Trois-Rivières

Salut...

Nous avons voyagé 130 kilomètres hier et sommes maintenant dans la belle ville de Trois-Rivières. The french is getting used a little more often at gas stations, pubs, grocery stores, and what have you, it seems I'm a little more comfortable getting by with it than I had expected. Guess those years in elementary immersion paid off, it's strange how words will just creep back into my vocabulary slowly.

Currently we're staying in an amazing apartment with a guy named Phil, a friend of Guillaume who used to manage a pretty cool local band called The New Cities, and now works as a researcher. He also owns Borat too, which I put on last night so Adrian can finally fully appreciate the quotes I so sorely reguritate while we're on the road.

Quebec City was just amazing. After being generously hosted by Guillaume's brother Francois and his girlfriend Geneviève, who have a beautiful house in the suburb of Charlesbourg, we biked towards downtown to see old Québec. We stopped for some cheap laundry on our way and indulged in some Valentine hot dogs, which brought back memories of the same chain we'd visit around my Grandparents' cottage growing up. Delicious and cheap, not necessarily healthy but what the hell, we burn up everything we eat and despite consuming vast quantities of everything, we seem to lose weight, if anything.

Before we could really explore the old city we had to store our bikes and find a place for the night, so we visited some murky dungeon of an internet café where parent-hating role-players come to escape reality. After exploring options for hostels and couchsurfer listings, we called the first couch-volunteer on the list. His mother answered the phone and turned out to be one of the coolest, if not the most hip person we've met along the way. This art prof let us into her home, gave us a set of keys to get into the building, let us store our bikes in the underground garage, and had a converted artist-studio type apartment full of amazing art, furniture, books, a piano, etc. We were amazed at her youthful demeanor and brought her back a bottle of wine after our night out later on.

She recommended a great local restaurant frequented by our kind of crowd, but it was closed so we rolled up the street and had some great local beer at a little rock-indie bar called Scanner. 13 bucks a pitcher, fine by us! Afterwards we found a cheap little restaurant called Diana, full of old people so you know the deals are good. Following the food we headed directly for the old city within the walls, full of touristy shops, restaurants, and pubs, but just beautiful to look at nevertheless. We cruised around for a while taking it all in, taking pictures here and there, surfed on the ornamental cannons atop the hill, ate some crêpes, walked by the Château Frontenac, and did pretty much what all the other tourists did without spending the same kind of coin.

We marched quickly through pouring rain back to Scanner on our way back to Isabelle's apartment, had some more beer and some laughs, then headed back to the apartment to sleep. I had the pull out couch for the night, meaning that the likelihood of Rainer dreaming and flailing a wild fist at my balls was decreased significantly, fine by me. Two nights in a row wouldn't be good for anybody. In the morning we had some coffee with Isabelle and in exchange for her hospitality I did her English homework for the correspondence course she's taking. I told her to change some of the 500 word report around to make it more mistake-heavy and less like something that looks like it was written by somebody who has written more essays in four years than I would like to remember.

Leaving the city wasn't difficult at all, but the legs were a bit stiff after the day off. My now arthritic hands aren't much better either, but the day off did help. The Comfort Seat we use and resulting weight on the handle bars has lowered the circulation to my hands somewhat. Subsequently, the hands are weak and make me look half retarded when handling a knife and fork. At least the seat is great for ensuring some other things remain in good health.

The wind was pretty vicious leaving the city, but after a rough start we picked up the pace and started raising our average speed quite drastically throughout the day. I can tell now our legs are much stronger and the day off really helped.

Today we head for Montreal, well, the west island more specifically, and we'll stay with my Aunt, Uncle, and cousins. My grandparents are very close nearby so it will be great to see them as well. Mike is healed up and ready to go, so he will get into town by train tonight and we'll meet up to become four strong once more! We can't wait.

Cheers!

Quebec City!

So I have 8 minutes of internet left here at this internet cafe, so ill make it quick. The punctuation mistakes are due to the francais keyboard.

Since we left Millville and the friendly family there, we have had quite the time.

We left and headed for Quebec some more, crashing in a farmers field outside Grand Falls NB. They had us in for breakfast and tea in the morning, pleasant old folks. From there we had another big day and crossed the border finally facing some monstrous headwind. It was difficult to fight against, and not fun on the knees. Ah well, we persisted and stopped in Degalis, where we camped in a municipal campground for free...heyoooooo...a nice lake in front of us and quarter showers!

From there, biked a whole lot to St. Germain, slept on the edge of the St. Laurent. Then we biked a huge 170k day to Quebec where we are now! and my internet is running out....

Millville, NB

Hey everybody, this'll be short and sweet because I'm on the computer of a nice family in a small New Brunswick town with Rainer and Adrian. Mike is resting up his knee in Waterloo for a week before rejoining us, we're all thinking about him quite a bit and hoping for his speedy and full recovery.

This family just had us in from the cold for tea, apple pie and ice cream, and offered to make us some waffles for breakfast...how's that for camping, haha! Our tents are in the front yard, hopefully tonight's frost doesn't cramp the legs too much.

We did 123km yesterday and 110km today, stopping in Fredericton for lunch. I wish we could've stayed there longer, the main strip feels very village-like with plenty of pubs and restaurants. Last night we camped in the yard of a nice retired school teacher in Jemseg, NB, and her amazing friend Willa had us over for dinner for some of the best spaghetti I've ever tasted. People have been overly hospitable so far, making me very proud to be a part of this country of ours.

Just had my first shower and shave in a few days, and words won't do justice to how great it feels. Time to go socialize with these kind folks some more before retiring in the tent for the night, will post an update at the next available chance...cheers!

Last Day in Halifax

Hey everybody, the public library computer says no e-mail, chat, or games, but mentions nothing about blogs.

Our ride into the downtown was quite eventful. A popped tire for Rainer, a flying pannier for myself, dropped mirror for Mike, and some other inconvient moments did nothing other than give us something to laugh at. We're staying with Rainer's friend Nick who generously put us up for a couple nights. Wicked grassy backyard, nice digs, awesome overall ***just got kicked off the computer haha.

So...we've packed up everything, taken care of all the loose ends in terms of equipment, and Mikey and I tested out the tent which sets up very easily. Everything seems good to go except Adrian just broke his spoke on the way to the bike shop...better now than on the road tomorrow I guess. Still, shitty deal. After re-packing and getting rid of every unnecessary or redundant item, I tried to use my foot to push the cloting compression bag into my pannier. After ripping a huge tear in the top draw string I realized brute force is never the best route, lesson learned. Tonight we're heading to the Keith's brewery for a tour and are gonna cook up some fresh lobster, how Nova Scotian.

Tomorrow we're heading to Truro which is about 120k or so away, which will be our first test in the way of actual bike touring.

Halifax!

Hey Now! We have reached the airport safe and sound, and though the obese biochem salesdude pouring his heart out to Rainer on the plane was slightly annoying, there were no real difficulties aside from the two hours of sleep....

The weather at the airport is great, albeit a little chilly. While changing into our bike gear in the relatively crowded parking lot, I unknowingly mooned a pretty hot chick driving by. Not sure if the smirk on her face afterwards is a good or bad sign.

It took three hours to pack everything into our saddlebags, and now it's pretty damn difficult to lift the back tire. The wind's picking up and should provide us a nice struggle biking into it.

We've decided to stay an extra day in Halifax to enjoy the city and rest up, should be good fun. Will post again soon once we get into the downtown and drown ourselves in a sea of lobster buffets. The music in this airport cafe is pumping some havarti-esque italian euro, thus sending some sort of sign that we should get the hell out of here. Though they did rock "This is Why I'm Hot" earlier, which gave us a kick.

Time to go, will post again soon, hopefully with pictures. 30k to Halifax coming up, should be a good warm up. Cheers everybody.

Welcome

So this is the first post of (hopefully) many documenting my bike trip across Canada from Halifax to Vancouver with friends Mike, Rainer, and Adrian. Our flight leaves very early Monday morning from Ottawa and from now until the landing gear leaves the tarmac, we'll be getting our equipment organized and packed and doing some last minute training. A beer or two may also creep into the mix.

The four of us have never taken on a physical and mental challenge quite like this, so it'll be interesting to see what problems we encounter and how we deal with them. I'm curious to see the diverse geography and weather conditions, camping sites, road quality, etc., but I doubt anything will be able to crush the will and determination of four stubbornly confident University students. Above all else, a grizzly bear knife fight in Banff is still sitting high on my checklist.

I'm not bringing my digital camera because I stupidly packed away both the charger and usb cable, but seeing as how disposables nowadays can be put straight onto cd, the hope is that I can upload pictures in cafes and homes along the way.

Our trek is part of the Speak With Spokes campaign, which raises money for Canada's leading AIDS research and awareness foundation, CANFAR. Donations can be made through the Speak With Spokes website, where you can also learn more about the various riders and the Brock marketing team responsible for the majority of corporate fundraising.

Cheers, the next post will be made from the road!