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Published: July 18th 2011
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Following the River
We found a nice lookout to stop for a rest As yesterday was a late night, today we started more slowly than usual. We got up on time, and headed to a nearby diner for a hearty breakfast (about a 2 minute walk from the motel), but afterwards we were tired and slow to get moving. After taking off, we were still slow and tired. We are in the middle of our longest stretch of continuous biking without a day off, and it is taking it's toll. Eric especially, who was up later than usual last night dealing with internet problems while trying to finish off uploading the blog, got less than the usual 8 hours of sleep could really feel the fatigue.
Despite our tiredness, when we were moving we were moving well. The roads were still hilly, but not unreasonable, and we had a nice average speed in the twenties during the morning, however we were breaking more frequently than the standard we would like to maintain. We did manage to find some nice spots for our stops, including a wooded lookout over the river we've been following.
Not long into the first major hill of the morning the bracket that connects the bottom of Therese's shoes
Hartland
The statues depict the first meeting of the English settlers and the natives to her pedals (we lock in to our pedals for extra power on the uphills and to prevent our shoes from slipping off on the downhills) unclipped on its own. This is not a good thing to happen, especially on a hill. After stopping to take a look, we realized that the rubber protection for the bracket had completely worn off, and the bracket itself had worn down from being walked on too much. It would still clip in for now, but it was not in good shape - it would need to be replaced. Checking our trusty iphone, we found that the closest bike shop to us was in Woodstock, still a good 60 km down the road (though right on our path).
Due to the poor road quality on the New Brunswick bike path surfaces yesterday, Therese was hesitant to try taking these again, but when one showed up at the foot of a daunting hill, at Eric's request she agreed to give one more a try. This turned out to be a mistake. About a half a kilometre into the path, a flood has washed out the path completely and all that was left was a
Washout!
Barefooted Eric carries his bike over the flood stream with stones and some logs. There was no way to ride across it, we had to walk the bikes. Walking the bikes would cause our feet to be soaked though, so Eric had to take his shoes off and walk barefoot with the bikes - this worked out alright, and we made it across without any wet shoes or paniers.
There were a few more washouts further down this path, but nothing as bad as the first one, and all covered by sand. We were able to ride over the rest, albeit slowly, but like our other experience, even on the unwashed path we couldn't go quickly due to the poor surface.
We decided to get off the path as quickly as possible, but the first exit crossed through a gravel pit, and was also a pain to navigate. We had to walk through some parts of it, and this only made Therese's shoe brackets worse. When finally done, we took a short break, and resolved not to use anymore of these paths in New Brunswick.
We made it to Woodstock at around 2:30 pm. We called the bike shop, but sadly they didn't stock the
Not the Concert Site
The sign is off balance, not the camera (this time) part we needed - the problem would need to wait until Fredericton to be fixed. We considered going further, but Woodstock seemed to be the last place where there was much of anything that we could reasonably hit by days end. Knowing we had made it far enough today to reach Fredericton tomorrow anyway, we decided to stop for the night, and as long as we were done early we headed to a camp sight to finally use the tent we've been hauling around.
The camp sight we went to was nice (and cheap compared to all our motels!), though we would have preferred a little more shade (read: any shade at all) on the grounds. Regardless, we set up for the night, got everything ready, and headed to the main office to figure out dinner and plans for tomorrow.
There was a bar and some slot machines at the office, but it was air conditioned which was the real sell. We set up shop to do some work, and plugged in the computer. There was wireless internet, but it was really patchy, and we were unable to get a connection for very long, not long enough to
Camping
Its a small tent, but look at the packs we brought it in upload our blog for example. For the first time in a few days, we hadn't stocked up on enough food for dinner, so we needed to order something in. Unfortunately, since the site was officially just outside of Woodstock, delivery prices were unreasonable, even from a Chinese restaurant that was about a 5 minute bike ride back the way we came.
Dividing and conquering, Therese did some computer work that needed to be done, and Eric biked over to the restaurant, picked up dinner, and biked it back over. We had a nice warm dinner, finished up for the night and went to sleep.
We knew that there was supposedly a storm on the way, but the sky looked clear when we had stopped, so we decided that camping would be fine. Our tent is new, and shouldn't have any troubles in even a strong rain, as long as it is set up in advance, and we have a tarp to cover our bikes. Well, as predicted, the storm showed up overnight, and rained all over us. Also as predicted, our gear held up fine, and the storm gave us nothing more to worry about than wet grass when packing up in the morning. Therese didn't even wake up to know it happened.
That's all for now, more tomorrow!
Stats:
Departure time: 8:05 am
Arrival time: 2:45 pm
Total distance travelled: 85.9 km
Total time on bike: 4h 6m
Average speed: 20.9 km/h
Trip distance: 1358.2 km
- E and T
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Tot: 0.099s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 50; dbt: 0.0624s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Alex Leonard
non-member comment
Day 15
There are times like this I'm glad I don't use an out-and-out road bike. I've always been a fan of big, flat and open pedals - I find they allow me to be very flexible on my bike. That said, I can see the advantages of being able to lock one's feet into his or her pedals - you can really get power that way. Mario locks in his shoes into his pedals when he bikes - he gets great speed on level or downhill runs, and decent speed climbing hills. By the way, how was the Chinese food in Woodstock? I would not have expected that kind of dining way out there!