Life is a highway , no , life is the open road !!!: Day 57

Todays breakfast stop.

August 22

Up today to what looked like quite the pleasant day , there had been rumors of possible shower today but the sky’s were blue so we thought we had dodged the bullet add to that a short ride day of only 117 and we thought we had it made today , time to linger and enjoy and get into camp early .

Turning out of camp we got the first indications that maybe things were not going to be so rosy and 5 km later when we turned on to the main east west road our fears were confirmed , a head wind was blowing straight at us and when I say blowing I mean shaking the flag pole plowing !

I rode the first 24 km by my self and did well but it was a fight to hold 23 km/h , later holding 20 was a challenge , at Kamouraska I caught up to some fellow riders going into the bakery so I followed and bought some pastries , from there we had to back track about 1/2 km to a restaurant as the bakery did not serve coffee and at that point the rest of my gang showed up so we had breakfast at this very charming restaurant , I had a bagel with smoke salmon and swiss cheese , absolutely delicious !!!!

The wind was no better when we came out , it was blowing straight down the St Lawrence and we had the river once again just to our left all the way again today. Initially we could see the other shore but it got harder to see as we went on, at one point a mist started to develop over it far in the distance , Murray who is from Newfoundland said, when ever that happens the weather turns cooler , well as we rode on the mist got closer and finally the fog touched us and it definitely got cooler , myself as many of us did not bring extra clothing so we suffered for the last 20km or so.

About 10 km from camp we ran into Mark with his wheel of , he had a slow leak and hd tried to pump it up and his pump stopped working so he was waiting for someone to show up , it was cold so the others rode on and I stayed with him , we could not find the leak so we put the tube back on and pumped it up and headed out , one more stop to pump it got us to camp , later mark did find the hole and patched it.

We are camped near Trois Pistoles today and it’s cold in camp, people walking around bundled up , we eat quickly and headed for our tents to get out of the chilly wind , I raided my laundry baskets for warm clothes for tomorrow , not going to get caught unprepared again !!! And hopefully the wind gods well look at us favorably tomorrow, if not we will have to do a ritual sacrifice !!!!!

A sort of depressing thing happened today , first noticed as we left camp , the wind was making some leaves fall from the trees , nothing serious , but as we went on it got worse , yellow leaves lined the curbs of some streets and obvious yellow tree top could be observed here and there , it looks like we are coming into fall. We have spent a summer out on the road and now we are aware it’s coming to an end , kind of sad really the first inklings of the end , oh well , all good things come to and end and this will be no exemption . I am looking forward to being home again , back to normal living , back to my loved ones , the adventure has been truly extraordinary but my home life is even more extraordinary !!

Total ridden today: 119.4 - Average speed: 19.3 -- Ridding time: 6.10