claimed it was hilly were discussing the next 130. Why didn't anyone just tell us that it was flat for a while and then became hilly? Also, after our nap, the sun disappeared and it got a lot cooler and gloomier. So much for that heat advisory. This weather change was accompanied by some new found headwinds that were not welcome at all, and only made the hills seem worse. As the afternoon wore on, rain began - slowly at first, but getting steadily harder as we got further, and with the rain even more wind; though sometimes the wind came from our side instead of directly against us, it was always to our detriment. Things really slowed down as we had a series of breaks close together. The first was at a corner store because we were in need of a rest and a washroom, but which didn't have a washroom. The second was at a restaurant only a few kilometres down the road for a washroom break and a snack. Finally we stopped a third time at an information centre another 1 km down, hoping to find out about a small hotel or bed and breakfast in the middle of nowhere that wasn't on the map. Sadly the people working there were not very helpful, only looking at the same maps we looked at, and doing the same Google searches we did. When we set out from there, things were not looking great, and we briefly considered stopping at the camp sight 5 km down the road, but ultimately preferred to push on if possible. We gave ourselves the option of stopping when we passed it, but both knew we probably wouldn't.

The morning ride went pretty well. It seemed like it would be a fairly flat ride after all as there were few hills for the first 50 km or so. With no hills, we managed to keep an average speed of a little over 23 km/h up for most of the morning despite rarely going much over 25. The sun was out, and the day seemed nice. At a washroom break at a little restaurant we were warned by a nice couple that Weather Canada had just put out a heat advisory for the whole area between Fredericton and Moncton for the next two days, expecting highs of 27 and 28 each day, plus the humidity. We passed a few little farmers markets, a petting zoo with Alpacas, and at another store, a giant potato man. By early afternoon we were definitely feeling the heat and humidity, but were also feeling good after having already gone 50 km. We stopped for a nice lunch of ham and brie sandwiches with tomatoes under a little tree on someone's front yard. The family who lived in the house were nice enough to let us use their property by virtue of not being home when we knocked to ask. After we ate we took a power nap for 20 minutes, staying in the shade and letting our sunscreen set in before braving the hot sun and heat again.

This morning's start ended up working out well, and we were full of confidence. Because there was a key deposit at the residence, we couldn't really check out before 7:00 as we needed to wait for the office to open so we could return the key. As a result we woke up late, and we slow, so didn't actually return the key until about 7:40. Since we were after 7:30, while Eric was checking out Therese noticed some students walking into the cafeteria, which opened at 7:30 - good, because we had forgotten to ask about a cafeteria (no cafeterias at previous universities had made us stop thinking about it). We were planning to get breakfast at a Tim Horton's in town, but that was not ideal because it was a few kilometres out of our way. The slow start led to noticing the caf, which led to a good and close breakfast. When that was done at about 8:30, we were optimistic, and hoping for a flat ride for most of the day - we had heard this might be the case, though some conflicting reports made us not be exactly sure what to think.

Well, that was our day, in reverse. The happy ending to the blog reflects the fact that we are in good spirits despite what seems a rather unpleasant situation. Hope you all enjoyed the change of style. Tomorrow from Moncton!

Stats:
Departure time: 8:30 am
Arrival time: 5:40 pm
Total distance travelled: 116.1 km
Total time on bike: 5h 13m
Average speed: 22.3 km/h
Trip distance: 1586.1 km

- E and T

P.S. Sorry for the lack of pictures, most of our trip was empty of sights, and too gloomy for us to want to stop for pictures.

---

Photos

Potato Man
Much bigger than Mr. Potato Head

Lunch Under a Tree
Absent families can be so generous

The Bedroom
This is where we spent the night - notice the protection from the rain, which ended up lasting all night

Comments

[Alex Leonard]

Head Advisory
It sounds like you two had an interesting day! For what it's worth, I've never been fond of biking through the rain, either. Generally I prefer weather that is too hot over weather that is too cool, but given the weather in Toronto lately, I'll make an exception - it got up to 39C on Thursday (more like 49C with the humidex).