Lobster Dinner

Good news!  The doctors have given me a 50-50 chance of survival after eating the Poutine, Montreal Smoked meat and Sugar Pie.   Telen was given a 60% chance because she is cute.

Quebec is the place to ride your bike.   They have a great “Vive le bicyclette!” attitude towards cycling.  After riding in Ontario, where they have only a slightly better attitude than Alberta towards cyclists, Quebec has been a refreshing change.   Ontario, I gotta tell ya, Quebec kicks your ass!  Victoria, the supposed cycling capital of Canada, could learn a lot as well.

I rode the Chemin du Roy from Montreal to Trois Rivieres and I felt like a king.  What a fabulous ride!   The route was right along the St. Lawrence River and very scenic.  Every town I rode through had big signs indicating the cycling routes and one town even had shoulder high pickets separating the cycling lanes from the rest of the traffic.  I rode along doing the royal wave at everyone but I think the heat must have gotten to them because the only one to wave back was an old lady in a motorcade.  She was waving to everyone, though.  I was riding on the Route Verte but I had to question the naming as I rode by two nuclear power plants and a pulp mill.   After that, though, I rode past a lot of farms and the smell was more what I expected. 

The day was very hot so when I was almost at Trois Rivieres I decided to pull over under a bridge in the shade to give certain parts of my anatomy a rest and to rehydrate.  That way, when I came to where Telen was waiting, I would look strong, fit and sexy.  After a suitable interval when the numbness had faded I remounted my bike and pedaled about 100 meters and there was Telen waiting for me.  She agreed, when I asked her, if I looked strong, fit and sexy.  She said, Yeah, yeah, yeah.” 

I thought I had at least 10 kilometers to go!   I swear the last road sign I had seen said “Trois Rivieres 20 K”.  Perhaps Quebec is learning its directions from Ontario.

We stayed in an Auberge in the heart of Quebec City.  Auberge means Hostel.   We like the atmosphere in hostels.  We had a private room with our own bathroom but we shared the kitchen facilities.  The kitchens in the hostels that we have been in are almost like professional kitchens.  It is always interesting to see what everyone else is cooking.  The only unfortunate part of this hostel was the number of stairs to get to our room.   We had to go up quite a few, then down some and up again.  Anyone who is a cyclist knows how much we hate stairs – especially just after a long ride!   Telen was very supportive and kept reminding me of how it was building my character and to quit my infernal whining.

Telen in Quebec City

Quebec City is like a little European City.  It is the only walled city north of Mexico.  There are a million places to eat and cyclists are everywhere.  Since Quebec City is on a hill I suspect these cyclist are very fit.  The roads in old town Quebec are cobbled so I think these fit cyclists may have few if any teeth left.   They will all probably become hockey players.

Things you don't want to see on holiday

We crossed into Noveau Brunswick.  Sorry, Ontario, but New Brunswick kicks your ass as well.  How does it feel, Ontario, to have your ass kicked by the nerdiest little kid on the playground?

Remember me lamenting the hills?   Well, I found them.  We are in the Laurentian Mountains now.   Back home we would not call these mountains, we would call them hills.  Since they are so low and worn down the road builders don’t bother to find passes to run the roads through, they just go straight up and over the “mountains”.  The hills are not as long and arduous as going through the passes in BC but there are a lot more of them!

We are currently in Saint John NB.   The Atlantic Ocean is just outside the cottage we are staying in.   We are not finished our cross-Canada trip yet, by any means, but we have gotten to the Atlantic.  So, we went to the market and bought 2 lobsters for dinner!  The part of the Atlantic outside here is the famous Bay of Fundy – the highest tides in the world.  Again, here we go with the superlatives! 

But really Canada has a great many superlatives the greatest of which is its people.  Having travelled this far I am impressed with the people we have met.  All of them are imbued with a certain quality that makes them Canadian.   I cannot say exactly what it is but you know it right away.  It makes me proud to say that I come from the same country.

Telen writes:

I really enjoyed travelling through Quebec.  I was rather apprehensive i.e. how to communicate in French, how to navigate by car as I have been warned about the “crazy Quebecois drivers” etc.  It turned out that everyone we met was friendly and spoke better English than our French.  Some of my grade 12 French returned which permitted us to order things in restaurants, for example.  There is a distinct cultural difference here.  At times I felt like I was in some parts of Europe which I have fond memories of.  A lot of street and town names begin with Saint …   One sign was “St Louis du Ha! Ha!” (with the exclamation marks).   I thought it was a joke but no!  It is the name of a real town.  I would like to return to Quebec for future vacations.

I think this lifestyle of having fun and no work suits us.  The muscle knots in my shoulders are pretty well gone.  The biggest decision each day is to decide what to eat or cook and where to go tomorrow.   Rand is looking even better nowadays with a much trimmer profile.