We left Toronto around 9:30 this morning along the Queen’s Quay and the bike trail that took us through the beaches up to Kingston Rd. I’m sure glad I decided to buy a pack for the front of my bike as opposed to wearing a backpack; it feels much nicer and your shirt doesn’t get soaked with sweat within an hour. My bag was placed on Cycle Canada’s truck – another cool thing about going on a trip like this: you don’t have to carry your own baggage.
There was, however, one small blip. I bought these new brakes when I got my bike tuned up. They are made with some kind of gum resin so they will still be sticky in wetter weather. They were screaming really loudly so I brought my bike back to the shop yesterday morning to see if they could do something to quiet them down. The bike shop guy said that they have to be broken in, that the noise is from the shiny coat and you have to use them for a few days and the sound will go away.
So I’m travelling happily down the road and decide to test them, so I squeezed them very hard very fast. My bike stopped suddenly and I went flying over my handle bars. On the way down I had visions of breaking my arm or wrist and my trip would be over 30 km in. I scraped my elbow pretty good and my wrist does hurt a bit, but the real downer is the charley horse above my right knee. It made for some uncomfortable riding the last 60 km but by the time I got here to Bowmanville I decided it was funny and to not worry about it.
The part of the Waterfront Trail that goes through Pickering is pretty nice, and I got a kick out of the overly nostalgic, sentimental name they have for one of their parks: The Pickering Rate Payers Association Park. The obvious subtext being “Stay out you non-property-tax-paying leeches.”
Just outside of Ajax, I had to ride a couple of kilometres on an unpaved road that was filled with small rocks. I wasn’t so much worried about a flat as I was about wiping out. Two spills in one day would just be wrong.
Oshawa was nicer than I thought it would be; I pictured it as a counterpart to the grime and cement of St Catharines, but no, they had a really pretty nature reserve and park that was nice to ride through.
The only time I really got nervous was the ride between Oshawa and Bowmanville when I had to go access a street called Holt Ave. To get to it you have to go a kilometre down an offramp from Highway 401. Luckily, there were no cars coming when I came through.
I got to the Howard Johnson’s in Bowmanville at 2:50, so I was on the road for almost 5 1/2 hours, during which I had stopped for maybe a half-hour total to each lunch, sit on the beach at Rouge Park and clean the blood and dirt off my elbow. We’ll see how my body holds up to further abuse tommorrow, when we ride to Brighton.
There are times when a Howard Johnson never looked so good! It’s good to get the the crash out of the way early on. Keep it up!