as it turned out, it took an extra 15 minutes getting out of the driveway. i had my first mechanical failure. fortunately, between greg and i, we found the cause of the noise i started hearing a day or two back. i had lost one of the bolts holding the back rack on. greg got to work and 15 minutes later we were on the road again. 'we' because greg decided to pull out his bike, blow the dust off it, put some air in the tires, and ride the first 10 miles with me.
i rode the rest of the way into romeo solo. i stopped there and had a chai and panini. inexplained to the young women working the counter that i had first been jn romeo some 20 years earlier. she smiled and nodded. i told her that both my brother and sister had lived there at that time. she continued to smile. oh, well, so much for trying to stimulate some curiosity.
i remember that first visit very well, because i wanted the girls to experience northern winter weather and snow. the timing was great, cause it snowed the day before, it snowed again the day after we got there, and it was around 20 deg with a hard wind blowing. the downtown seems to have grown a little since then.
i made the 60 miles to marine city and the ferry across the st. claire river to canada faster than i anticipated. i was there by 6pm. so i grabbed the ferry across, $1. a steal. and after a short wait, they let me through customs and into canada. the last time i tried to do that was hitchiking in the winter of 71-72, or 72-73. they wouldn't let me in and sent me back across the border. they said i had to have $10 for every day i was going to spend in canada and i didn't. this time, no problem. see what a difference 40 years, a war, and a few gray hajrs make?
one of the big questions was where i was going to spend the night. i had planned to ride 10-20 miles down the road and find some place to slip into and camp. i was a little concerned that i didn't do anything to get arrested on my first night in canada. the customs official suggested a campground i might want to go to. which i did. turns out there was a public campground a mile down the road. there was no attendant when i got there, so i went back to the tent camping area with no sevices. i was the only one. i cooked dinner, ramen noodles and a cookie, and went to sleep. i woke to the sunrise, a big red sun smack on the horizon. last time i saw that it was in montana and the sunrise was at 5:00 pm. this time it was 6:30 and all the tent equipment was soaked from a really strong dew. but i packed up, fed the mosquitos, showered, and hit the road by a little after 7:00.
i followed google maps' recommendations and for the next 50 miles i rode gravel country roads. i really enjoyed the quiet and not having to deal with the trzffic. the roads were gravel, but they weren't bad. they weren't filled with potholes. matter of fact, i made pretty good time, i covered the 50 miles by before noon. now this area of ontario is pancake flat. mostly farmland, corn, soy beans, and hay. the weird thing is that i never saw more than two people: a man driving a pick up and a postman driving his car. otherwise, for 5 hours and 50 miles, i never saw another person. not a farmer on a tractor, not a person on a lawnmower, not a woman putting out the laundry or working a garden. no one. i was starting to get a little nervous that if i had a tire burst on the grave that i wouldn't be able to find help. so i abandoned google and got back onthe pavement.
except for one divergence. there was a stretch that showed a bike trail typical of a rails to trails. turns out it was a snow mobile path that was a two track dirt trail. it wasn't bad to start, but it quickly added some potholes and pits. and then a mud pit. i had to carry the bike through parts of it, wheel it through others. by the time i made it past the pit, the bike had a layer of mud collected around brakes, deraileur, and panniers. what a mess. but i made it trough, scraped most of the mud off, and made it the final miles into port stanley.
ontario is flat. really flat. except along the coast. it's flat till you reach the towns located on streams or rivers. there you drop down to the water line and immediately climb up afterward. like riding along kodak road, except the ups and downs are spaced much further apart, usually several miles apart.
all the towns along lake erie are called ports and they do indeed have marinas and boats for the most part, but not what we would normally call a port. port stanley has a population around 3,000 +/-, based primarily around tourist trade. it's buiult on either side of a river, with a lift bridge connecting the two sides and allowing the sail boats to get back to the marinas. immediately across the bridge, on the main corner is the coffee shop owned by michelle. michelle posted on warmshowers, not as a host, but offering to help find someone to host. i had emailed her asking for help but hadn't heard back. when i got in the shop and finally got connected again, i had a message from her offering to let me stay in a little 2 bed room cottage that she had. bingo.
it was also in her coffee shop that i met another cyclist touring coast to coast. jacob is a 20 something. back in june, he sold all his misc. belongings, cancelled his lease, quit his job parking cars, and left seattle heading for the east coast. he detoured to iowa to ride in ragbrai (bike ride across iowa). he met a young woman from new york during his ride and has now adjusted his end point to new york to go stay with her. anyway, since jacob needed a place to stay for the night, i invited him to share the cottage and ride together the following day.
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