Halifax

Lobster Dinner!

People from the Maritimes have a reputation for friendliness.   I guess a good example is what happened in Newfoundland right after 911.  I am here to tell you that this reputation is well deserved! I was riding along between Saint John and Moncton when I saw something red off the side of the road.  I was riding in my own little headspace and it took a few minutes for it to register.  Oh, my gosh, that could be someone injured on the side of the road or something equally macabre!  I stopped and walked my bike back the 20 meters or so to have a better look.   It turned out to be just a piece of red cloth that had likely blown off of someone’s moving truck, so I got back on my bike.  I looked up the road and there was a car backing furiously down the shoulder toward me.  Two guys hopped out and one of the men said, “Are you ok?  I am a bike mechanic, I could help you fix your bike!”  Contrast that to the incident a few years ago when a group of us were riding to Calgary and Bob fell and broke his shoulder and 16 vehicles went by before a couple of Newfies stopped and drove him to hospital.

The bike-mechanic, whose name was Dana, and his friend Peter, chatted with me for quite a while.  Dana had ridden across Canada a few years ago.  Has everyone ridden across Canada?

Everywhere we have been in the Maritimes the people have been warm, friendly and accommodating.  Maybe it is the diet of lobster.  The diet on the west coast is beef and crab… 

On the map there was a scenic road called the Fundy Scenic route from Saint John to Moncton so we decided to head that way.  50 km of teeth-rattling road with nothing to see but a few farms, lots of trees and fog.  Not a fun day after all.  Strangely I was happy to get back on the smooth, wide shouldered main road even though there were large trucks.

In Moncton we went to watch the Tidal Bore come up the Petitcodiac River.  A wild pig running up the river before the tide!  Wow!  The Bay of Fundy has the highest tides in the world so when the tide comes in it pushes up the riverbed raising a wave before it.  No pigs and no tedious conversations, just water.

The Tidal Bore (Yawn)

We have made it to Halifax.  Lobster again.  Sigh.  Telen is looking for mussels as well.  I have been wandering around flexing and posing but apparently mine are not good enough for her?  Geeze!

Halifax Waterfront

Telen on Halifax Waterfront

I guess we have crossed the continent but we are not done yet.  In a few days we will arrive in Charlottetown and begin 5 days of actually riding together.  I think Telen has been relishing the time I have been on the bike because she gets away from my crankiness.  On PEI she is going to be with me 24/7.  I just hope the werewolfiness we discovered on Manitoulin Island will be held in check.  Mind you, that lupine side may have surfaced because of the great rip-off of Gordon’s Park, where we stayed.  Nevertheless I am going to eat lots of garlic… or is that for vampires?  Maybe I should just eat lots of lobster and hope for the best.

Wait a minute, she loves lobster…

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.