Life is a highway , no , life is the open road !!!: Day 35 - We have crossed half the country !!!!

( entered posts for days 34 & 35 today , more coming tomorrow )

Half way photo, five ridders missing , late arriving.

July 31

Today in the town of Marathon we celebrated completing 3684 km !!!!, hard to believe but we have traveled half way across the country !!!!!. It still fells unreal that I have covered that distance , we set out every morning to do our daily run and the total of those runs never really enters your mind , you just think in terms of one day , or one kilometer, or one hill , one bend in the road , one food stop, time even does not exist for us , we don’t know if it’s Monday or Friday, the date of the month is of no significance and an unknown also.

We start our days groaning as we get our legs working and just pedal , personally it doesn’t mater if it’s 80 km or 160 km , flat or hilly , I just pedal and for the most part enjoy myself , sometimes you get lost in the scenery, sometimes you just relish the road and get lost in the riding, other times it’s the camaraderie , the kidding and joking , the mad sprints , outlandish breakfasts and lunches , some times you just test yourself , how fast , how far , race up hills, glide down hills , the one thing that is constant is that it never really is boring , and personal I just love being out here and riding .

So today was special and we celebrated with a lunch in Marathon ( the half way point ) Erin and Mat brought the truck to Pebbles Beach were we all met it and they laid out goodies for us to have , we made sandwiches , had watermelon and ice cream and took tons of pictures, marveled at our accomplishment and when it was done off we went back to pedaling and losing ourself in the adventure.

By now there seems to be quite established riding groups our being no exception, Ed, Murray, Janice myself and Bob ( recovered from his bad day ) set out today, well we set out without Ed ( he was still eating breakfast ) but he caught up to us while we were stopped at the donut store having coffee, then latter we lost Murray for quite a while when he did not see us turn into the information center, but we found him later sitting by the road eating a banana , and at the end we lost Ed again when we left our last stop at Manitouwadge as he wasn’t quite ready to go and we started climbing and he was not able to catch us up . it’s just the way it goes , stop and take a picture and it takes a good 5 km to catch up , same goes for the unscheduled bathroom breaks , most times we all stop together but sometimes we don’t , no rime or reason to it , sometimes we’re fast , sometimes we’re slow , sometimes one of us goes off on there own latter rejoining the group. Some times we are joined by others and sometimes we join others, but for the most part we have our ridding partners and we stick with them.

We are again in another provincial park , quite a ways off the road, so much so that I have no cell coverage and had to pedal 3 km to the pay phone at the park gate to be able to call Evelyn. Also today I was on cook duty and once again we had the challenge of dealing with having to boil water as the campground water is not potable, but we made it work and made spaghetti with a great meat sauce and salad with rice crispies for desert, everyone was happy and all was eaten so we probably could have made just a little bit more. And now I find myself once again in my tent in the dark typing this which I will post at a later date .

Total ridden today: 105 - Average speed : 21.5 - Total ridding time: 4.52