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Saturday 16 August 2014

Laura's and Kelly's Epilogue

Best shoulder: Saskatchewan. By far. You fit three riders across and rumble strips. 

Best weather: July in general. It was freezing in May and June and rained what seemed like very day. And August was pretty similar. 

Best license plate: Prince Edward Island. There's four to choose from all complete with pictures. You're bound to find one you like. 

Best drivers:  northern Ontario.  Terrible roads, no shoulders and yet we never ran into any close calls or problems with these drivers. 

Best/ cyclist aware : Quebec. This province is full of cyclists and bike paths and the drivers are more than used to sharing the road. 

Best welcome sign : rennie 


Best largest object: The wawa goose. It's massive, it welcomes you to wawa, It celebrates the highway going to wawa. BUT it's falling apart, don't worry you can buy a feather for the mere price of 50 dollars because they're rebuilding the goose of course. 

Best Ceaser : you'll have to ask Danica to confirm this but my vote is Medicine Hat at the local. Served in a boot. 

Best London fog: Halifax, the wired monk. Delicious and they even had flavours including coconut chai, delicious. 

Best camping: Ontario, great stealth camping by Lake Superior. And their provincial parks were the nicest. A bit pricey but definitely the most secluded from other sites. 

Best wild life: Ontario; bears and moose and deer. 
BC; mountain goats one time, and a baby near and deer. 

Best scenery: Newfoundland is our vote. Mountains, fiords, lakes, moose and rocks. If the weather had been better this would be a clear winner. OH and there towns are so colourful and cute. 

Best headwind: going into Winnipeg. We drafted that whole day in rain and wind. Completely awful. 

Best tailwind: leaving Regina we had an awesome tail wind and ended up doing another 180 km day without really trying.

Best rest day: Ottawa. Hands down. We all met friends there and.... Snooooooop lion? And awolnation and childish gambino. Blues fest was a time. 

Best natural disaster we averted:  a few day after passing kenora Ontario we heard that the water that had been at high levels near the trans Canada had flooded the road and the traffic was being diverted on a big detour. 

Best (worst) natural disaster: the blueberry Paulson. I'll paint you a picture: you summit a mountain after six hours of climbing. At the summit it begins to pour and thunder. That rain turns into a torrential downpour of hail. Then a park ranger tells you to beware if grizzlies on the road. Worst day. 

Best (worst) detour: Brandon was a day of detours. First gravel, then potholes, flooded parks and Danica falling. But that first 5 km in gravel was the worst.
OR
the day with just Danica, Kelly and I opting not to take the detour and instead we biked through an active construction site. 

Best google directions: tough mudder. Otherwise known as google telling us to bike through atv trails. 

Best hitch hiking: British Columbia. 

Best ice cream: cows, pei. Sorry kawartha dairy you're a close second. 

Best hospitality: Rebecca and family for taking in smelly bikers and Sam. Thanks again!! 

Best wipe out: the obvious choice would be Danica in Brandon. But we're going with Danica in bow island who managed to be thrown from her bike after trying to get on the sidewalk from the grass ( a tiny lip). This fall caused her to have the yips about curbs for the whole trip. 

Best flat tire: Danica. Coming into Princeton on a down hill AND a 1/4 inch nail puncturing her newly purchased tire in her home town of kenora. 

Best bike shop: mission, BC.  Specifically Bruce. 

Best newspaper article: the one from the Lindsay times. 

Best bridge encounter:  northern Ontario. We crossed a lot of bridges under construction one day. 
Coming into Schreiber we saw the opp blocking one Lane. Turns out one of the bridges had been washed out and it would take 4 days to fix!! Thank god we got over it. 

Best bar:  George street Newfoundland. The whole thing. 

Best timmies: to us they looked the same, but honestly we should have been sponsored by them because of the amount of tims we consumed this trip. 

Best moose sign: Quebec, it honestly looked like it was prancing across the street

Best deer sign: Quebec, the deer was "jumping" but really just looked like it was flying. And was an odd looking deer. There were also quite a few Rudolph's and one winged deer outside of fernie. 

This trip has definitely been one for the books. From the BC mountains to the shores of Newfoundland we crossed them all. I know that I've had some experiences that will stay with me for the rest of my life. And some that I wish to forget ( Brandon, Manitoba). But all in all this was an amazing way to see the country... In really slow motion.  Something I would recommend to anyone even thinking about doing something similar.
 To everyone who helped us along the way, thank you so very much! Your generosity and hospitality was amazing. This country is truly filled with amazing people.  Thanks to everyone who read the blog, I hope we kept you entertained with our stories for the past 3 months. 

We all finished this trip separately, and at different times. Missing our amazing German, Veronika for our east coast leg.  It just wasn't the same without her. But in the end we made it to St. John's. 
Having checked one of the bucket list, now it's back to the real world. Hopefully, with a bed, a climate controlled environment and a real stove. 

( by Laura and Kelly) 

We wrote something, Can you spot it? 


Make it to St. John's. 
( written with red wet chalk) 

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