Day 52 - Trenton, ON to Kingston, ON

Daily Stats:
Time: 4h32m11s
Distance: 117.19km
Avg Spd: 25.8km/hr
Climbing: 683m

Today was the Single Speed Challenge, wherein riders were challenged to ride the entire route today in one gear.  No changing of gears was allowed to make it easier to go up hill, or to prevent us from spinning out going downhill.

I rode the whole route in a gear that let me keep a steady 26km/hr at about 70 rpm.  I could top out around 38km/hr, but could still grind up the hills.  Sprints were a lost cause as Karel picked a bigger gear than the rest of us, so he was able to power to a faster top speed than the rest of us could.

The bonus of riding in one gear is that by nature the ride is slower because it's too much work to spin at high RPMs to keep the speeds we would normally ride at.  So we took our time today.  Ryan and I got some more sweet shots of him #eleveloing, including him on a swing, on a pier, on a fake wooden canal boat, and on the top of a four-high stack of hay bales.

In Bloomfield we stopped at Bloomfield Bicycle Co. which is a sweet little bike shop that is packed with goodness.  And it is packed!  The owner said they have about 4,000sf worth of product crammed into 1,200sf of real estate.  Their tag line is "TV Sucks, Ride Your Bike."  I bought a pair of socks with the slogan stitched on them.  They had two Colnago bikes at the shop - one hanging on the wall from 1974, and another one from the 1990s(?) on consignment out on the street.  The other cool thing was they had two big bookcases outside on the deck lined with old books for $2ea.  Ryan perused the collection and walked away with five sci-fi novels to start his collection.

Just before the ferry ride, we took a 4km detour to see Lake on the Mountain - a naturally formed lake that sits a few hundred feet above Lake Ontario, and is only a few hundred feet away.  To this day, no one is really sure where the water in this lake comes from, as there are no rivers that feed into or out of it.  Because of its proximity to Lake Ontario, it is unlikely that the water table is high enough to feed it from an aquifer below the surface.  It is possible there is an underground spring nearby, but nobody knows for sure.

The ferry was a short, free ride from Picton to Adolphustown.  Nothing too exciting, but it was traveling without pedaling!

We also stopped for a while just outside of Bath, and hung out in the park on the lake.  It wasn't a warm day, so we didn't swim, but we did skip rocks and spend some time just chilling in the shade.

Tonight we're camping in Lake Ontario Park.  It's a great site right on the lake.  It used to be a campground, and as you can see in the sign, the campground is closed indefinitely.  Obviously, Sea to Sea got special permission to stay the night here.  First CRC Kingston brought out a pile of salads and desserts to supplement our spaghetti dinner this evening, and they also led us in worship to start and end our peloton meeting.

Think that's all for now.  It's early to bed as the mosquitoes and sandflies are terrible here...