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Published: July 28th 2011
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Ferry Town
Things were good up to here The day started out really well. We awoke much earlier than we have been getting up lately - the not so bright time of 5:30 am. We packed our bags, and Mary very kindly made us a nice breakfast. Eggs, ham, toast, muffins - we were stuffed. We managed to leave by 6:15, which was good because we wanted to make sure to get to the ferry well before its departure time of 8:00, because if we missed that one, we would need to wait until 11:15 for the next one. Normally 1h 45m would be more than enough for us to do our first 25 km, but with the PEI hills, and the wind we've been getting lately, we didn't want to take any chances. As it turned out, it rained all last night, and this morning it was grey, but not rainy. With the complete cloud cover, and the early start, we got no wind at all in the morning, and took just over an hour to get to the ferry. Our PEI average on the day was actually a healthy 21.6 km/h. It did start raining during the last stretch, but nothing too strong or heavy. When we
Assphat Wheelers
About to hit the road after the ferry arrived at the ferry, wouldn't you know it, but once more we bumped into the Wheelers.
We all parked and chatted while boarding the ferry, and then we spent our ride mapping out the rest of our day to Antigonish. This is the same place the Wheelers were headed, and they mentioned to us that there was actually a university we could stay at (St. Francis Xavier), which was good news - we like staying in dorms. We tried calling ahead to book, but only got a machine, so didn't worry about it as just showing up has never been a problem for us before.
After the ferry, Nova Scotia was very grey, and also quite rainy. We took a picture with the Wheelers, and started to get going. This is where things first started to get bad. Therese noticed some extra friction on her wheels again, but we were unable to fix them as easily as we did before. It seemed that there were two problems now - the brake pads on the front wheel were becoming unaligned more easily than ever, and were a pain to fix. We did manage to get these straight, but the
Province Number 5
Check out the spray from the truck in the background - no wonder we were so cold and wet back wheel also had friction, and in this case the wheel had become untrue - about half a centimetre off. This meant that a simple push adjustment wouldn't work, and we actually had to break out our tools and change around some spacers to get things working again. When we were done, she could move without friction, but there was a delicate balance being maintained and we had to be careful with it for the rest of the day.
As we got going the light rain continued constantly, and it was the coldest we've been so far on our trip. The sky was completely grey, and it was kind of gloomy. We got moving anyway, and for the first while had fairly flat roads, but worsening rain. We were liking Nova Scotia for a while, but eventually we found some bigger hills, and got tired. As we spent most of our day on the Trans-Canada Highway, there were rarely good places to break or sit, and we kept ourselves moving for a lot of the day. This meant no breaks from the constant rain, or the cold. Our feet were numb at points.
We saw some roadkill that
Construction Delays
The line is about 10 times longer than it appear here. And this is the side that is moving... we hadn't seen before - our first fox, our first duck, and our first two porcupines. It seemed that in Nova Scotia, at least on the highways we were on, roadkill would get covered up with straw and not removed from the road, and so we saw and smelled, a lot more than we were used to.
In the early afternoon, after an off-highway stretch, we were merging back on again and hit some horrendous traffic. On bikes we were actually able to move right by it, but the cars were lined up quite a ways, and not moving. When we got to the front we found construction, and were told by the traffic guys that the cars from the other way were never being stopped, so the people going the same way as us would have to wait 30 minutes or more for their short turn - a standard five-minutes each seems pretty reasonable to us, but this just seemed outrageous.
On the plus side, the construction meant that we got to do our next stretch of Trans-Canada with no cars going our way to look out for. This was especially nice since the first hill was
Phew!
A long hard day comes to a close a real killer. Actually, there were a series of really killer hills, and some wind had started to pick up, so we were having a heck of a time with it. We were lucky that we often managed to do our climb up the worst hills with no cars coming beside us thanks to that construction, but this was no consolation for the extreme work it took to pedal up the slopes. We were almost missing the rolling PEI hills of earlier. Almost.
Another problem we were having was that Therese always seemed to be hungry. We were eating lots, and eating well (we took some left overs from our wonderful dinner last night for example), but still, she was not to be satiated. This was frustrating because we didn't understand it, and it also slowed us down as we stopped to eat often. Our best guess is that the lack of breaks was wearing on us, and this is what caused the excess hunger. We had even more frustration when there were disagreements about whether we were going up-hill or down. Eric would often think we were going up, while Therese thought we were on a down-slope. This inability to tell what kind of slope we were on is a testament to how strong the wind had become - making it impossible to coast on either up or downhills. In retrospect we agree that they were probably mostly uphills.
After one mid-day food break, we realized upon starting up again that the computer on Therese's bike had stopped working. A quick investigation showed that the wire had just snapped in the middle, and there was no connection between the sensor and the computer. One more problem to deal with. There was no way to fix this, we just needed to replace it, and since we used the computer to maintain a constant sense of where we were, and how close to the next turn we were, this was a pain.
We somehow made it to Antigonish before 6. We headed to the Canadian tire to pick up another bike computer, and then to the residences. We had tried calling again mid-day, but still the machine, so we just showed up. On arrival we were told that the only thing they had left available was a 2-bedroom suite for $140 a night - well screw that. We headed to a near-by cheap hotel instead. We made it even cheaper by asking to forgo the "included" hot breakfast. There is a McDonalds next door after all.
After eating at the only nearby restaurant - a really cheap "Chinese-Canadian" all you can eat buffet (we're talking 7.99 for dinner cheap), we came back to the hotel, cleaned up, and got ready to do some work. Eric was working on some computer stuff while Therese was attaching the new bike computer from Can-Tire. Things were going well until Therese accidentally cut through the cable of the NEW bike computer while trying to snip the end of a zip-tie off. Back out to the Canadian tire for Eric buying another bike computer. What a day...
Well, the trip is wrapping up at least, lets hope tomorrow can't be any more problematic than today. We'll be making it into Cape Breton around noon-ish! Woo Hoo!
Stats (partially extrapolated due to computer breakage about three quarters of the way through our day):
Departure time: 6:15 am
Arrival time: 5:45 pm
Total distance travelled: 105.7 km
Total time on bike: 5h 44m
Average speed: 18.4 km/h
Trip distance: 1978.8 km
- E and T
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Tot: 0.121s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 10; qc: 52; dbt: 0.0799s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Alex Leonard
non-member comment
Day 24
Whoa, that's a rough day! Your bike computer problems would be enough to put me on edge. I don't know about the terrain in Cape Breton, but I at least hope the wind and weather goes in your favour!