Bikely map

After another late night came another late morning, but with no wheelbuilding to delay things, we were able to get going at around 11am. With Gavin’s car providing the opportunity not to have to carry my gear, it also provided the opportunity to make a substantial error in judgement. I tossed my raingear in the trunk, and it started to rain heavily while I was too far from the car to do much other than get really wet.

Once wet, there also wasn’t much point putting my raingear on, since it would only hinder my efforts to dry out. Besides, by the time I caught up with the car, it was no longer raining. It was still cloudy, and there was a tremendous tailwind. So much so that the place where we met up was loaded with kite-surfers taking to the river. I took a couple of pictures at a lookout area one bend before the rendezvous point:

We continued along, and I expected that I’d just continue to dry out, up until reaching Trois-Rivieres. Just on the far side of town, the rain just began to fall in torrents, and I had to take shelter in an awning for a restaurant. I called Gavin over to meet me where I was, and we ducked into a nearby pizza place to eat some lunch and try and wait out the rain.

While we ate, my clothes dried out again and the worst of the rain passed. I threw on my raingear and we head out again with the understanding that I really wanted to camp at a site with laundry (to attend to the mud stripe running up my back) and showers (since it wasn’t just my clothing that felt dirty).

The weather generally mellowed as the afternoon/evening wore on, and we were able to stop at a suitable campground about 30km outside of Quebec City. Although this was a little short of my goal to reach Quebec City in 2 days from Montreal, that goal appeared to have a few other impracticalities. Namely accomodation in the city would be non-campground (and therefore expensive) and scarce (due to the 400th anniversary celebrations).

Along the way, I also took a few more pictures:

Also, Gavin had to leave early the next morning so we had to pitch both tents, though his tent was clearly large enough to accomodate both of us (as demonstrated by our chatting and drinking inside it in the evening, while it rained).