Hello, Hello

“A feeling's so much stronger than a thought
Your eyes are wide
And though your soul it can't be bought
Your mind can wander.”

Welcome to my blog about riding a bicycle across North America from Haida Gwaii, British Columbia back to my home in Ottawa, Ontario in the summer of 2013 to celebrate my 50th year on Earth!

If you are new to the blog and would like to start from my pre-trip ramblings, CLICK HERE, and advance by clicking "Newer Post" at the bottom of each page.

To start from the actual beginning of the trip in Haida Gwaii, CLICK HERE

Otherwise, feel free to browse using the Blog Archives on the right margin of the page

This Must Be The Place

“Home — is where I want to be,
Pick me up and turn me ’round.”

I woke up at 6:30 am to the sound of a transport truck's rattling engine brakes but to the smell of bacon from the Rolphton Motel's restaurant kitchen. Fair trade off I guess. Over breakfast, it was entertaining to listen to old men banter in the mixed accents of the upper Ottawa Valley, the mumbled Irish lilt and French Canadian staccato. 225 kms from home, not a daunting distance when your own bed is at the end, I told myself before heading off.

At Deep River I got past the last of the steep hills, as the Ottawa Valley opens up towards the Capital. I stopped for a ice cream sundae at the local dairy as it was shaping up to be a hot morning. 30 kilometres later at Petawawa, I let out a sigh of relief as I left the increasingly busy highway for good and turned to the small county back roads that I know well.

Deep River being a nuclear energy research centre, this ice cream  parlour had an Atomic Reactor Sundae

Don't tell anyone I was secretly having beer with my submarine sandwich at the children's playground in Beachburg. No minors were corrupted in the making of this photo.

The sun was going down as I reached Ottawa's outer limits, and I still had 50 kilometres to go. I rode through the last exurbs and suburbs like one big giant countdown in a strange local dialect — Arnprior, Galetta, Kinburn, Carp, Kanata. I entered the Greenbelt under a full moon hanging on a clear sky, with a chorus of crickets singing their late summer song. Into the city, then finally my street and my house.

In the TV series "Once Upon A Time", there's a scene where the Evil Queen lights up a truck's tracks to trace where people had been secretly planting magic beans. If I had the same power, tonight there would be a thin line of my bike's tire tread glowing from my house all the way to the Pacific Coast :)

Hope you have enjoyed reading along with my journey, good night! 

This is  Radio Glenn going off the air and blogging out.

“Home — is where I want to be

But I guess I'm already there.
I come home she lifted up her wings
I guess that this must be the place.”

Hard Road

“I have a vision in my mind of a life that I've left behind
Yeah, can't you see that lost souls can't swim
You know you'll sink, but you still jump in
And it's alright to get caught stealing back what you've lost.”

Before I started on this trip, I had a drink with a friend who asked me what I wanted to get out of it. I said I wanted to get something back, but I don't think I clearly articulated what it was. It's an intangible feeling, akin to placing an ear on a part of the world to hear its heartbeat for yourself; of being grateful for the good in it more than begrudging of the bad; of deriving energy from the experience and regaining the willingness to return it. Whatever it is, I got what I wanted — there is not a single day of this adventure that I regret.

I had stayed in Sudbury's western suburb and I was glad it was a Sunday morning with very light traffic to get across the city's gritty industrial core. Sudbury is far from cycle-friendly, a place that seems to have grown haphazardly around the mines and smelters. I rode up the hill to its famous landmark, the Big Nickel before riding away from its towering smokestacks.

Sudbury still looks like it needs a bath

My obnoxious orange vest at the Big Nickel

With the phasing out of the penny, soon to be Canada's smallest coin

I stopped at the first community just east of the city and found a food truck. The owner, Robert, asked me where I was riding from, and after told him how far I had come, he refused to take my money and gave me a free lunch. I just dropped a few bucks in his tip jar anyway. He sat down and ate with me for a bit, swapping stories, and I told him people like him made travelling so rewarding.

I stayed in North Bay, which sits on the fuzzy line between Northern and Eastern Ontario. Some people here refer to driving to Ottawa as "going south on Highway 17" when it actually lies directly east. It's a pretty little town with good "bones".

Downtown North Bay

Ontario has such rugged beauty — sometimes the monotony of trees and rocks lull you to the point of boredom, but then a grand vista or a small detail snaps you back to attention. Sometimes a pocket of the landscape can seem so deliberately artful, like a bonsai arrangement. In a car, you'll see the same scenery behind the windows, but on a bicycle you are in it and free to pause anytime to take in the subtleties. 

The state of the Trans Canada Highway is sometimes embarrassing, and stressful on a bike.

Once in a while, cyclists are thrown a bone, like shoulders on the climbs

At Mattawa, I officially enter the Ottawa Valley. Even up here the river seems familiar to me in how it cuts its banks, and the sweet peaty smell of its water. I had a picnic lunch by the statue of big Joe Mufferaw, the Canadian version of Paul Bunyan. Kind of neat that I had ridden through Bemidji MN then to here. However, Joe Mufferaw, or Joseph Montferrand, was at least a real guy whose feats of strength were magnified in folk tales. Paul Bunyan is purely fictional.

Some of the climbs here are steep, as steep as the ones through the big mountains in the beginning of this trip, and on far worse roads and ruder truckers. By 8 pm I'm tuckered out and 20 km short of my goal of Deep River, so I pull into the first and only motel for miles

One of the neat things about cycling back home from far away is getting to the point where things start to feel everyday, like turning on the TV in the motel room and getting your local channel or seeing mailboxes with your city's newspaper. I'm now within a day's long ride away from home and I'm definitely feeling Ottawa's gravitational pull.

“And you try to find a love that'll see you through your darkest days,
And her soft brown hair is as long as the Canadian highway

When the sun dies until it's reborn
But there's no road that ain't a hard road to travel on.”

Long May You Run

“Well, it was back in Blind River in 1962
When I last saw you alive
But we missed that shift on the long decline

Long may you run.”

Neil Young wrote this song lamenting for his first car, an old hearse he used to haul his equipment around. Funny to think that it was about the time I was born when he had to give it up because the transmission broke on these same roads. Well my bike hasn't missed any shifts on the long declines (maybe it hesitated on some of the inclines), and has performed swimmingly since Saskatoon — no flat tires!

I left Sault Ste. Marie after programming my GPS with a route to Blind River that avoided the main highway from the recommendations of the bike shop. The first half was great, going on really quiet roads through Mennonite country. I came across more horse and buggies than cars, it was like stepping back in time, The beautiful rolling countryside was worth the climbs and the occasional dirt road.

Nice quiet country roads

I thought I had seen enough bison out West

A store run by Mennonites

After going through a stretch of rough loose gravel road, however, I realized that the route was taking too much time. I had contacted a host in Blind River and I did not want to get there too late, so I decided to switch to the Trans-Canada highway. Getting back into traffic took a bit of getting used to with the narrow to non-existing shoulders, but with the light traffic and my well-positioned rearview mirror I got accustomed to it. I also put on an obnoxiously fluorescent orange vest that I bought in the States, the same kind road construction workers wear so I was visible. I was a moving pylon.

I got into Blind River at 8:30 pm as the sun was setting and was welcomed by Wayne and Muriel Orton in their home right on the river. They offered me their entire guest cabin, and even the use of their kayaks. Had I gone paddling, I would have been tempted to stay an extra day.

The Ortons'  backyard

The guest cabin

In the morning, I went to a restaurant for breakfast before leaving town but the service was so slow, it almost turned into lunch. It's nice to have normal August weather come around — those nice stable mid-summer days with no risk of thunderstorms in the afternoon. It was a beautiful day to ride the undulating route through the jagged rock cuts in the granite hills, with occasional glimpses of Lake Huron. It's just a pity that the roads up here aren't great for cycling because it's hard to fully appreciate the scenery when half of the time I'm watching out for trucks.

Typical scenery in Northern Ontario, rivers tumbling over the rugged granite of the Canadian Shield

These 2-foot "shoulders" are generous for this part of the Trans Canada Highway.

Got safely into Sudbury by the evening, but the small road leading into the city is just as bad and cracked as it was ten years ago. It's nice to be on the home stretch, though!

“Long may you run, long may you run.
Although these changes have come
With your chrome heart shining in the sun
Long may you run.”

Ontari-ari-ari-o!

I'm happy to be back in Ontario, but I dread its highways. Some of the quality of the roads in this province, especially in the north, remain the same as they were in the 1960s. This homestretch is going to be not as comfortable as the start out West.

I met Adam at a rest stop on my last late afternoon in Michigan. He's cycled from Toronto to Vancouver and is on his way back, probably more than twice the distance I've done. I decided to join him to camp out in a rustic forestry campground — way out, it seemed, in the middle of nowhere. The place was deserted except for the mosquitos, of course, but had a decent source of water.

The next day, we made a run for Sault Ste. Marie, making really good time. With two cyclists on the road, it seems cars slow down a bit more. Strength in numbers. There was lot of construction towards the end, at one point we used the pyloned-off centre part of the highway where we really weren't supposed to be. It felt like a weird reversal, a bike path with car lanes in the shoulders. Going up on the big bridge across St Mary's River — which empties Lake Superior into Lake Huron and separates the USA from Canada — was quite exciting, too bad we couldn't stop to take pictures. We were actually slowing down traffic, as the big truck behind us was following us at our speed through the narrow bridge. It all did not matter, as there was a bit of a line up at border control anyway.

Adam

It's like a bike highway with car lanes :)

Climbing up the big bridge to Canada

After parting ways with Adam, I went in search of Velorution, the best bike shop in Northern Ontario. The owner Andre is a great advocate for cycling in the area and has set up a free campground for cyclists behind his store, complete with a nice shower.

Sault Ste. Marie has come a long way since I was last here ten years ago, but I fully expect some of Ontario's highways will have me cynically singing old this song from Expo '67 to keep my courage up:

Frayin' Easy Down The Road I Go

“Pair of boots and a sack of clothes
Free and easy down the road I go.”

I've been using and washing certain clothing items more frequently, and some of my favoured ones surprisingly have been cheap Walmart "Starter" brand which they don't carry in Canada. Their shirts are perfect for touring because they wash well and dry easy. Since one of my more expensive brand name shorts have begun to fray at the seams, I decided to duck into a Walmart at Marquette and ended up buying several items. With those, plus the few souveneir t-shirts I've bought along the way, my panniers are getting fat.

The route between Marquette and Munising is really beautiful, the kind of scenery I was hoping to see more of along the south shore of Superior. There are long stretches of beaches with nobody on them. Crashing surf just like the seaside but with freshwater practically clean enough to drink.

Almost looks like the Florida panhandle

Everyday is Christmas in this town

At Munising, I had to try the quintessential Yooper snack — pasties. A shop that had a sign boasting they had the best in the Upper Peninsula was as good a place as I could ask for. Yooper pasties are basically a giant empanada filled mostly with potato and a bit of meat. Pretty tasty, pasty, it made for a good lunch.

The road turned inland again after Munising, back into the forested interior. I had a drink at a truck stop and sure enough some country music came on the radio.

“If you only get to go around one time
I'm gonna sit back and try to enjoy the ride.”

Glove plus one

“I went off to the right

Without saying goodbye,

Where does it go from here?
Is it down to the lake I fear?”

The two parts of Michigan are often described as a "glove and bat" — I'm travelling across the bat, the Upper Peninsula, UP ("Yoo Pee"), or Yooperland as they call it here. The main reason I've gone down through the States is to avoid going through the north shore of Lake Superior on the Ontario side again, as that was one of the most gruelling portions last time I biked across this way. Although the terrain down here has definitely been tamer, it is also less scenic. The direct route goes mostly through forests — not much of a view being inland from Lake Superior.

I made it into the Michigan border at Ironwood after exploring Ashton WI, and soon decided to make it a short day since I was about to lose another hour going into Eastern Time Zone. The town certainly has a glut of motels, a few of them have closed or are for sale, so it was a cheap place to stop.

Although I dodged all the heavy rainfall, I was still treated to this rainbow

Not just one rainbow, but a double

It has been cold and windy lately, with the north wind blowing chilly damp air from the lake. There have been frost warnings at night, and here and there I have seen a few leaves start to change colour. Where did the summer go?

I made good distance the next day going almost 170 km to Lake George/Michigamme — not by choice but because the place I had intended to stay in had gone out of business. I had to continue on to the next town, making it a long tiring day with the wind against my favour and some hills to climb. At one point the GPS directed me to a short cut on an old section of highway. I didn't realize it was horse-and-buggy-ancient for it had deteriorated into an unpaved road for quite a stretch.

Not quite home

Forest and more forest

Old M28 highway

Getting into Marquette was an easy distance from Lake George the next day, which allowed me to stop at some silly roadside attractions along the way.

Dere's da place

This gun can actually fire a projectile

The big lake 

Marquette has a decent lakefront bike path

Ergo, one of the most vapid songs to come out of the 1980s