British Columbia
Alberta
Saskatchewan
Manitoba
Ontario
Quebec
New Brunswick
Nova Scotia

Producing these files also enabled me to produce an elevation profile for the entire ride. The colours on the bottom indicate provinces, red lines above indicate where I rested for the night, pale green regions above indicate where I rode unladen, and the pale orange region above indicates the section covered by thumbing a ride to the hospital rather than riding. (Also, having been given a lift from Princeton up to Coalmont, I omitted the ride from Coalmont back down to Princeton, in the interest of continuity).

Times and distances

Ride began: May 3, 2008
Ride ended: July 23, 2008

Total distance: 6636km

Total days: 82

Riding days: 61
Rest/injury days in Winnipeg: 12
Other rest days: 9

Average daily distance:

Riding days only: 109km
Uninjured days only: 95km
All days: 81km
Numbers of riding days between rest days: 4, 5, 6, 4, 6, 2, 6, 7, 8, 7, 6

Longest riding days:

May 31 (220km)
May 21 (179km)
July 13 (166km)
May 30 (165km)
July 18 (161km)

Shortest riding days:

May 24 (30km)
May 6 (35km)
May 23 (40km)
June 24 (54km)
May 11 (56km)

Political divisions

Days (started) in each province (riding/rest)

British Columbia: 14/2
Alberta: 3/1
Saskatchewan: 8/1
Manitoba: 4/13*
Ontario: 21/3
Quebec: 5/0
New Brunswick: 4/1
Nova Scotia: 2/0

Provincial boundaries crossed on: May 18 (BC-AB), May 22 (AB-SK), May 31 (SK-MB), June 17 (MB-ON), July 11 (ON-PQ), July 16 (PQ-NB), July 21 (NB-NS).

Chronographic divisions

Days (started) in each timezone (riding/rest):

Pacific: 12/2
Mountain/Saskatchewan: 13/2
Central: 8/13*
Eastern: 22/3
Atlantic: 6/1

Timezone boundaries crossed on: May 16 (PDT-MDT/SST), May 31 (MDT/SST-CDT), June 21 (CDT-EDT), July 16 (EDT-ADT).

Hydrographic divisions

Days (started) in each ocean watershed (riding/rest):

Pacific: 14/2
Arctic: 19/15
Atlantic: 28/4

Watershed boundaried crossed on: May 18 (Pacific-Arctic), June 21 (Arctic-Atlantic).

Mechanical failures

- Front rack mounting (first failure May 3, attended to May 3 and early June)
- Rear fender stays (first noticed May 3, fender removed May 3)
- Rear rack mounting (first failure May 3, attended to May 3, May 6, May 12, May 14)
- Left shoe/pedal cleat (first failure May 10, attended to May 12)
- Two broken rear spokes (failure May 26, replaced May 27)
- Flat rear tire (failure June 20, also blew a tube during repair, repaired immediately)
- Bead seperation on rear tire (failure June 20, patched with duct tape immediately, evening of June 20, and tire replaced June 22)
- One broken rear spoke (failure June 27, repaired immediately)
- Seperation of bead seating on rear rim (failure July 3, temporary rim installed immediately, retensioned July 6, final rim replacement July 11)
- Flat rear tire (failure July 16, also blew a patch/tube during repair, repaired immediately)

Biological failures

- Tendonitis in left Achilles’ tendon (first observed June 3, rested until June 16 to recover).

Notes on measurement

The distance reported by the map and by the odometer on my bike differ in quite a few places, much of which I chalk up to my inability to plot exactly where I rode on the map. Also, there were a couple of days that I noticed that the odometer wasn’t back in its bracket on the bike until I first looked to check it some distance into the ride (and another day where, having laid the bike on its side for a repair, I noticed that the front wheel was spinning freely, and adding distance to the odometer). Also, the horizontal scale on the elevation profile is based on horizontal distance covered, (rather than the distance travelled up and down the inclines).

Another common thought I have is “it’s really a lot of pedalling, even when you take that into account”. While there was a tremendous amount of really nice scenery, there was a tremendous amount of the stuff. A lot of the time, unless something pretty spectacular was going on, the baseline level of pretty wasn’t really enough to take my mind off of things like “how much farther do I want to ride before I stop for a snack/lunch/the day”, “is it raining enough that I’ll get more wet with rain keeping my raingear off, or more wet with sweat putting it on”, or “this road runs right next to an [expletive] river/lake, but they just had to set it back far enough from the shore for it to be hill after hill after…”

Basically, there were plenty of really fabulous high points in the ride, a few rather troubling low points (and those notable situations are what made it into the blog), but there was also an absolutely colossal amount of just pedalling. So much so that if I were trying to convey what actually happened, instead of points of interest, the entries would look a lot more like “pedalled, pedalled, truck passed, pedalled, pedalled, checked distance covered today, time, and calculated average speed including stops, drat I looked to be stopping half an hour later than I’d hoped, still before sunset though, pedalled, pedalled, took a swig of water, pedalled, pedalled, saw some widened paved shoulder up ahead, pedalled, …” except with even more pedalling in there. It would be completely unreadable. So instead you get a version condensed into a certain degree of inaccuracy.

Outside of those two thoughts, one of the largest classes of reflection I have is reviewing my gear choices. For the most part, I think that I was well equipped, and that everything was pretty well packed, though a few potential changes have rolled about in my head.

The one change that I absolutely would not make is to bring portable music device. It struck me as borderline suicidal when I saw them on other riders and (even though I know at least one of those riders to have survived) it still strikes me that way. As nice as it may be to hear music (and I sang to myself from time to time to break the monotony), I’d still much rather hear the traffic around me.

On the other hand, one thing that it was nearly suicidal for me not to have brought would be some sort of mirror for the handlebars. I have a lingering suspicion that, had I had a mirror, I might’ve been able to see how close to the side of the road the dump truck that grazed me was riding, and pulled off to the shoulder before getting brushed like that.

Another thing that would have been nice would have been a multi-fuel liquid fuel stove. I already had ready access to two stoves running on some sort of gas, so I took the Coleman figuring that it’d be easier to refuel (the other one took fuel cylinders that I’ve only ever seen at MEC, and the route I took doesn’t pass a MEC anywhere between Vancouver and Winnipeg). That said, I passed all manner of places that had jugs of kerosene, naphtha, white gas, but no propane (and a few of the multi-fuel stoves even take gasoline). On top of that, the fuel bottles for the liquid fuel stoves seem less bulky and easier to pack.

I didn’t really hang on to anything unnecessary, having had plenty of opportunities to just throw it out or mail it home, so I can’t really say that there’s much I regretted lugging around with me. A notable exception to this is my bike lock. The thing weighed a ton (well 6lbs, but that was nearly 10% of my non-bike/non-self weight) and didn’t see any real use. It turns out that whenever I was in a city big enough for theft to be a concern, the need to secure my panniers and all their contents had me storing the bike indoors anyhow.

Also largely unused was have a heavy load of spare parts. I wouldn’t do without them, but it’s worth noting that (apart from my second broken spoke incident and the tire, which patched up was still more durable than the spare) all of my parts needing replacement were generally parts that I wasn’t carrying (except that I also used up plenty of my spare M5 allen bolts, even had to top them up — not sure whether to count them as parts though)

The key lesson about mechanical failures that I’d take away is that the length of a ride like this isn’t all that far off the designed useful life of some components. In particular, any part that actually wears out from ordinary use (i.e. brake pads, cables, chain, gears, tires, and rims) should probably be new before going, and that entering a city of any appreciable size should prompt a review of what parts are in a position to wear out before the next city (and therefore should be replaced). Also it’s a good idea to use stupidly durable models of just about everything (but particularly the parts that wear out), after all, I did make the trip on a single set of brake pads.

For timing, I followed a sort of conventional wisdom that leaving around the end of April or beginning of May tends to mean warm enough weather for the mountains, and still making the Canadian Shield before the humidity and bugs really get going. This worked well enough for my ride, with Spring having gotten a late start in BC, but it typically means hitting the prairies around a storm season, when all the expected tailwinds get replaced with headwinds. In years where Spring doesn’t get such a late start, it’s probably a good idea to leave a couple of weeks earlier so that the prairies can be crossed before the headwinds fire up (alternately, start a little later, take a lot of time crusing around BC, checking out hot springs, then take the prairies slowly in spite of the tailwinds, and hit the Canadian Shield after the bugs have died, the weather’s started to cool, and keep riding east, through the Fall as the colours change; though that approach would add 2-3 months to the ride length).

As for the route, I really liked not being on the Trans-Canada Highway much more than I had to be. Had I not had an interest in passing through Deep River and Ottawa, I probably would have turned south just past Webbwood, taken the ferry from South Baymouth (on Manitoulin Island) to Tobermory (on the the Bruce Peninsula), and taken less heavily travelled roads across Southern Ontario. That said, if I hadn’t wanted to pass by DRAO and Nelson, I probably would’ve just taken the Trans-Canada across BC (not having known any better at the time).

Another subtle change I’d make to the route if repeating the ride would be not to bother with the suburban portions of La Route Verte on the stretch from Montreal to Quebec. Le Chemin du Roi is still a really nice road to bike on in those parts, and the signage on La Route Verte isn’t quite adequate in the suburbs to prevent confusion with the local bike routes.

In the end, the parts of the country that I’d be most eager to ride through again would have to be Quebec (particularly Le Petit-Temis, and the stretch from Quebec City to Riviere-du-Loup), the Prairies, and BC (in pretty much that order, though the Prairies and BC are really close, and I suspect that one of Quebec’s biggest advantages is that it’s a reasonable distance to just catch a train to, and air travel is a tremendous hassle with much of the gear involved). That said, I’m also really curious to check out some of the bike touring routes in the States (particularly the Underground Railroad route from Moblle AL to Owen Sound ON, if only because it ends reasonably close to home), and maybe ride around a few parts of Europe too.

For attaching stuff to the bike, I had 25L of storage in a pair of (Ortlieb) roll-top panniers on the front rack, another 40L of storage in a pair of (Ortlieb) flap-top panniers on the rear rack, a 10.5L dry-sack (Outdoor Research Helium) clipped to the front of the rear rack, and tied down to the side and rear of the rack with velcro tie-down straps. I also had the pockets in the back of my jersey, and in my rainjacket for a little extra storage. (When I wasn’t wearing the jacket, it was neatly folded up and secured between the back rack and the dry-sack). Finally, there was a small saddlebag, with a(n Alien II) multi-tool clipped to the side, and a few items mounted onto the frame itself.

Of the stuff attached to the bike, the handlebars held a headlight mount (holding my headlight, which also doubled as a flashlight when camping at night), my wristwatch (which I never really wear on my wrist anyhow), a cycle computer (which I picked up in Princeton after discovering that I couldn’t really count on distance signage beside the road to tell me how far I’d gotten), and most of the working parts of the air horn that Graydon and Frances gave me back in BC (to help me scare off aggressive animals better than any other sounding device that I may have gotten instead). The rest of the airhorn consisted of the air bottle (which was strapped to the seat tube), and the hose connecting the bits (which I ran along the top tube).

The down tube sported my main water bottle (a 1L Sigg), and my air pump (a cleverly designed little machine by Cannondale IIRC, which had a handle that flipped to a T at one end, a flap that flipped down at the other, and the valve head attached to a hose that ran up a recess in the body, basically making it a floor pump that folded up to roughly the same size/shape as a large-ish hand pump; if only it had a pressure gauge, it would have been the perfect pump).

The pressure gauge for the air pump (after I finally bought one in Winnipeg) lived in the saddlebag, along with a pair of Presta/Schraeder valve adaptors (as neat as my pump was, it still couldn’t compare to just using a compressor–except when you consider that many compressors top out before the minimum rated pressure on a lot of road bike tires), one of my spare inner tubes, my tire levers, an inner tube patch kit, and my swiss army knife (Victorinox Climber).

The front panniers having (inadvertently) switched sides around mid-Manitoba when I was adjusting how they sat on the rack, I’ll describe their contents in the initial configuration (which had the logic of putting the bear spray on the traffic side of the bike, where I normally dismount anyhow, and the food on the other side, where any aggressive animals may be coming from).

The right front pannier generally held food to be eaten while riding, i.e. granola bars or other breakfast-foods, apples, candy (aka bulk calories), and buns, deli meat, (and sometimes cheese) for sandwiches. It also contained a spare 1L water bottle, a first aid kit, and the TVP for my dinners.

The left front pannier held miscellaneous objects that may be needed while riding, namely sunglasses, sunscreen, lip balm, a polar fleece jacket, bear spreay, waterproof over-shoes, my smog mask, road atlases, spare batteries for the lights (and their battery charger), camera charging/upload hardware, and a pair of spare 1L water bottles (the water loading was a great way to balance out the front panniers).

The left rear pannier held stuff I figured I may need access to overnight, whether camping or not, and included my bottle of ocean water (which didn’t fit the category for the bag, but fit the available space quite nicely), my soap, thermarest (see ocean water), notebook (spiral-bound, with two mechanical pencils clipped into the spiral), clothing and towel (in the stuff-sack that my sleeping bag came in), rope (50′ of 1/4″ twisted nylon; see ocean water and thermarest), toiletries bag, and bike lock.

Packed clothing was 6 pair of underwear, 2 pair of full-length cycling pants, one heavy (kinda fleecy) long-sleeved cycling jersey, one light long-sleeved cycling jersey, one short-sleeved cycling jersey, 3 pair of socks, a t-shirt, and a pair of slacks (these clothes having been packed to be worn on rest days). There was also another (laundry) bag in the clothing bag to help keep the bag sorted into clothes needing washing, and those not needing washing.

The right rear pannier was the bag that only needed to be opened to camp for the night, or if the bike had a significant breakdown. It contained a roll of black duct tape, 50′ of 16ga galvanized steel wire, some spare spokes, spare chainlinks, spare machine screws and nuts, spare brake and shifter cables, half a dozen spare inner tubes, a spare tire (one of the really light ones that can fold flat), spare lights (already loaded with batteries), spare brake pads, and spare mounts for the lights (in the breakdown category). It also contained my tent (Big Agnes Seedhouse SL1), my dinner bag, a pot (the 2.5L pot from the MEC High Camp set) in which I stored the my stove burner (one of the Coleman types that screws onto a standard propane cylinder), dish towel, fork, spoon, and pot handle. Also in the pannier was the propane cylinder for the stove, and the stove base).

The food bag ordinarily contained up to 3 onions, up to 500g of pasta (typically short noodles like penne, fusilli, or macaroni, in the bag they were sold in), up to 3 dinner rolls, some garlic, a shaker of salt, a large-ish spice shaker filled with a mix of basil and oregano, a smaller shaker filled with hot chilli pepper flakes, a 1L wide-mouthed Nalgene bottle containing up to 1 (28oz) can worth of crushed tomatoes, and a 500ml “water” bottle full of vegetable oil.

(Note that all food objects were confined to two bags which could be hung over a tree branch — using the rope — while camping so as not to attract bears, and that neither of these bags contained the bear spray, in case a bear came around anyway)

Finally, my dry-sack contained my sleeping bag (a MEC Oasis, because its temperature rating varied between 0C and 10C depending on which side was up, and I (correctly) anticipated being on snowy mountaintops in early spring, and in the hot, humid Ottawa and St. Lawrence valleys in mid-summer), and my rainjacket was loaded with a pair of rainpants and my wallet and spare cellphone batteries in the inside pocket, as well as fleece liner-gloves, and waterproof shell-gloves in the outside pockets. In my jersey pockets, I kept the camera (right pocket), a handkerchief (middle pocket), and the cellphone and a piece of paper, torn from my notebook with addresses and phone numbers for upcoming libraries, warmshowers hosts, public pools, and other such useful information (left pocket). When bug season came around, I also kept bug spray in my jersey (left pocket).

With no climatic horrors, and with my host needing to head to work in the morning, I got on the road at around 9am. I stopped at a local community centre to recheck my route to Point Pleasant Park (for once I reached Halifax), and see the weather forecast for the day. I picked out the roads down, and saw that I finally had some light tailwinds again.

With a favourable forecast, and a relatively short ride ahead of me, I dawdled on the internet a little, and was really going by about 10am.

The weather was relatively pleasant, there wasn’t much to stop for, and I was sufficiently obsessed with finishing that I didn’t really take many pictures. In fact, I only photographed the first sign welcoming me to a town in Halifax Regional Municipality:

I reached the City of Halifax by around 4pm, and continued down to the park. No sooner did I enter the park than the thought that I was really almost done started sending tears of joy stream down my face and giddy little laughing noises out of my mouth. Owing to the reduction in vision from said tears of joy, I missed the path that turned off to the first beach, and wound up riding past an outdoor theatre to a somewhat less prominent beach. After leaning my bike against a picnic table near the beach, I ran out into the water (I was going to do the foot-dipping, but the waves just washed over my feet, which I guess was a dip and then some), went back to the bike to grab my ocean-water-bottle, and take a picture of the ocean:

the spot where I filled the bottle the rest of the way up:

and the little bottle, half filled with Pacific water, half with Atlantic water, and with pebbles from each of the ocean watershed crossings between:

I went back into town, to the bike shop where I’d arranged to have my bike boxed up for the flight home, and was done.

Naturally, the little blue bottle got broken by baggage handling on the flight home, and I was only able to salvage a few drops of the water in a vial far too small to hold the pebbles. Most of the water soaked into my journal (which I thankfully kept in pencil) making it the major souvenir item from my trip. Every now and then, I still resent the restrictions on bringing liquids in carry-on luggage.

Once again, rain furnished me with an excuse for a late start so by the time I’d shown my remaining route to the Atlantic Canada Cycling folks (who didn’t really have any suggested improvements to make — something I’d blame partly on consulting their website when planning the route back in Edmundston), breakfasted on the sweet and sour pork ration, broken camp, and gotten myself back on the road it was a little after noon.

Coupling this late start with the substantial headwinds that were blowing at me (and would continue to for about half the ride; the remaining half having them as crosswinds instead), it was pretty clear that I had a long day and another potentially late night ahead of me.

For the first little while, I got to ride on relatively empty road looking roughly like this:

and which was moderately hilly. After one particularly tiring uphill/upwind slog, I stopped to admire the scenery from the top of the hill (sure everything else looks pretty flat):

After a couple of hours, I came to the road that my map told me ought to take me to the slightly more major highway that would lead me pretty much right into Truro. The thing is, the road (Jersey Road) only appeared to turn off to the left, and I needed to take it right. It was a dirt road, and there was a remarkably poorly maintained driveway just across from it. I rode ahead a short bit to see if Jersey Road had any jog in it, and after about 100m, decided that the unmaintained driveway was actually the unmaintained road going south.

Now although I didn’t take a picture of it (not wanting to jinx the possibility that this “road” would get me to the highway, instead of some collapsing shack in the woods), rest assured that the surface condition was worse than most mountain biking and offroad trails that I’ve ever seen. And I was on a road bike. A heavily loaded road bike.

I somehow managed to make it along this trail without falling, losing any parts off the bike, or even having to step in one of the many large puddles, and got to the highway on the other side.

Now this highway continued east a little way further before turning to the south, but when it turned, it led to a rather nice (if vaguely ominous) view:

The ominous part being, of course, that little bit of mountainous terrain off in the distance. As it turned out, there was no particularly good pass, and I got to ride up to Folly Lake on a climb that, while it wasn’t quite something I’d expect in BC. was certainly larger than anything I’d encountered in any of the other provinces (since my experiences with mountains in Alberta consisted almost entirely of coasting down them). On a nicer note, there was certainly some good coasting to be had going back down the other side.

Continuing along, I generally managed to avoid getting rained upon, and reached Truro at around dusk. There was a warmshowers host who fed me and put me up for the night, which meant the last leg could be done well cleaned, well fed, and well rested (and it promised to be short too!)

Between the late night the night before, attempting to avoid getting rained on too much by sleeping in a little extra, and trying not to have to deal with too many bugs, I wasn’t really up until around 10am, and on the road until 12:30.

I breakfasted on one of the macaroni and cheese rations (also pretty good) before setting off for the day. Within the first hour or so, I passed by a man out in his yard who, seeing me passing asked if I was from Toronto. I stopped and told him yes. He then asked if I worked at a school. Since my last full-time employment was as a post-doc, another yes. Next he asked if I knew a guy named John. Now it this point, I should clarify that a friend of mine, named John, had previously planned to join me for this trip, but had other things in his life to go and do instead. So I asked back “John who?”

As it turns out, the man’s brother-in-law is named John, and works as a caretaker at a school in Toronto. One of John’s coworkers was planning a bike tour out around the same parts I was riding through, and news of his ride had made the family rounds well enough for me to be asked if I was him. Needless to say, this was all pretty interesting, and led to a short period of friendly chatter before I got back on my way again.

This also was quite good for lifting my spirits, as there was a moderate headwind blowing over, gloomy skies, and a threat of rain (some storm had parked itself just off the coast, and was throwing a bunch of unpleasant weather inland). Basically, most of the day looked like this:

Riding on, I got to Moncton by about 4:30pm. I had some arrangements to make for arrival in Halifax that required use of the Internet, so I wandered around looking for access, finally finding the public library about 15min before closing time. While this was enough time to get some of the arrangements made, I still found myself computerless before my tasks were done (and phoned ahead to see if I could have some of them done for me). Also in Moncton, I topped up my snacks one last time. By this point, snack shopping was actually getting to be an exercise in “what sort of candy am I not completely sick of yet”, and I settled on beer nuts (branded for some undoubtedly obnoxious and litigious reason as “Wow! Nuts”) and some small “tropical” flavoured gumdrops.

I then rode along some local roads and, when just about to make a turn in Memramcook to remain on local roads, I encountered a pair of cyclists who let me know that from there to Nova Scotia, the Trans-Canada has a good wide paved shoulder, relatively few interchanges, is flatter than the route I was considering, and 20km shorter too. Since, with my late start, I was looking at a pretty late arrival in Amherst as it was, shaving 20km (and therefore a little over an hour) off my riding time looked really attractive, and I took the highway.

Along the highway, I passed the RCI antenna field, and made an effort at a picture, in spite of the dwindling light, as a sort of pornography-for-HAMs:

As the light dwindled even more (and my head and taillights were all fired up), I reached the border with Nova Scotia and took several pictures which completely failed to capture the wat the border was decorated, like the rows of provincial flags on each side of the boundary:

or the little garden and backdrop on the “Welcome to Nova Scotia” sign

and I just plain didn’t bother with New Brunswick’s welcome sign, since it was the same design of sign as I saw when I entered from Quebec.

Shortly after crossing the border, I pulled off on an exit to a smaller road into Amherst, passing by the welcome centre, and realized that this was the last provincial boundary that I’d be crossing on the ride, and that I was only two days away from finishing. Tears of joy welled up in my eyes as I rode. I’d been wondering if, upon arrival at the Atlantic, any of my behaviours might give away the magnitude of the endeavour I’d be finishing, and noting my emotional response to simply reaching the last province of the ride, I had little doubt that anyone seeing me reach the end of the ride would know that something big was happening.

Anyhow, I rolled into town in enough need of a shower that I decided to drop into the local Tim Horton’s and ask after a campground, but it was closed, so I checked at the police station instead. I got directions to one pretty nearby, and when I got there, found out that most (but not enough to keep me out) of the tent sites were being used by a touring group from Atlantic Canada Cycling. I thought this an excellent opportunity to solicit route improvement suggestions, though I’d have to wait until morning, as they were all pretty much down for the night by the time I set up camp. I ate the other mac and cheese ration, took a shower (in a pay stall with no temperature controls; not that any temperature held for more than about 5 seconds as it was) and bedded down for the night myself.

After a good night’s sleep and a generous breakfast, I found myself heading out at around 11:30am. Upon reaching Gagetown, I found that my friend had already headed into town for church, and was going to be there for the rest of the day.

In spite of that, he still gave me directions to his room in the barracks, and told me to take some rations from his locker (I suppose he had extras) and that one of his roommates would likely be around to help me. He said it would be ok to take about 4 or 5 of them, and that I should leave behind the zesty turkey stew rations as they’re his favourite.

So after getting directions to his barracks from some of the other people on base (the buildings not actually having much (anything?) by way of exterior signage) I dropped into his room, and sure enough there was a roommate there who helped my find the rations in his locker, and who also helped me remove some of the packaging from the ration so that it could be reduced to about half its previous size. Noticing that my friend’s laptop was still running (and he being a friend from the gun clubs back home), I opened up a browser window with the Barney shoot-out video in it, and a session of notepad in which I wrote (in 72pt Impact) “im in ur barrikz steelin ur rashinz”. I was tempted to go for the earlier meme reference: “im in ur base steelin ur foodz”, but figured that the message left was quite internet-nerd-y enough.

It also occurred to me that said friend must’ve graduated from university in June and, having otherwise qualified to become an officer pending the completion of his degree, ought to be an officer by now. Sure enough, his name on the door included the rank 2Lt.

Gagetown being south of the St. John River, I had to cross a bit of a beast of a bridge to get down there, and another beast to get back to the road I was taking (at least for the time being) along the north shore. Once that road turned away from the river, it naturally passed over an even beastlier bridge, but was subsequently quite sane. Said bridge passed over a river leading up to what seemed to be a bit of a cottage country lake, which I caught a picture of as I passed a corner of it:

I then found myself in relatively pleasant country to continue riding. It was still hot out, but I stopped for ice cream at a fruit market set up at the side of the road, and the people there were quite friendly (more in the manner that I had been sort of expecting from this part of the country). While chatting with them, I think there was a little confusion over which route I was taking towards Moncton, but they still had some good pointers on local directions and whatnot.

Eventually, after continuing down a bunch of road resembling this:

I found a nice church to camp out behind around 50km shy of Moncton. I had a beef ravioli ration for dinner (which was actually pretty good, and included some touches, like bread, jam, and tea, that struck me as being immensely civilized — oh, and there was a questionnaire on the quality of the food in the ration too).

I saw some fireflies for the first time in a long time, and called it a night, probably pretty close to midnight.

When I woke up in the morning, it was raining. On top of that, the dinner I’d had the previous night consisted of food that had been sitting (unrefrigerated) in my pannier since the 14th (and included cheese curds). So between waiting out the morning rain, and working through my minor digestive distress, I got a pretty late start on (I failed to record the start time, but I think that it was close to noon). Moreover, with the long day ahead, it looked like I’d still be riding clear through the evening, and a little into the night.

Now not long after I started out, I passed a covered bridge that bills itself as the world’s longest. Its road surface was being maintained, so it was down to a single lane of traffic, and probably stank of asphalt inside. I took a pass on riding across it and back:

The weather quickly cleared and became quite hot. Atlantic Canada Cycling’s route database indicated that the road I was on was not quite as hilly than the one just across the river, and had heavier traffic. I routinely wondered if I’d gotten the two confused, as this side was plenty hilly, and there were hardly any cars to be found (though I’ve since checked, and I hadn’t gotten the two confused). There was quite a lot of motorcycle traffic, but that seems to have explained itself when I passed by a campground hosting a “toy show” all full of hot-rods, motorcycles, and vintage cars. I passed through Nackawic, stopping for lunch and tooping up my supply of snacks again (and first happening upon the maritime practice of offering donair as a pizza topping) where I saw the worlds largest axe:

I rode on and eventually took some pictures of the river that seemed somewhat typical of the view for much of its length (except now with a bit of a weather bonus):

Eventually I got into Fredericton after dark, found the hosts with whome I’d be spending the night just outside of town, and settled in a little too late to head out and visit my friend downtown for a pint. I called, and we made tentative plans to meet up in his barracks the next day.

At some point in the day, my odometer rolled over 6000km.

Edmundston being a paper milling town, and having spent a rest day in it, I woke up in the morning and noticed that I had a body odour that smelled of paper mill. I decided to shave and shower to wash off the smell, and be able to set out clean-shaven, though this delayed my departure a little. As it happened, I was a little later heading out than expected, but still on my way by around 11am.

While back in Ottawa or thereabouts, I’d checked the distance from the general vicinity of Edmundston to Halifax on Google Maps, and figured that it looked like a comfortable enough ride to cover in 6 days. Once in Edmundston, I decided that I’d much rather take local roads than the Trans-Canada, and saw that this added about 100km to the distance to be covered. Nonetheless, I still had it in my head to try and finish the ride in 6 days. On top of that, I had planned to visit a friend stationed at CFB Gagetown while in Fredericton on the weekend, so I was looking at covering a little over 300km in the first 2 days out of Edmundston.

Having been a little later than planned getting going, I only tossed back my remaining granola bars for breakfast, and failed to look particularly hard for a grocery store in Edmundston (actually, I’d found the supermarket on my rest day, and it was at the top of a substantial hill, so I decided to reprovision at the next town). This didn’t quite work as planned though, as the road, which was a significant city street in Edmundston, bypassed most of the next several towns. Having gotten hungry earlier than hoped for, I managed to drop into a roadside gas bar and depanneur (still being in a heavily Acadian part of New Brunswick; I got to keep practising my French after all!). It was one of those marginally maintained/organized middle-of-nowhere convenience stores (mostly empty display racks scattered about the floor) so I just managed to score a few chocolate bars and some gatorade that I expected to be able to hold me over to Grand Falls.

As it happened, I was able to top up my snacks (and even a bit of my meal food) in St. Leonard, so I didn’t have too much grocery shopping to do in Grand Falls.

Just past Grand Falls, I was able to get onto the road that would take me right to Fredericton. It was a small, relatively quiet road with some attractive scenery, and a few more hills than I had expected.

What it also had, that I hadn’t expected was unleashed dogs who were more than happy to begin chasing after me (forcing me to stop the bike and dismount until I could tell them to go home, as I was entirely uninterested in getting knocked off my bike (and would have been even without Graydon’s experience in that area; July 1st 2007 and onward a few weeks if you want to read about it in his LiveJournal). I hadn’t actually encountered any chasers in the rest of the country, but they came right out of the woodwork once I hit this road. I have a hunch that all the other roads I rode on either had too much traffic, or too few homes to be able to provide a steady supply of chasers.

Another thing that astonished me once I got down towards more Anglo parts of the province was the teenagers who’d pass me in their cars, yelling “fag” out the window. Again, I hadn’t encountered any of those in the rest of the country. Needless to say, between the teenagers and the dogs, I was beginning to have some doubts about Atlantic Canada’s legendary friendliness.

I had thought to stop in Florenceville, and still topped up my water there, and took a picture of the covered bridge:

It still being a good bit short of halfway to Fredericton (and expecting that with the slog I’d set out for myself, on any given day I’d want to ride a shorter distance than the last) I pressed on until I’d cleared an imperial century, and then found myself a place to make camp next to the local church.

Waking up at around 8am, I ate some granola bars, broke camp, and dropped into the cafe for a muffin and some tea. The pump for the watering station didn’t seem to be working (it wouldn’t prime, even though there certainly didn’t seem to be any shortage of groundwater), but I didn’t think to ask for an opportunity to top up my bottles; instead I just made sure to drink a non-caffeine tea, and top up my bottles at the next opportunity.

So, figuring that there seemed to be watering points every 7-10km or so, I set off down a trail that looked pretty much like this:

Being built on an old railbed, the grades and turns were gentle, and there were the occasional locations where it had been blasted through rock:

I got to the rest area with the next watering station, but couldn’t find it at the rest area itself, so I continued on, and found it about 50m or so further down the trail. It was a small spring in some rock at the side of the trail which had been tapped with a plastic pipe, but there didn’t seem to be anything near it that I could lean my bike against (apart from going back 50m to the rest area, carrying the bottles over, etc.) so I decided that I had plenty of water to make the next watering point. Continuing along there was some more nice scenery:

The next watering station was a pump that I once again failed to operate (thus leading to a suspicion that there was some sort of trick to these pumps, of which I was unaware; given the assortment of manual water pumps that I have to operate in my day-to-day life on the boat, I’m pretty confident that it’s not some sort of general inability to use a water pump). The next watering station was marked by a sign as being a 5 minute walk down a little footpath leading off the trail and, figuring that it would be another inoperable pump, I kept on.

Around this point, I also got myself a flat in the back wheel, so I decided to patch it. As is the norm with patches applied on a ride, it failed, so I swapped in a new tube a little farther down and things continued to work fine. Like with the previous flats, I found a gully near where I was fixing the tires, in which to wash my hands when done.

Shortly after, I entered a town with one of the most amusing placenames I’ve ever seen:

(Yes, those exclamation points are a part of the town’s name; I rather suspect that omitting them would be an incorrect spelling, but who’d want to omit them? The name is a million kinds of awesome.)

And a little further down the trail than that, I finally came upon a watering point that I could use (right around the midpoint of the trail). This also enabled me to have my lunch, since I now had some water to help wash it down.

After the midpoint of the trail, it went from rolling through the woods to following along the shore of a lake, then a river (and passing through a few cottage towns as it went):

There were frequently signs indicating that a footpath just off to the left led to a beach, and at one of them, there were a few women coming back from a swim who let me know that the beach that they were coming from was very nice. I thanked them, but by this point in the day, not only had I lost a whole bundle of time to the flat tire, but it had been raining off and on, so I opted to keep riding. I’ll have to return to this trail, and take some more time to check out the towns and the beaches along the way (and since the VIA train has a stop in Riviere-du-Loup, I think that such a visit would likely make a good week-long family vacation in a few years).

A short while after the trail veered away from the river, it passed under a bridge. Normally this isn’t notable, but the only piece of grafitti on the bridge read “Ave Maria”. This not being the sort of language I expect to see in grafitti, I couldn’t help but wonder if it was just some kid swearing, what with French-Canadian expletives being mostly religious in nature, like “Tabarnak de criss de coliss d’osti”.

Anyhow, eventually the trail got back to, and began running beside the Trans-Canada Highway. Once this happened, there began to be driveways or minor roads crossing the trail from time to time, and some signs to go with them. Upon first seeing these signs, I thought I might have missed the indication that I’d crossed over into New Brunswick (even though my trail map indicated it to still be a few km ahead):

You see, the signs are bilingual, and I expected that a sign in Quebec would not bother including the english “STOP”. Of course, my odometer was in fact correct, and a little further down, I saw the signs both on the highway and the trail indicating the boundary:

Needless to say, this particular border crossing easily had the most “Welcome” signs of any of the borders that I crossed (without even having to go anywhere near the signs announcing local laws and enforcement programs). In spite of this, it completely lacked any notice that I was changing time zones again. Fortunately, I already knew to change my clock, like when crossing from Saskatchewan to Manitoba, but what about all the people who didn’t? (And in spite of remembering to change my clock, the change was still a little tricky snce I’d been in Eastern Time for nearly a month; Pacific Time came in a distant second at 13 days, unless you add the 4 days in Vancouver prior to setting out, for a still-distant second of 17 days).

Before getting into any towns, there was a nice rainbow for putting up with all the intermittent rain throughout the day

It was just getting dark as I got into Edmundston. Since I was planning a rest day, I didn’t feel up for any guerilla camping (as I wanted neither to break camp, nor to leave an unauthorized camp unattended while checking out the town). There weren’t any campgrounds in town (there was in the town immediately before Edmundston, but I wanted to come as close to riding the entire Petit-Temis in a single day as I could given my starting location; the previous town also appeared to lack any facilities that I’d actually want to leave my campsite for anyhow). So I noticed that a hotel right by the end of the trail announced the “lowest rates in town” on its door, and decided to check in there for my rest day.