Day 4: No Wind At Our Backs

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...because it was in our faces.

Note: Pictures have now been added to Day 3.

The start of the day was slow. Near the end of yesterday, Therese's brake pads became unaligned, and the subsequent rubbing against her wheels caused a lot of friction and delays. This morning we thought the problem had been corrected, but it quickly came back, so we solved the issue permanently by adding more space between the two pads. This morning setback, combined with the constant (medium-strength) wind in our faces gave us quite a slow start to the day. Also, the roads between Brockville and Cornwall are very flat, with some "just-steep-enough-to-annoy-us" uphills. The subsequent "not-quite-steep-enough-to-get-good-momentum" downhills made this a bit of a drag. However, being the awesome team we are, we powered through it to another 100 k day!

In the morning, we seemed to be getting tired of riding more quickly than the previous day, and stopping more often, so at first we were disheartened. As the day wore on however, we realized that we were actually making excellent time, and our rhythm for riding-and-resting along the long single continuous stretch of road that was our entire day had been working quite well. By the time we hit the afternoon, we had increased our average speed to over 20 km/h again (this is our usual minimum-target, but with the slower start in the morning, it was hard to get our average back up), and we were feeling pretty strong.

When we reached Cornwall by 3:15, we realized that we had pedaled our way to another exceptional day (by our standards at least). We even considered pushing on to the border today, but for reasons related to pacing over the next few days, and possible stop locations, we called it a ride.

Have a good night everyone. Next time we post, we'll be in Quebec!

Stats:
Departure time: 8:00 am
Arrival time: 3:30 pm
Total distance travelled: 100.3 km
Total time on bike: 4h 33m
Average speed: 22.0 km/h

- E and T

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Photos

Not the Friendliest Welcome Sign
No wonder we considered blowing right by this place!

And Another Thing...
By the way, did someone lose a hubcap?

That's a Better Welcome!
Why wasn't this sign the first welcome?

Comments

[Alex Leonard]

Day 4
For such nagging cycling conditions - I really hate headwinds - you had a pretty fast ride! Do you practice riding close to each other to minimize wind resistance for the rear cyclist?

[Phillylama]

Thank you
Thank you for sharing your day to day travel. I will be watching each day and living this great trip through your words

[Shira Hart]

great photos
So not only is it fun to read about each day's adventures but the photos are lots of fun too. Enjoy Quebec; I hope the riding continues to be so successful. Julius is assembling my deck today, and I am off to visit with Galia over brunch. Lots of love, Mom

[EandTbikeblog]

Re: minimizing wind resistance, pictures, McDonalds
Thanks for all your comments guys. Alex: Eric tries to ride close behind Therese for this reason. Therese is scared of getting too close to Eric to do the same. Luckily she is usually in front anyway. Ben: Ok, we will try to put more pictures. This blog site doesn't handle too many pictures well if there is not enough text. There is an extra picture at the bottom of Day 4, but its hard to find. When there is more time we'll upload a whole bunch to facebook. Rachel: Thanks for the advice! Porridge is hard to come by in cheap hotel rooms, but we'll see what we can do. For the McDonalds we ask for no butter, and try to avoid hash browns, but I guess we could still do better. On the other hand, with all the calories we're burning, we hope its not the worst thing in the world, our lunches, dinners and snacks are all pretty great health wise. P.S. McDonalds is our favourite breakfast, we love it!