Distance: 80km
Cycling Time: 4 hrs 4 min
Average Speed: 20km/hr
Weather: Cloudless blue sky and hot! 27C! Hardly any wind.
Terrain: Compared to the first few days, flat!
Mechanicals: 0 (!)
Today was another fantastic day! We hit the road the earliest we have yet (10:00am, oops we haven't exactly been quick to hit the road in the mornings) and found the terrain to be much more manageable than the coastal roads. It is starting to flatten out as we get to central Newfoundland; however, with more than 300 rivers on the island, we are still climbing in and out of the watersheds that feed these rivers (I.e. We can't quite kiss the hills goodbye yet!). After a day off it felt really good to get back in the saddle, and so we were happy to mount our faithful steeds, Blanco and Rocky, for another day of adventure.
At one point today I thought I was completely losing it; we had been rolling along for about 30km and were just starting to climb a huge hill (Joey's Hill, named after the former NFLD premier Joey Smallwood who was responsible for signing the Confederation for NFLD) in a valley where there was no wind (i.e. It was HOT!). All of a sudden, out of nowhere appeared a sign proclaiming "hot dogs, COLD pop and FRESH local strawberries - 1km ahead". I have never seen a mirage before but I was absolutely convinced this was one. So I put my head down and kept on pedaling. As I reached the crest of the first part of the hill - there it was - a hot dog stand and a fruit stand! Still not convinced of my sanity (my stomach was really rumbling at this point and we had been dreaming of fresh fruit for a few days now), I shouted ahead to Sean and he confirmed that I am not officially crazy.... So we sat at Joey's Lookout admiring the great view of the town of Gambo (another great name, that and Happy Adventure were the best two of the day) and ate the most delectable 5 star lunch ever, a sausage, cold coke, entire box of local strawberries and a snickers bar. I was in heaven.
Sean and I have both commented on the many interesting things we have seen on the side of the road as we roll along; things you would never notice as you speed by in a car. Sean compared it to finding treasures when walking along the beach, except in this case a pretty sea shell was replaced with a diaper, a crab with a stationary bike straight out of the 1970's, an interesting stone with a burnt out car and a message in a bottle with bungee cords, roadkill and various car parts.
We have met a lot of interesting people along the way so far; the bikes seem to be a natural conversation starter. Most people say something to the extent of "yes b'ye, you must be in some good shape!", when we tell them where we are headed. We have also received our fair share of honks as well, and as I was thinking today about how to decipher them all, I was reminded of something I wrote four years ago while I was in India:
"I feel it necessary to comment on the dynamics of the road in India, as I was able to sit in the front seat of the bus on this trip I think I now actually understand how this organized chaos works. Aside from the hierarchy of the road which I had already witnessed on numerous occasions, in which pedestrian yields to cyclist, cyclist to cycle-rickshaw, cycle-rickshaw to autorickshaw which yields to cars, cars to trucks and trucks to buses. The only thing the bus (and ALL other entities on the road) will always yield to, without question, is the King of the Road - the cow, I learned something else. Here is how it works: the bus roars down the highway in the right inside lane. When an object blocks it's path, the driver simply lays on the horn (which sounds like a doorbell-meets-video-game-sound-effect) until said object moves out of the way into the outside lane. This continues until the destination, meaning that the bus barges along in the same lane for the entire journey - no time wasted on passing or anything silly like that. In the rare instance that it is necessary to pass, often the vehicle in front will use their signal, but not to initiate a lane change, to tell the driver behind that it is safe to pass on that side of their vehicle. As crazy and bizarre as this all sounds, it really just works."
I am pretty sure that we are all well aware the T.C.H. operates in a much more ...conservative, shall we say, manner than this and our horns are nowhere near as entertaining and comical sounding, but in understanding the various uses of the horn in India, this got me to thinking about defining what each could mean in the context of our trip. I decided it could mean any of the following:" Hi!", "Heads up, I am behind you", "Good job, you are almost up that hill", "Hey! Those are cyclists!", "Keep on Pedaling", "Get out of my way!" or "Get off the road!". Unless of course it is a transport truck or a gravel truck than it is almost certainly one of the latter two....
Anyways, we made it to Gander in one piece (and several honks later, most of which were the encouragement type) and although Sean creaked the entire way there, his bike didn't fall apart on us. The miracle of the trip was had when we managed to find a shop that services bikes (Source for Sports as there is no bike shop here) AND they had ONE bottom bracket in stock AND it was compatible with Sean's bike AND they had the right tools to fix it AND the guy and Sean figured out how to fix it! We should have bought a lottery ticket as the chances of all of those factors coming together are extremely slim! For $22.60 (the guy only charged for parts because he had never actually fixed that part before so needed Sean's help to figure it out) Sean rode away with a properly-working bike! Lucky indeed as the only bike stores on the island are in St.John's and Corner Brook! As we were already in town, we found a great B&B to stay at, re-stocked on some camping supplies and celebrated the miracle (and the mirage!) with a feast at Pizza Delight. 'Twas a great day indeed. :o)
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