Time: 5h14m19s
Distance: 139.58km
Avg Spd: 26.64km/hr
Climbing: ?
Today started out rough. From the moment I first awoke, I was in a sour, dejected mood, and the speed at which we were forced to race through breakfast and depart from camp did not improve my spirits. I left camp with the Top Guns plus Ryan Bruxvoort and wanted to ride slow. We did not.
At the twenty-kilometer mark, we arrived at Hope Fellowship Church near Oshawa and the reception we received there was amazing! This is the home church of Stan & Bernice and Joan and Alice. There were Timbits, coffee, lemonade, water, fruit, and a candy-bar! Not to mention the multitude of people cheering every single rider as they arrived and departed. We easily spent a half-hour here.
Just before we left the church, Peter Slofstra (the pastor, 2005 rider, and author of "In Tandem" documenting his ride, which I read before coming on the ride) met us in the parking lot and asked me how the ride was going. I replied with honesty that today was a tough day for me as I was weary and missed home. He took to the time to pray for us on the spot, and asked God to bless our ride, slow us down and to see the beauty in our day.
And from that point, my day turned around.
Brandon, Karel and Mark left just as I started talking to Peter, so Ryan and I rode together. We ride well together, and enjoy exploring and taking pauses for cool photo-ops. A rider that crashed last week and had to return home instilled an appreciation for hay bales in Ryan, so each day he is trying to take a picture of hay bales. Here he is getting the shot for today just right.
Later in the day, we saw a caboose of a train car at a flower shop, so we got a shot of Ryan #eloveloing (raising his bike above his head) standing on the hitch. We got another sweet shot of him doing the same pose buried in rows of corn.
Our third, and my favorite shot of #eloveloing took a little more sleuthing. Entering Port Hope, we saw a neat bridge in the distance...
Closer inspection revealed that the bridge was in a golf course, crossing some rail tracks. And the ramps were gated off. But we found a way in, and got our shot. They aren't posted yet, but check out Ryan's blog in the next day or two to see them all... thebicycleatlas.tumblr.com.
Port Hope was a brief stop. Lake Ontario is big, and could easily be mistaken for ocean. I thought of the early explorers who first came to these shores, and wondered what their thoughts and confusions might have been when debating setting out in the massive expanse of water.
We also stopped in the little town of Cobourg for some delicious pizza, and laughed when we saw the Dutch bakery named... "The Dutch Oven."
Fellowship CRC in Brighton was our last stop of the day, with a mere 15km to go. This is the home church of Kaitlyn, Sara and Pastor Jake. The folks here put on an awesome spread - including ice cream, Gatorade and oliebollen!
And I got a little reminder of home, as this church was one my friend Jess from Calgary grew up in. And she "just happened" to be home this week visiting her family! It was so good to catch up with her, and hear a little bit about life back home.
This evening, Kaitlyn's family invited a bunch of us over for dinner, and to crash on their basement floor. They fed us a delicious steak dinner, with corn on the cob and some great punch with blueberries in it. To top off the evening, we took a quick dip in their hot tub, and I'm finally calling it a night just before midnight.
Looking back on the day, God's presence and orchestration of things is hard to miss. I'm super grateful for good friends, good food, reminders of home, hot tubs, candy-bars, eloveloing, pawn shopping and all the other good memories from today. My legs felt like trash all day, but I still look back on the day and can honestly say it has been one of my favorite of the tour.
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