After a pretty good night’s rest I got up, had my breakfast, and chatted with another cycle tourist who was stopping in the park for a snack. Having managed to carry on the conversation entirely in French, I felt that my shyness about my relative (in)ability to speak French was really slipping away, and almost regretted that I’d be out of the province in 2 days, so soon after starting to get really comfortable in Quebec.
As Gavin had to leave early, and there was a gate that was kept closed between the hours of 11pm and 7am, he parked his car just ouside the gate. There not really being any parking spots outside, he parked on the grass. So at I-really-wanted-to-keep-sleeping a.m., I was called from my sleep to help with a push, as the grass had gotten rainy, dewey, and otherwise wet and slippery. Eventually failing in this, I went back to bed while Gavin dropped in on the owner to get an address/directions/etc. to pass along to the CAA for a tow.
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.
Having had a late night coming into Montreal, there was something of a late morning, and by the time I had eaten some breakfast and picked up the new rim for the rear wheel, it was already pretty much afternoon. Still having to rebuild the wheel with the new rim (a process which my host got a couple of pictures of), I wasn’t really ready to go until some time around 4pm. By this point, I’d already asked my good friend Gavin to just meet me in Montreal instead of along the way. (He’d offered to join me for the stretch from Montreal to Quebec City in something of a support vehicle role–not quite hanging out behind me with his 4-ways on, since that sort of thing kinda creeps me out, but carrying the vast bulk of my stuff to prearranged meetup points avery 10-20km or so).
Having stayed up kinda late the night before, we rose a little late. our host then made us a nice big breakfast including sausages cooked in beer, and eggs with fresh spinach from his garden. Follow that up with more pleasant chatter and, needless to say, we more than a little late getting going (at least by my standards so far for days where miserable-weather-avoidance didn’t influence the pace of morning activities).
The hot humid weather having broken while I was in Ottawa, I was blessed with moderate weather and a good brisk tailwind. Consequently, I was in no hurry to leave the good company of my family, and didn’t hit the road until around noon.
I woke up to a hot, humid morning which held the promise of an even hotter, more uncomfortable day. When breaking camp I folded my fly in a place that caught the eye of a few rec centre staff who were out on their coffee break. One of the asked what I was doing, so I told him that I was biking across the country and had just camped out behind the maintenance shed. He took a peek, agreed that it seemed a pretty good place to camp for the night, and went back to his break.
The email from my thesis advisor on things to see/do in Deep River having included a visit to his mother at his childhood home, I stopped by after being treated to breakfast by one of my friends I’d been visiting (the other having had to go to work in the morning). It was a rather nice visit, I got to find out a bit about my advisor’s history/childhood, and that his nephew who’d been studying undergrad math (and hanging around our research group a good deal) had gone off into computational neuroscience instead.
It being a short ride, and there being bugs to deal with in the morning, I got going at around 10:30 in the morning. The ride was largely uneventful, and continued with similar terrain and weather to the day before.
After rising at around 9am, being fed a good breakfast, checking the outdoors store downstairs for propane (and getting referred to Wal-Mart), and then stopping by the public library to hop on the internet for about an hour and check my email, I was finally properly on the road at around noon.
