Day 55/56 - Cornwall, ON to Montreal, QC

Daily Stats:
Time: 3h52m47s
Distance: 105.87km
Avg Spd: 27.3km/hr
Climbing: 218m

Great ride on Saturday, and fun times in Montreal today...

I left camp with the Top Guns on Saturday, and we crossed into Quebec on a side street parallel to the 401, and took a picture at the little roadsign.

After navigating some tough traffic through a busy section of town, I found myself at a garden center with Julia, Shannon and Ryan and everyone else was up the road.  We had stopped to take a picture of Ryan #eleveoing in the giant deck chair out front of the restaurant, then struck up a conversation with the nice lady working the store.

A little restaurant in Beauharnois was our next stop for Ryan's first taste of poutine!

We arrived at our destination - the Kahnawake Survival School - and set up camp.  This is a new facility that will be opening for their first day of classes shortly after we leave in the morning.

Our first mission was to do laundry.  Brandon borrowed a van, and we ventured into town to find the laundromat.  But that was easier said than done.  We ended up talking to a local at the gas station, who directed us to a non-descript white building off the main road that wasn't evened signed.  But sure enough they had washers for us!

Eukre tournament was the action for Satuday night, as we were far away from any night-life.

Sunday we got bused into Montreal for a church service at St Paul and St Andrews.  It was a gorgeous old church building, and we were led in a mixture of liturgical and contemporary worship.

After church, Ryan's friend from college led us on a walking tour of Montreal.  We had a sweet lunch at Santropol - a "foodie" restaurant with some awesome sandwiches and milkshakes.

Walking from the restaurant to Old Town, where we were to meet our bus back to camp, we came upon the Pride parade blocking our path.  We watched the second half process past us.  I was shocked at the shamelessness of many of the participants...

Montreal is a great, busy, happening city.  There was so much activity - even away from the parade.  We also walked through a park right beside McGill University, and saw people lounging in the sun everywhere.  There were vendors, buskers, dogs, frisbee players and all sorts of other people.  And bikes!  There were bikes and cyclists everywhere.  There were dedicated lanes at many main roads, and bike share stalls on the major intersections.  I was thoroughly impressed with the extensiveness that cyclists were permitted and encouraged in the city.

Our final stop of the day was at Montreal Poutine for one more taste of the original delicacy before we return to the USA tomorrow.  Topped off with a French beer (La Fin du Monde), it was the perfect ending to our time in the city.

PS - Time trial results...  I won!  It ended up being a 16.3mile route, and I finished in 40m01s, average speed of 39.6km/hr.  Tim from NJ came in second in the mens at 40m09s. George won the masters category and Martin came in second.  Shirley won the womens, and Katie R placed second.  All winners took home some awesome silver plates as mementos.

Day 54 - Brockville, ON to Cornwall, ON

Daily Stats:
Time: 3h36m31s
Distance: 110.38km
Avg Spd: 30.6km/hr
Climbing: 339m

Today was our time trial day!  Ryan Bruxvoort organized a 16 mile (25.6km) route from SAG #1 to a church in Morrisburg that one of the riders congregation had set up.  A time trial is an individual race against the clock.  Riders leave the start line in one-minute intervals, and go as fast as they can without drafting anyone or anything else.  We don't know the results yet, as they will be announced at peloton this evening. It was a fast, flat course.  My GPS tells me I averaged 39.4km/hr for about 40 minutes, which is a fast time, but I don't know if it was fast enough to win.

Because of the time trial, I stripped my bike down, taking the seat-bag off, and only taking one water bottle on the road today.  I carried all my essentials (food, wallet, spare tube, pump, tire levers and multi-tool) in my jersey pockets.  My camera did not make the cut, so I missed taking pictures of the event.

Cool things we saw:
* Fort Wellington, where the war of 1812 was fought.  Karel got some fun pictures of the Top Guns storming the fort.
* The Long Sault Parkway that connects eleven islands created during the flooding of the St Lawrence river in the 1950s.  There is a beautiful roadway (freshly paved) that connects the islands, a gives riders some spectacular scenery.

Tonight we're staying a neat facility, too - the NAV Centre.  It used to be a training base for Canadian air traffic controllers, but has been converted into a hotel, conference centre and fitness centre.  The showers here were definitely the nicest we've had in a very long time.

And for good measure, he's a typical shot of what my camping area looks like.  Tent airing out, fly drying from morning dew, shorts drying on tent, towel drying on the bike.  But today I've got shade!

Day 53 - Kingston, ON to Brockville, ON

Daily Stats:
Time: 2h51m090s
Distance: 84.26km
Avg Spd: 29.5km/hr
Climbing: 520m

Not a bad day today.  The ride was short.  The weather was gorgeous.  The roads were fresh, new pavement.  And Brockville is a neat little town that we arrived at early enough to spend a few hours exploring.

At 50km, there was the opportunity to go on a 1 hour boat tour of the 1000 Islands.  We got there, and the lineup was crazy long (including four busloads of tourists!) so the guys and I decided not to go.  We hung around the parking lot for a while, and got a few shots of Ryan #eleveloing in the lineup and in the fountain.

While the majority of the riders were out on the ride, all their bikes and helmets were left behind.  Someone had the brilliant idea to play a little joke and move all the helmets to the picnic table, and interconnect the helmet straps and clamps...

We checked in at camp around 11:30am and were greeted by a handful of folks from the local CRC (First CRC?).  There was fresh baking, and candy and chips from the Brockville Tourism representative.  As the gear truck had yet to arrive, we ventured off into town to see the sights.

Our first stop in a new town is always the bike shop, so we stopped in at Cranks, and had a peek around.  Karel needed a bolt for his stem, and a few other guys had some minor things to pick up.  The owner was super helpful and friendly, an everyone got what they were after.

Other stops included the used DVD trade-in store, the army surplus store, the Salvation Army Thrift Shop and the "Everything Store."  Tomorrow Ryan is trying to organize a time trial event, and was looking for some cheap trophies.  It's looking like the event might be delayed 'til next week as a church is possibly setting up a SAG stop right in the middle of the stretch we were planning on using...  we'll see if we can recoordinate something else in the morning.

The other awesome stop in town was at the Book Trader - a huge, cluttered collection, which the owner claimed contained 70,000 titles. There were two full shelves of Louis L'Amour that I had to snap pictures of for my friend Ed, who loves this western author.

Mark, Ryan and I then got some pizza from a local pizzeria, and rolled back to camp around 3:30.  We're staying at St Lawrence Park on the west side of Brockville, and it's right on the St Lawrence River.  We swam in the water, then set up our tents on the grass-covered concrete reservoir right beside the water treatment plant. The view from my tent door is pretty awesome.

The same people who greeted us on arrival into camp also provided dinner for us tonight.  And it was as Dutch as dinners get: Borecole (boiled potatoes and kale), sausages, homemade apple sauce, ceasar salad, buns, and a huge selection of dessert.  Awesome!

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...

Day 51 - Ajax, ON to Trenton, ON

Daily Stats:
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.

Day 50 - Ancaster, ON to Ajax, ON

Daily Stats:
Time: 4h32m21s
Distance: 124.09km
Avg Spd: 27.3km/hr
Climbing: 520m

Good, flat ride today from Ancaster, through Toronto and into Ajax.  No serious events, but it was cool to see Lake Ontario, the CN tower, and the busy-ness of downtown TO.

Our route took us down some sweet secondary roads, just off the lake.  The streets were heavily treed, and the houses that lined them were mansions.

Note in the above picture that Brandon is wearing the "Traveling Tutu."  This is a new game started today where-in the recipient of the tutu must wear it for an hour, then pass it off to another rider.  If the Tutu is on your shelf in the morning, it's yours to start the day. I hope this game doesn't last for too long.

Here's a sweet shot of the bay as we approached downtown.

And a shot of the Top Guns (minus Karel, plus Adam).  Karel had passport issues today, and had to take the day off of riding to get a new one issued post-haste.  He's in camp again this evening and all is in place for our border crossing next week.

And another sweet shot of the lake with a bunch of sailboats.

The other highlight of the day was SAG 3, where Katie's mom, Marti, and another lady from Newmarket CRC had Drumsticks waiting for us cyclists!  As I've said before - Ice Cream is the way to a cyclist's heart!

After leaving the beach, we rolled through this awesome neighborhood, just off of Queen Street.  I had to chuckle at the sign on the left condemning street hockey players...

We're camped tonight at the Ajax community center.  Showers were available at the arena.  We can swim in the pool.  They have Internet.  There's soccer fields, basketball courts and a skate park within a stones-throw of camp.  We've just pitched tents on the greenspace in between two of the play areas...  and it works just fine.

Day 48/49 - Breslau, ON to Ancaster, ON

Daily Stats:
Time: 2h12m40s
Distance: 71.60km
Avg Spd: 32.4km/hr
Climbing: 436m

The ride on Saturday was short, and as such, the Top Guns were the last ones out of camp again, and intended on a fast ride.  We did.

Maranatha CRC hosted our first SAG stop, where a large number of day-riders joined us, including Ed (the 2005 & 2008 tour director), Matt (Peter Wong's friend and organizer of the 2014 Love in Motion) and their friend Greg.  We cruised along at a very rapid pace for the rest of the day, all the way to Redeemer College.

Almost immediately arriving on campus, I was greeted by John, Connie and Spencer Byl (my aunt & uncle).  They live in Hamilton, and have been putting me up all weekend, feeding me wonderfully and showing me around town.

I spent Saturday afternoon doing laundry and drying out my tent, then we went to the mall to try and get my cell phone working again.  It was strange being around so many people again, all of whom were unconcerned with my existence and the journey I am on.  Saturday night we went out for dinner, then watched a movie into the wee hours of the evening.

Sunday was a busy day - John & Connie's church (Meadowland Fellowship CRC) welcomed all the Sea to Sea-ers to join their service, and fed us a great chili potluck.

My friend Meghan Thomson and her friend Rachel came to visit from St Catharines after lunch, and we grabbed coffee and caught up on life and quizzed me about life on the tour.

At 3pm today we held a celebration service at the Redeemer auditorium, that was attended by almost 1,000 people!  I forgot my camera, but rest assured there were lots of people, and lots of cyclists.  I'm not sure who led worship, but the band was amazing.  Representatives from World Renew, the RCA and Partners Worldwide all spoke briefly about their work, and encouraged the cyclists to continue the good work.

Dinner tonight was home-cooked goodness on the BBQ with John & Connie.  We went for an after-dinner walk down at Bayfront Park with Spencer and Dexter.

Tomorrow we're back on the road to Ajax, along with 36 new riders.  It's hard to believe we've finished seven weeks of riding already.  Seven weeks!  In two weeks from today, this trip will be a memory, and we will all be returning to our regular lives.  But the best of the ride is yet to come!