The Last Day: Cape Cod

Day 72
Kilometer 6182
Brewster, MA

I can't decide if it feels more like I'm waking up from a dream that I was finally home, or if it feels like I've fallen back into the dream where I pedal and pedal and pedal and occasionally take a break to eat an obscene amount of food. A little of both.

Kingston, Plymouth, Bourne. What's weird is that I'm not counting down the miles—er, kilometers—anymore. Now I'm counting down with towns whose names I recognize.

Sagamore Bridge, Sandwich. I'm summing it all up in my head: 3841 miles, seven states, four provinces, eight national parks, ten flat tires.

Barnstable, Yarmouth. And I'm also composing this blog post in my head as I ride, as I do nearly every day, but I'm stuck. How do I sum up more than two months in a few pithy words?

Dennis, Harwich. "Exhausting," "exhilarating," and "wet" are the only ones that come to mind. I guess I've got to go with those.

And finally, Brewster. Home again, home again, jiggity jig.

Days 65 to 70: New England Coast

Day 65
Kilometer 5645
Belfast, ME

Acadia: beautiful. Mountains. Ocean. Countless gorgeous views of both. Can't go wrong.

Day 66
Kilometer 5760
West Bath, ME

Home stretch now. I'm counting down the days. Four, hopefully.

God, it better only be four. I'm tired.

Day 67
Kilometer 5852
Wells, ME

Portland, Maine, is the first place since Halifax, Nova Scotia worthy of being called a "city." Which means: there's more than one highway here. Which means: I got lost.

Day 68
Kilometer 5950
Rowley, MA

Three important things: One. Last night in the tent. Woot.

Two. I crossed the bridge ("Hey! No bicycles!" "Oops.") from Maine to New Hampshire, and then, having sufficiently Lived Free and/or Died, left New Hampshire for the State of Codfish and/or Baked Beans.

Three. My bike is a piece of crap.

Day 69
Kilometer 6050
Norwell, MA

Update re:bike problems. My unfailing steed has, yet again, failed me. Its newly rediscovered chain/tire/brakes/essentially-everything problems have blossomed anew, giving me the fun task of navigating Boston streets and traffic on a bike, while also pulling over every ten to twenty seconds to take the chain that has mysteriously fallen off the bike and wind it back on (I've gotten pretty good at this!), and every 30 minutes to re-inflate the back tire.

Upside: a shower and a bed. And only one more day.

Day 70
Kilometer 6081
Pembroke, MA

I failed. I flunked. I folded, flopped, foundered, fell flat (pun somewhat intended), and forwent the finale. I phoned my family, forsaking the finish line, and they ferried me home. The bicycle's fussiness had, uh,—okay, I'm giving up the F thing. Everything on the bike got worse—the chain, the tire—and at 11 in the morning, I gave up and got a ride home.

Not exactly the dramatic finale I was hoping for.

Days 60 to 64: New Brunswick and Maine's Downeast

Day 60
Kilometer 5079
Pleasant Villa, NB

After two days around the Bay of Fundy with Mom (in a car more functional than my bike, I'm happy to say), I'm back for the last portion of the trip. I'm near the end now.

A lot of bike mending was required today. I took the head of a screw and jammed it in between the bike frame and the back wheel to keep them in place. Virtually everything else was fixed with duct tape. (How could I live without it?)

Day 61
Kilometer 5199
Harvey, NB

This is, barring more bike malfunctions or inclement weather (and I won't count on either of those passing me by), my last full day in Canada. I stopped in Fredericton, New Brunswick and celebrated like a true Canadian—er, I went to McDonald's at the mall downtown. For all the times I worried about someone finding me at night and telling me off for being where I shouldn't be, I didn't expect it at a fast food chain in the daytime, but sure enough, the mall security guard came over and told me that I'd "been sitting there for way too long charging your phone. You ate your meal. Now you need to leave." I looked at my watch. Not quite thirty minutes had passed since I walked in. Oh, please, Mr. Mall Cop, thirty minutes is nothing. You don't know the meaning of sitting-at-a-McDonald's-for-way-to-long-so-you-can-charge-your-phone. (But, of course, this polite Minnesotan gave no more sass than an exaggerated eye roll when his back was turned.)

The two new punctured tires today bring the trip total up to eight. And the screw head I jammed between the wheel and the frame is, it turns out, not quite large enough. I wrapped some tape around it for extra width, (I guess I was wrong about the solution not involving duct tape!), and wedged it back in. It seems to have held. For now.

Day 62
Kilometer 5317
Perry, ME

Back in the US—back in the US—back in the US of A. I met first other long-distance bike rider of the trip. Prince Edward Island to Mexico, he said, which sounds a lot more impressive than when I told him my route—just a list of states and provinces—but I checked later, and 5317 kilometers would have gotten me a little ways into Mexico if I'd started in PEI.

I'm sleeping on the 45th parallel north tonight. I pulled over behind a sign on the side of the road telling me I was "halfway from from the Equator to the North Pole."

Day 63
Kilometer 5438
Milbridge, ME

My mom has decided, ever since a particularly long stretch of Québec, that names of cities and provinces up here don't mean anything to her, so she now updates me every few days on where I would be if I hadn't done this weird Canada thing and just gone straight west from Cape Cod, across the US. In Québec, when I'd gone 2000-some kilometers, that was Iowa. For weeks I've been getting texts telling me "Kearney, Nebraska!" or "Almost to Denver!" Well, at Kilometer 5425 this evening, I reached San Francisco and finished my trans-continental voyage. Alas, Milbridge, ME is not San Francisco, so I've got a few more days to go.

Day 64
Kilometer 5530
Bar Harbor, ME

I veered off the route to Mount Desert Island to visit the last major stop of the trip: Acadia National Park. I'm technically inside the park boundaries, which is probably against lots of rules. Don't tell.

Days 51 to 57: Southwest Nova Scotia

Day 51
Kilometer 4450
Goodwood, NS

Most of the day in Halifax today, and most of the time in Halifax typing up several weeks of blog entries. City was nice though, what little I saw.

Day 52
Kilometer 4600
Lunenburg, NS

The most notable village I passed through today was Peggy's Cove, which must be listed as a "must-see" spot in all the guidebooks. Certainly a pretty little village (triple-digit population might be a high estimate) set on the moor above the rocky coastline (disclaimer: I don't actually know what a moor is; I'm just going to call it one because that sounds cool), but absolutely swarming with tourists. I pushed and shoved my way into the bathroom in one of many gift shops, took a picture of the lighthouse, and left. I suppose it's lucky for me, actually, that all the visitors to the coast of Nova Scotia have decided to squeeze into one little village; they've left the rest for me!

I stopped for the night just outside what I know is another guidebook-recommended spot, Lunenburg. Hope it doesn't disappoint.

Day 53
Kilometer 4695
Port Mouton, NS

Lunenburg didn't disappoint. Adorable town on the bay. It's the kind of white-steeple, sleepy-wharf, coffeshops-and-bookstores kind of town that an actual travel writer (as opposed to Some Guy With A Blog) would write flowing paeans to. I'm not the flowing-paeans type, though.

Port Mouton's town slogan is "Sheep Overboard." I thought that was just good enough to include here.

Day 54
Kilometer 4761
Shelburne, NS

Sadly, I used all my good what-the-heck-is-this-name jokes on Kouchibouguac National Park, during the Lost Days of New Brunswick, and now I can't remember them now that I've reached Kejimkujik National Park. I leave you to come up with your own.

I made what I thought was a lucky find today: the Queens County Rail Trail runs to the end of the county, where it connects with the Shelburne County Rail Trail, followed by the Yarmouth Country Rail Trail and the Digby County Rail Trail. I'm set for days! But alas, it would not be so easy. The rails may have been removed, but I made about as much progress through the mud and sand as a train would have. I eventually escaped the trail, after an hour of slower-than-walking-speed biking.

I'm getting to the point where I'm ready to be done with the trip. I would be perfectly happy to arrive back at Cape Cod tomorrow. And my bike, I can assure you, agrees. In fact, it's made this desire pretty clear. On one particularly rough patch of road, the metal U-lock holder that's attached to the front of the bike frame abruptly cam loose and started swinging around, hitting the spokes on the front wheel. I taped it, but it wasn't until about a mile later that I noticed my odometer wasn't working. In fact, the magnet that sits on one of the spokes of the wheel to count rotations was missing. It took me nearly an hour of backtracking, but, by some great miracle, I happened to see it: the tiny black magnet, now missing the piece that attaches it to the spoke. The fixes for my two problems, respectively: duct tape and duct tape. Some walk on water. Some feed nations with bread and fish. I find small magnets in the gravel.

Day 55
Kilometer 4878
Yarmouth, NS

Rounded the southwest corner of Nova Scotia today, which puts me on the western end, headed north to the Bay of Fundy. I'm getting a second visitor this trip: my mom. Guess she got jealous. I'm skipping the Bay of Fundy and taking the ferry straight to New Brunswick and meeting her, then we'll drive the Bay together. Bike problem of the day: my chain has just fallen off the gears twice today and I don't know what the problem is. I don't know if I can fix this one with duct tape.

Day 56
Kilometer 4987
Digby, NS

Okay, so the problem with the bike chain is that the back wheel is out of place, which makes the chain too loose. The problem with that: the back wheel refuses to stay in place, no matter how often I fix it. Side effect of the back wheel being constantly out of place: the back brakes have gone from barely functional to actively impeding forward motion. Yet another problem on the bike where nothing works: the luggage rack holding the panniers is now missing two screws, making "wobbly" a bit of an understatement.

Sigh. After a long day of things breaking, it's finally time to pitch a tent, get in, and—rrrrrip. The pin in one of the corners that holds up the poles rips off the tent fabric.

I may end up walking home, carrying a box of nothing but broken things.

Day 57
Kilometer 5004
Saint John, NB

Somehow I survived Nova Scotia. I made it to the ferry that took me to Saint John, New Brunswick, and I made it to the hotel where Mom and I are staying tonight. Bike problem of the day (in addition to all of the other ones that still haven't been fixed, that it): odometer not working again. I didn't even try to figure out what was wrong with it.

Days 47 to 50: Nova Scotia's Eastern Shore

I'm in Halifax, land of functional library computers, reliable internet access, and no excuses. Which means we're offering a four-posts-for-the-price-of-one deal today. Days 37 to 50 are all here:

Day 47

Kilometer 4115

Boylston, NS

Back across the Canso Strait to mainland Nova Scotia today. It goes a lot faster without mountains. (Not to mention the person whining in my ear all day long about the mountains.)

Day 48

Kilometer 4219

Stillwater, NS

I have a tendency to ride on the very edge of the road, between the white stripe and the end of the pavement. If there's anything I've learned from this trip, it's that this is apparently the international trucker signal for "Please Drive As Fast And As Close As You Possibly Can To Me; I Like Playing Fast And Loose With My Safety." I've learned to sometimes claim my place in the lane to avoid giving this signal. Today, I was riding just to the left of the white stripe and a semi truck, still a few hundred feet back, started honking at me. I moved to my natural place, right of the stripe. Seeing my signal, the driver enthusiastically obliged, and the sheer force of his wake knocked me off my bike and into the gravel. New rule for Sam: stay in the driver's way until you've forced him to slow to a safe passing speed.

Day 49

Kilometer 4321
Sheet Harbour, NS

My first conversation since Dad left (at least, first one that didn't start with "welcome to..." or end with "have a nice day"): I got stopped by an older man who asked if I was "one of them crazy bikers that cycles all around the province?" Indeed. He'd totally do that, if he were younger, he says, but he's too old now, and I'm young enough that I can do stuff like that, but he's much too old. He's sixty! And by the way, this is the cold side of the province, and if I go to the other side, that's the bay side, it's warmer there, but this is the ocean side, so it's colder here, and where was I from anyway? When he learned I was American, I got a rambling speech on the virtues of Donald Trump and was I voting for him, well, of course I was! I should be anyway! I had to quickly dip my fingers into my pouch of holy water and cross myself as I hightailed it out of there.

Day 50
Kilometer 4412
Lake Echo, NS

Thunderstorm last night. I seriously overestimated the portion of this trip that would be spent dry.

I feel a lot like I'm riding through a Norman Rockwell painting recently—perhaps if Norman Rockwell had studied in the Hudson River School and painted beautiful natural landscapes. Or maybe this is a Stephen King novel. (Only time will tell, though I'm somewhat hoping for the former.) Everyone here knows everyone. For the past several days, I've passed about one town per day (and my definition of "town" is a very liberal one: if it's got at least one establishment—be it a gas station, a grocery store, or a café—that serves food of some kind, it counts as a  town in my book), and in every town I've stopped in, it seems that I'm the one clear outsider. People (even ones that haven't me on my bike) ask which way I'm headed, as if I couldn't possibly be staying here more than an hour or two. I suppose they're right, though.

I was lucky enough to find a grocery store today. This is what I bought: a twelve-pack of plain rolls, an eight-pack of Twinkies, a quart of juice, and (I couldn't believe my luck when I found it) a 64-pack box of Nature Valley granola bars.

Since places to stop around here (and in a lot of places in this country) are so few and far between (I didn't pass by a single business of any kind until 3:30 pm today), I've got my bathroom routine down to a science: first, the obvious, whether I need to or not, then fill up my three water bottles (doubtless all empty by now), then, if it's the first or last stop of the day, and occasionally both will be at the same place, brush my teeth (I'm lucky if I get a single stall bathroom; if it's five pm in a crowded McDonald's bathroom and I'm brushing my teeth, I generally get a few stares), then assess what else (hair, body, clothes) needs cleaning and do my best to clean it in a sink. One time in Québec, I took so long in the visitors' center bathroom, that the woman running the place came to check on me.

The map of the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia is a splotchy mess of lakes, streams, inlets, and coastline. And the road shows it. I'll get miles and miles of nothing but trees, and then suddenly a postcard-perfect view of a harbor and the sea behind. (At least, what I'm sure would be a postcard-perfect view if it weren't foggy.)

Days 41 to 45: Cape Breton (Dad's version of events)

The tree doesn't grow far from the apple, as they say: Dad has produced his own doctoral theses—er, excuse me, blog posts—detailing his own experiences. The unabridged version will appear as a four-part hardcover series in stores this fall. He has also, always the optimist, included photographs. Man, is it going to take me a long time to get those to display right.

Friday, July 8, 2016

Brewster

Preparing

It’s all about persistence, isn’t it?  Well, I’m thinking about biking, but really it applies to life too: if you just keep grinding, eventually you get somewhere.  Maybe not where you planned, or desired, but you’ll accomplish something. 

Why am I thinking about biking?  My son, Sam, is on a two-month-long solo bike ride around the Canadian maritime provinces.  In a moment of rash exuberance I told him I would come up and join him this summer for a couple of days.  Turns out there’s a 200-mile loop (The Cabot Trail) around a national park in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia which he will hit at a convenient time.  The loop means I can park my car, ride with him for a few days, and then be back at my car. 

So, I’m in training.  For the past six weeks I’ve been biking three to four hours a day (25 to 45 miles) to get into shape.   This morning I did what I’ve started to think of as my usual ride:  I get on the Cape Cod Rail Trail near my house (at mile 6.4) and pedal to the end (mile 22) in Wellfleet.  There’s an amazing French bakery there, so I usually go inside and get a chocolate brioche and a double espresso as fuel for the return trip.  When I told Deanna this she turned to the internet and discovered that a chocolate brioche contains 390 calories, but 32 miles of biking burns 1900. I could eat four of those babies and still be ahead of the game.

Seriously, I’m in the best shape of my life. (Those of you who have known me for a long time know that this is a low bar.)   When I was born, I weighed 11 pounds and I have never given up on that headstart in life.   As a kid, I bought all my clothes in the “husky” department at Sears.  Yes, that’s what they called it; I wasn’t fat, I was husky.  A couple of weeks ago I had to buy a tuxedo shirt at Nordstrom’s.  The salesman handed me one he claimed would fit, it was labeled “trim fit.”  I handed it back, “Dude, I have never been “trim.”  He said, I swear to God this is true, “It’s OK, it’s a ‘polite’ trim.”  If nothing else we have made progress on marketing, husky turns into “polite trim” forty years later. Deanna and I have been dieting since January and I’ve been on a rowing machine 30-40 minutes nearly every day.  I’ve lost forty pounds (Deanna has lost thirty-something).   I’m still not trim, but biking two hundred miles in four days sounded actually possible this spring when I proposed it to Sam. 

I’m nervous about actually being able to do it.   But I realized a few days ago while on a 45-mile training ride that really it’s just a matter of persistence.  If I just keep pedaling, no matter how slowly, I’ll get it done.  This makes think about Sam and I realize that he has enormous reserves of persistence.  When he was young, about eleven I think, he got it in his head that he wanted to swim across Seymour Pond and back.  It’s close to a mile in each direction.  The very thought terrified his mother and me.  But we wanted to let him challenge himself, so we put a life jacket on him and I paddled the canoe alongside as he slowly swam across the pond and back.  He’s done it hundreds of times since then (after a few years we stopped insisting on the life jacket and canoe escort).   He doesn’t go fast, but he doesn’t stop either.    He took the same approach to finishing college, by the end he wasn’t enjoying it, but he sucked it up and endured.  The latest craze is self-help pop psychology is “grit”, Angela Duckworth’s argument that grit, or persistence, is the essential ingredient in leading a successful life. If she’s right, Sam’s headed for a Nobel prize.  As I think about this I realize he also has an enormous amount of gumption, it had to be scary to get on a bike and set off alone on a three-thousand-mile adventure to new parts of the world.  I’m proud of him.

As I’m having these thoughts I finally hear from him.  Did I mention yet that his phone stopped working?  So now we only hear from him when he can find free public internet.   My phone gives that funny ding that means I have a Facebook message, I hop on my computer and there he is.  He’s in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.  He checks in on the plan; we are meeting on Sunday at the Inverary Resort in Baddeck, Cape Breton Island.  I say, “Can you make it in time?  I can meet you somewhere closer to where you are and drive you to the hotel.”  He tells me not to be cynical.  After our conversation I check, it’s 330 kilometers from Charlottetown to Baddeck.  It’s 2 pm on Friday.   I don’t want to doubt him, but I wish we had a back-up plan.

Saturday, July 9, 2016

Brewster

Driving to meet Sam

I’m on the road listening to podcasts, I loaded up my iPad before I left.  I can’t figure out how to get it to broadcast through the car’s speakers (both car and iPad are Bluetooth equipped, this should be possible).  I’m stuck with the low-fidelity, low-volume of my iPad speakers.  I listen to every episode of “Surprisingly Awesome” a podcast recommended by Janice Sklensky (Thanks, Janice!).  The premise is they take something completely banal and ordinary and try to convince you it is actually, well, surprisingly awesome.  It’s actually fascinating, they do concrete, broccoli, and, my favorite, frequent flyer miles.  They tell a great story here about “the pudding guy.”  In 1999 Healthy Choice Foods ran a promotion.  If you cut out and returned to them a bar code from any Healthy Choice grocery item, they would award you 100 frequent flyer miles.  The pudding guy, I forget his name, went to the supermarket, bought one of every Healthy Choice item they carried and tried them all.  (I think his plan was to eat only Healthy Choice for the several weeks of the promotion and get a few tens of thousands of miles.)  Then, a few days later, he’s in a Sam’s Club and he walks by a display of Healthy Choice individual-serving pudding cups.  He looks.  Each cup has its own bar code and costs twenty-five cents.  In those days airlines would redeem 20,000 miles for a free domestic ticket.  Our guy does a quick calculation: two hundred of these pudding cups cost $50 and equals one free flight.  He buys the entire display of nearly one thousand pudding cups, it fills up two shopping carts.  At the checkout, the clerk asked him what he was doing with all this pudding and, remember it’s 1999, he says, “It’s for Y2K.”  This makes zero sense, but satisfies the clerk.  Anyway, after this he drives to every Sam’s Club within 200 miles of his home and buys every pudding cup in the store: 12, 432 in total.   He stacks them in his garage and puts his kids to work peeling off bar codes.  They last about half an hour and abandon him to the job.  He realizes he’ll never finish.  So he calls the local foodshelf, “Hey, do you want 12,432 individual-serving pudding cups?”  Not only do they want them, they’ll come pick them up.  “Oh, just one thing, I need you to remove all the bar codes and return them to me.”  So, a few days later he mails twelve thousand bar codes to Healthy Choice and earns 1.2 million miles.  He and his whole family flew free for a decade, for a $3000 investment.  At the end of the year, as he was doing his taxes, he realized that he could claim the $3000 as a charitable deduction!

The topic of persistence comes up during an interview of writer John McPhee by New Yorker editor David Remnick during another podcast.   McPhee says, “If you sit down every day and write a few paragraphs, then, it’s like filling a bucket.  Drop by drop, at the end of the year, you’ve written a book.”

The other day during one of my training rides, as I left Wellfleet, I noticed that the first two miles back towards home were mostly uphill.  So, the next day, when I hit the twenty-mile marker I expected the last two miles to be mostly downhill.  But they weren’t.  And that is when I realized the mathematical paradox of biking.   I ride in loops, I end up where I started, so I do just as much climbing up hills as coasting down them—it’s a zero-sum ride.  But that’s in terms of distance.  Suppose that your downhill speed is twice your uphill speed.  Then you will spend twice as much TIME riding uphill as downhill.  You’ll be working twice as much as you’re coasting.  When I have this revelation on the Cape Cod Rail Trail (puffing up a hill) I think of it as a whimsical metaphor for life.  When I explain this revelation to Deanna a few days later, she laughs and says, “It’s pretty clear you haven’t spent the last forty years in a wheelchair.”  Oh, yeah, right.

I should talk about training.  I should have done my homework and actually read about training for a long bike ride.  Instead I called my sister Joan, noted fitness fanatic and avid cyclist, and asked her if I would be able to ride fifty miles in a day.  (I’m planning a four-day circuit of the just under 200-mile Cabot Trail.)   She expresses doubt.  I tell her I’ve been working out 30-40 minutes a day on my rowing machine.  “Well. OK, maybe then.  But you’ll be really, really sore for the next couple of days.  I don’t know if you can do it four days in a row.”

She scared the crap out of me.  The next day I started training with a twenty-five mile ride.  By the end of the week I had worked my way up to a forty-mile ride and I was feeling pretty good about surviving multiple consecutive fifties.  This was in Minnesota.  Then I came to the Cape and continued my training rides on the Cape Cod Rail Trail.  Did you know that the maximum grade of a commercial freight train line is 1.5%?  That is, for every 100 feet of distance, the vertical rise is a maximum of 1.5 feet.  The CCRT is really flat.  I decide that to prepare for the hills that I know are coming on the Cabot Trail, I’ll ride in the highest possible gear I can handle in training.  Maybe that will simulate climbing a real hill.  One day I ride the entire 44-mile length in sixth (my highest) gear.  I feel like this gives my thighs a good workout.  I’m an idiot.

I stop for sleep, after about ten hours of driving, in Amherst, Nova Scotia.

Sunday, July 10, 2016:

Amherst, Nova Scotia

Where is Sam?

I make it to Baddeck around 2 pm.  It is rainy, raw, and cold.  There is only one decent road to Baddeck on the island once you cross the causeway from the mainland.  I scan for Sam constantly as I drive the 60 miles.  He’s not on the road.   In Baddeck I get lunch (seafood chowder at the Lynnwood Inn).  I explore the small downtown (picturesque harbor) and check in to the hotel.  No sign of Sam.   Thinking about the 330 kilometers, I’m not completely surprised.  But, it’s cold and rainy and really miserable, I decide to drive back along the road to the causeway, eventually I have to bump into him.  Except I don’t.  I get to the causeway without seeing him.  It’s about 4:45 and I’m 60 miles from where he said he’d meet me.  Sixty miles is a full day’s ride for Sam.  Where is he?  If you’re a parent you know the feeling of anxiety creeping towards panic in the pit of my stomach.  I look at the map.  There is another route to Baddeck, up the west coast of the island and then cut across the middle.  But it’s a smaller back road and a lot longer route.  Would he do that?  I have to check.  I drive the back road to Baddeck.  I get back to the hotel around 7:00 pm.  No sign of Sam.  I’m almost out of mind with worry.  I decide to drive to the causeway again.  I stop at the desk to leave a note for Sam in case he somehow shows up while I’m gone.  The kindly desk clerk, when I explain my problem to her, says, “Let’s just call the Mounties.”   My heart screams, “YES!”  But my head knows Sam wouldn’t want me to call out the Mounties just yet, so I tell her I’ll try one more drive to the causeway before doing that.  She tries to talk me into calling them, the concern in her voice is scaring me more than I already was scared.  She tells me her boyfriend is a Mountie, she’ll call him.   I get on the road again.  It’s twilight and the weather is really hideous. Forty-five frantic minutes later as darkness is becoming total, I see a faint headlight bobbing up and down in the far distance and waves of relief wash over me.   He’s cold, wet and starving (and bearded!).  He’s ridden 140 kilometers today and he had about fifty more to go.  He tells me it’s been raining for days, and that he hit a patch of hail earlier.  I take him to the hotel (he huddles over the car’s heater vents the whole way); he showers and changes into dry clothes.  Finally warm, we eat a very late dinner in the hotel pub (fish and chips, local beer and the local whiskey) accompanied by loud, live Gaelic music.

Monday, July 11, 2016:

Inverary Resort, Baddeck

Rainy, raw and cold

I wake up at 5:30.  I’m keyed up and excited and pretty nervous about whether I’ll be able to keep up with Sam.  I do have a mechanical advantage---my bike has six speeds, he only has one.  (Yes, Sam went on a 5,000-kilometer on a single-speed bike.  Don’t ask me what he was thinking.)    At 8:00 I can’t stand it anymore and I wake up Sam.  We eat everything on the hotel breakfast buffet: eggs, bacon, sausage, potatoes, toast, cereal and fruit.  Then we pack up the bikes.  Sam is psyched, he gets to leave all his camping gear in my car for four days.  (We’re staying in hotels.)  Here’s what’s I’m carrying:

2 pairs of gym shorts

4 t-shirts

4 pairs underwear

4 pairs gym socks

sneakers

flip flops

1 long-sleeve t-shirt for warmth

rain jacket

floppy-brimmed hat

iPad/charger

phone/charger

toiletries kit bag

sunglasses

bike tools including patch kit (forgot spare inner tube on Cape)

maps

water bottle

journal/pen (to make notes for this blog)

cash/wallet/keys.

My bag is heavier than I expected.  I did think to pack a couple of plastic trash bags to put my stuff in inside the suitcase in case of rain.  This was smart, cause did I mention it was raining?  It’s about 50 degrees outside and raining steadily.  It’s raw, windy and very unpleasant.  I’m happy about the plastic bags.  I wish I had a couple of gallon-sized Ziplocs.  (Deanna would have had gallon-sized ziplocs, and quart-sized and sandwich-sized.)  I wrap my stuff as thoroughly as I can and strap the small dufflebag  to the back of my bike.  (I put a luggage rack on before leaving Minnesota.)  Sam, carrying much less stuff, gets by with a backpack (strapped to his bike, not on his back).

We set out.  Our goal is Ingonish Beach, 86 kilometers away.   I never trained in the rain.  One morning it was sprinkling when I set out, I made it about halfway down Tracy Lane and decided it was idiotic to ride in the rain and went home.  Not an option today.  The hat is mostly keeping the water out of my face, but I’m basically soaked from the neck down after fifteen minutes. And I’m cold, really cold.  My hands and feet are numb.  My sneakers have soaked up so much water that my feet weigh about twenty pounds apiece.  My legs feel like they end in cold, numb bricks.  I’m also realizing the difference between riding up real hills and the simulated-by-high-gear hills of the CCRT.  I feel like I’m always riding uphill.  But, I can keep up with Sam.  He pedals at a constant low rate that, I later realize, he is able to keep up for ten or twelve hours straight.  My natural pace is faster than his (and on the hills I have low gears) so I’m in front for the whole day.  The wind is blowing in our faces all day.  I have another mathematical observation about biking: standing up in the pedals gives you more leverage to push against the wind AND exposes you to more wind resistance.  I spend a little while trying to think about the right way to mathematically model this to answer the question about when it makes sense to stand up, but then I go back to suffering from the cold.  I put my head down and pedal.  I realize why it’s called Nova Scotia, with the low, scudding, grey clouds, the icy rain, the raw wind it feels like Scotland.  The road is along the shore here.  The hills come down to the ocean and end in cliffs lined with rocky shores.  It is dramatically beautiful (or it would be in the sunlight).   We trudge along, stopping every once in a while to admire the view and to imagine what it must look like in the sunshine. 

I also realize that what on Cape Cod I considered the whimsical paradox of biking is actually the exceedingly cruel paradox of biking.  I am always pushing uphill.  And these are real hills.  Grades of 10% are not uncommon, remember locofuckingmotives can’t climb anything steeper than 1.5%.  My thighs are turning to soup.  On the downhill stretches I probably hit 20 mph, on the uphills I’m often doing only 4 or 5 mph.  That means I’m climbing 80% of the time that we’re on hills.  (It’s reasonably flat about one-third of the time.)

Mid-afternoon we hit the Wreck Cove General Store for lunch.  Lobster sandwiches, snack mix, Kit-Kat bars and coffee.  We linger enjoying the warmth and respite from the drenching rain.  The feeling in my hands comes back, but my feet remain numb, cold, and weigh about thirty pounds apiece.

We set off again.  We have ridden 58 kilometers so far, only 28 to go.  I’m feeling good about being two-thirds done for the day.  But, there’s a mountain between us and our hotel, Mount Smokey, a 350-meter vertical climb.    My six-speed bike is actually, effectively, an eight-speed bike.  I can stand up and pedal in both second and first and these feel like two additional lower (lower than first sitting down) gears.  Shortly after leaving lunch I’m standing nearly constantly and eventually I hit a stretch where even in first gear standing up and pushing as hard I can I am going more slowly than if I just got off the bike and pushed it up the hill.  I’m using more energy, too.  So, I get off and start pushing,  Sam does too.  We trudge up the hill for what seems like an hour.   Eventually we summit and get to coast down the back, then we start zooming down the back, then careening.  I’m getting scared of the speed, but I resist using my brakes as much as possible.  I just see that as turning this kinetic energy I worked so hard to create (by climbing the hill) into useless friction.  If I don’t brake I can coast longer once I hit the bottom.  But, I have to.  I’m doing at least 40 mph in the rain on a twisty downhill mountain road.  I hate squeezing the brakes, but I do it. 

Eventually ---soaking wet, freezing cold, thighs screaming---we arrive at the Keltic Lodge.  It’s about 7 pm and we started around 10 am.  Nine hours, 86 kilometers.  On the CCRT I could ride 86 kilometers in five hours (and that includes a break for a brioche and a double espresso).  Sam gets in the shower first.  He comes out to tell me that the tub won’t drain.  (Did I mention yet that he takes like thirty-minute showers?)  I go in to see and the plug is stuck.  I stand in the tub and try to pry the plug up.   Sam’s warm dirty shower water feels amazing on my frozen feet.  I stop working on the drain and just stand there for ten minutes as feeling is restored.   Sam’s bag didn’t protect his clothes, everything he has is wet, so I give him a t-shirt and dry socks.   Finally, showered, warm and dry we go to the hotel restaurant: seafood chowder, bacon cheeseburger with fries, (fish and chips for Sam) Guinness-ginger cake with whisky-caramel sauce, another local beer and a dram of Talisker.  I’m liking completely blowing off my diet.

Tuesday, July 12, 2016:

The Keltic Lodge, Ingonish Beach

The cruelty of the mathematical paradox of biking

Again I wake before Sam and go on a walk to let him sleep a bit.  It gorgeous outside, the temperature is about 15 (sorry, I’m going metric from now on), the sun is shining, the air is crystal clear, the trees and grass are every conceivable shade of green and shining in the sun.  This hotel is situated on a very narrow peninsula (as thin as 100 meters in places) with gorgeous bays on either side---rocky beaches backed by dramatic rocky cliffs.  As I stand there marveling at the view a bright red lobster boat chugs into view and starts hauling up a trap.  Incredible.

I’m a little rubber-legged but otherwise I’m doing OK.  Sam is fine, of course.  His clothes didn’t dry overnight so he’ll ride in damp ones.  This doesn’t seem to bother him.  Around 8 I wake him up.  I’m feeling pretty confident.  Day one was our longest day by distance, that combined with the lousy weather make me certain that it will be the most difficult.  I survived it.  I’ve got this.  Sam assured me that good times are ahead, today will be a piece of cake compared to yesterday.  We go to breakfast, I load up: two fish cakes, three sausages, four strips of bacon and four blueberry pancakes.  I want to go back to the buffet and get a bowl of granola, but I’m embarrassed by how much I’ve eaten already.

Our goal is Pleasant Bay, 82 kilometers away.  We set off around 9:30 or 10.  It’s beautiful, the weather is perfect, we’re riding along the ocean, sunshine sparkling on the waves, dramatic coastlines, rolling hills along the shore, small quaint villages full off small, boxy, neat homes each with a pocket harbor protected by a rock breakwater packed with brightly colored lobster boats.

Here’s a somewhat iconic picture of the Cabot Trail.  Beautiful, no?  But I see what you probably don’t think to notice.  There are no flat stretches.  The road stretches out in front of you like a piece of ribbon candy, undulating up and down constantly.  Every time you crest a hill you see three or four more hills coming up in front of you.  That is the experience of the morning of day two: climb, climb, climb, climb, zoom down, climb, climb, climb, climb, zoom.   We spend at least 80% of our time pushing hard uphill, standing on our pedals.  The first 28 or so kilometers are along the east coast of the island.  Then the trail turns left and heads inland through the woods across to the west side.  Several people have told us we should opt here for the alternate route which hugs the coast a while longer.  It adds six kilometers to the ride, but is much more scenic.  We opt for the longer scenic route.  Adorable harbors in quaint villages, dramatic cliff-edged shores, lobster boats in the bays.  Ribbon-candy roads the whole way, constantly climbing. 

We have our first, and really only, disagreement of the trip during this leg.  We’re going through a little village and we pass a small store and climb a very steep hill (maybe 100 meters, very steep).  Sam says, “Wait, I’m starving, let’s go back to that store and get something to eat.”  “No, I don’t want to reclimb that hill, let’s just keep going.”  “That’s ridiculous.  I’m hungry.”  “There will be another store.”  Sam says, “Just wait here,” and heads back.  I ride down the hill with him and we share a box of crackers (and then reclimb the hill).  Good thing we did.  We didn’t see another store or restaurant for nearly two hours.  By the time we find a café around two in the afternoon we’re both starving.  Curried pork on basmati rice and brownies for dessert.  We’ve covered about 45 kilometers.  I could easily do 45 miles on the CCRT in the same amount of time.  In the restaurant the waitress tells us that it takes her an hour to get to Pleasant Bay at 90 kph.  We’re pretty sure she must be wrong, all our maps (and Google) say it’s more like 35 kilometers.  She tells us the mountain in front of us is a tough climb.  She also tells us about a ten-kilometer stretch of construction where the pavement has been removed that we’ll be riding over tomorrow.

We leave, a little nervous about what’s in front of us.  More ribbon candy, up-and-down road for a while then we hit the approach to North Mountain.  A punishing climb.  I’ve been behind Sam most of today (after being in front most of yesterday).  As we climb I can judge how steep it’s getting by watching how hard he’s working.  When he has to stand up on his pedals, that means I’m going to need to downshift into first and shortly afterwards stand up myself.   When we hit the switchback section the grade is too much, we both get off and start walking.  We walk for miles (occasionally jumping on and pedaling for a few hundred meters).   It takes hours to climb the mountain.  My confidence from this morning is gone; I have no intention of quitting, but this is a lot harder than yesterday.

I should have done more homework.  I read lots of descriptions like this as I planned:

Featuring dramatic ocean views and highland scenery, the Cabot Trail has been described as one of the world’s top bicycle rides. Its breathtaking coastal topography presents some wonderful challenges for cyclists and rewards riders with many memorable vistas.

OR

For a taste of the experiences that await you on this 300 kilometer road, set your mind on breathtaking sea vistas, framed by dramatic cliffs; curvy roads through timeless fishing villages; old-growth forests in the Cape Breton Highlands National Park.

What I didn’t read carefully enough was the warnings:

It almost goes without saying that when the hills are steep, it pays to travel as lightly as possible. Remember, sustained climbs at grades above 10% are common. Some grades even reach 15%. Category

North Mountain, westbound.

Distance 5.4km, climbing 386m, average slope 7.31% (min -3.1, max 14.2)

I recommend you train on hilly terrain and bike with the full weight you intend to carry.  You don’t want to be adjusting to your pannier weight for the first time on the Cabot Trail.  Don’t let its little ‘mountains’ fool you; you might not be climbing more than 1200 feet at a time, but your ascents will be very steep (sometimes 13% grades for 2 – 3 miles) and hills will be frequent.  Much like the AT, the Cabot Trail has many PUDS (pointless ups and downs), so bring your climbing legs.

I’m not sure those numbers would have been meaningful anyways.  I just know that day two is a lot harder than day one.  And some friendly folks at the next table at lunch told us day three would be the worst.  (They also confirmed our suspicion that the helpful waitress was wrong about how far away Pleasant Bay was.)

I’m amazed at Sam.  He never complains (I complain constantly).  He just pushes on.  I’m constantly asking him our mileage total, I need to know how much further I have to go.  He doesn’t care and finds my constant need to know irritating.  I have to keep promising myself stuff, “OK, just make it up this little hill and then you can stop and take a breather.”  Sam is able to just push forward slowly, constantly, uncomplainingly.  I always want to know what’s coming.  For example, I have a condensed vertical chart:

I am constantly studying this trying to anticipate upcoming climbs.  Sam has no patience for this.  He’ll climb the hills as they come and doesn’t need to know about them in advance.

By the way, Smokey Mountain (day one) is the first big spike on this chart about one-quarter of the way along.  The very tall skinny spike is North Mountain (day two).  The big fat lump after that is McKenzie Mountain and French Mountain (day three) whose peaks are joined by a not painfully steep, but extended, constant climb.  Notice that day four does not have a (real) mountain!

Around 6 pm we finally summit North Mountain.  We zoom down the back side.  I make Sam stop and take a couple of short hikes into the woods.  The national park has dozens of hikes branching off the Cabot Trail.  I don’t tell Sam this but I’m hoping to see a moose—and not a chocolate one, or a plastic one, or a driftwood one, or a metal cutout on a mailbox—I’ve already seen all of these.  We don’t see a moose on the trail, we arrive in Pleasant Bay around 7 pm.  Another nine or ten hours biking totaling only 82 kilometers.  Again, on flat ground that’s a Sunday bike ride of about four hours.  We dine at the Rusty Anchor: lobster dip with tortilla chips (shared), fisherman’s platter (scallops, shrimp, mussels, haddock filets, coleslaw, potato salad), blueberry pie with ice cream, two “Rusty’s Punches” (which don’t pack much of one).  We watch an awesome sunset over the water out the restaurant’s back windows.

Wednesday, July 13, 2016:

Pleasant View Motel

Pleasant Bay

One more mountain

We start our day with breakfast in the hotel restaurant.  It’s not a buffet and we order from the menu: two eggs, ham slice, toast, potatoes.  We agree afterwards that it wasn’t enough food.  We’re still hungry when we leave.   Our waitress is very friendly and warns us about the road construction ahead of us.  “Yeah, you’ll probably have to walk your bikes for those ten kilometers.”  Why do waitresses keep scaring us? We’re on the road by our usual 9:30 or 10.  Our destination today is Margaree Harbour, 73 kilometers away.  Once we leave the village of Pleasant Bay we start climbing immediately.

That’s an aerial view of McKenzie Mountain.  It’s a punishing climb, the worst so far.  We are off our bikes walking a lot.   Near the top there are constant false peaks, points that look from the distance like the top which, when you reach them reveal another climb on the other side.  It’s like two hours of constant climbing, alternately on and off the bike.  When we summit there’s a long stretch of gradual climb (8-10 kilometers) to the summit of French Mountain.  Here we hit the construction.  The pavement has been ripped up for an 8-10 kilometer stretch.  It turns out we can ride on it though, it’s mostly hard-packed dirt with patches of gravelly bits.  It’s bumpier and more work than pavement and slightly uphill the whole way, but the slope isn’t killer and we make decent time.  The views all morning have been incredible.  You can see some of it in the picture above.  The coast is incredibly gorgeous---dramatic rock cliffs, scooped-out coves and bays---we stop at every lookout point  (mostly to catch our breaths, but also to drink in the beautiful views).

Somewhere during this stretch we get to the trailhead of Skyline Trail, the iconic hiking trail of the park.  Everyone (and every website) told us we have to hike Skyline.   It winds through the forested highland and ends at a headland 300 meters high at the sea’s edge with spectacular views down the coast.  We find the parking lot, park our bikes and hike half a mile up the dirt access road to the trailhead.  We get to the trail’s beginning and read on the sign that the trail is five miles long and takes 2-3 hours to hike.  It’s already nearly two o’clock in the afternoon and we’ve only covered about thirty kilometers.  If we take a three-hour hike, we’ll be biking until 10 pm tonight.  We reluctantly decide to skip it.  When I was planning this trip I assumed that we would be on our bikes five or six hours a day and we would have time to enjoy the touristy diversions of the Trail: hikes in the woods and along the shore, whale-watching expeditions, Celtic cultural experiences.  But we’re on our bikes nine to ten hours a day and our lives are a cycle (no pun intended) of eat; bike; eat; bike; eat; sleep; repeat.

Between Pleasant Bay and Cheticamp.  Views like this are why the Cabot Trail is popular.

On the road to Cheticamp from Pleasant Bay.

Around three o’clock in the afternoon we get to Cheticamp, the Acadian town on the west coast.   It’s the biggest town we’ve seen.  The guidebooks all recommend Boulangerie Aucoin which, luckily for us, is at the northern edge of town and is one of the first things we see.   (Maybe this is a comment on my trip preparation.  I knew the names of all the good restaurants and cafes on the Trail when I arrived in Baddeck, but before we started riding I couldn’t have named any of the mountains.  I know those names now.)  Sam sprints ahead of me when we see the boulangerie and rushes inside.   I go in after him and head immediately to the bathroom, mistake.  Sam is famished and pissed; he had to give up his place in line to wait for me.  Turkey sandwich for him, smoked meat on rye for me.  We eat at the picnic table outside.  It’s not enough.  We go back inside, two more sandwiches for him, one more for me, plus a six-pack of assorted dessert bars, he eats four, I eat two.  Sitting eating our sandwiches he explains to me that he isn’t used to three meals a day at restaurants.  He stops at a market and loads up on food and stops throughout the day to eat small meals---he usually eats seven or eight times a day.  My eating schedule is starving him.  It’s made worse by my inclination to get at two-thirds of our ride done before stopping for lunch.

I should point out that I’m surprised by how few other cyclists we have seen.  This trail is supposed to be one of the top ten bike routes in North America.  Where are all the bikers?  I would say we’ve seen only about twenty other bikers by the time we finish.  I should also point out that every one of them is better equipped than we are.  They all are riding fancy high-tech bikes, wearing spandex cycling outfits, they have the fancy shoes that clip into the pedals and aerodynamic helmets.  On the mountains we can see that their gearing is infinitely better than ours.  They are sitting and pedaling freely on slopes that have Sam and I standing and pushing as hard as we can and barely making progress.  If this blog is making you consider biking the Cabot Trail, get a good bike equipped with gearing appropriate for mountain climbing.  We are woefully, ridiculously under-equipped.   My bike is a model called “Street Life”, it’s heavy, has widish tires, and only six speeds.  It’s designed for riding around in town.  Sam’s bike is lighter but, as I think I’ve mentioned, has only a single speed.  It’s miraculous that he can do any climbing.

We’ve got about 30 kilometers to go as we leave Cheticamp.  The ride turns into the Cabot trail of my imaginings.  Gorgeous coastline views, more cute, quaint villages with picturesque harbors full of brightly colored lobster boats, beautiful rolling hills (with slight grades) mixed with long stretches of flat, the houses are neat, small, boxy, bright colored, and set far apart from one another in large expanses of green fields, a green that looks like plush velvet.  Everywhere I look it’s like a postcard for Cape Breton.  I loved the dramatic rocky cliff-edged views, but those come with mountain-climbing bike rides.  Here I’m pedaling free and easy and feeling great.  Two hundred miles of this would have been a cakewalk.

I learned something today that I had actually been wondering about.  How come northern beaches are rocky and tropical beaches have very fine beautiful sand?  I’m thinking about this as I look at the rocky shores here during Monday’s rain.  The waves are big and energetic.  Shouldn’t such waves grind the rocks down into fine sand?  The tropics don’t have wave action like this.  It should be the opposite: tropical beaches should have rocks and gravel; northern beaches should have fine, powdery sand from all the wave pounding.   Today I read a plaque that explains it.  Yes, northern beach wave action is more violent than tropical action.  In fact, it is so much more violent that the waves strip the sand, gravel and small rocks from the beaches and pull them out to sea.  The reason beaches are rocky up north is the waves can’t carry those big rocks away!

On the road from Cheticamp to Margaree Harbor.

We get to Margaree Harbour around 7 pm.   Our hotel (which is directly on the trail) is just past the town which lies off the road and on the shore maybe half a kilometer away.  So, we don’t actually see it.  I briefly consider suggesting walking into town for dinner, but quickly abandon that idea.  We eat at the hotel.  I have a salad and Acadian meat pie (a pie crust stuffed with chopped-up chicken, pork and beef., served with cranberry sauce).   Weirdly there is nothing on the plate besides the small slice of pie and tiny cup of cranberry sauce.  I make up for it by ordering the warm chocolate chip cookie with ice cream and chocolate sauce for dessert.  Sam has mac and cheese with mushrooms and some other stuff, I forget what, inside.  He gets the blueberry cake, basically a blueberry muffin in a different shape, for dessert.  I think we’re both disappointed.  We’re both feeling pretty good though, we know the worst is behind us.  Tomorrow’s ride at 61 kilometers is our shortest and there are no more mountains!  We joke about our next big bike adventure.  “Let’s ride Kansas!”  “No, Holland.”  “Yeah. I hear the Dutch Alps are awesome!”  “Or, the Bonneville Salt Flats!”  After dinner I propose a walk to see the town, he agrees, but we don’t actually make it.  We walk back to the bridge across the cove that our hotel is on the shore of and, wordlessly, jointly decide that we’re not walking all the way to town.  We stand and enjoy the lovely view from the bridge.

After dinner we do our usual.  Sam takes my iPad and reads internet stuff, I read my book (a history of Cape Breton).  We don’t have cell service anywhere on the island and the hotel wifi (at every hotel) is so slow that I can’t stand using it.  Sam is more patient than me with the slow internet (Sam is more patient than me on every dimension).  Anyway, one consequence of this is that I have not read my e-mail since last Friday.  I’m not going to read it until I get back to the Cape.  This is the first time I’ve ever done this.  I always check my e-mail religiously, whether or not I’m on vacation.  It feels remarkably good to ignore it---I forget about work completely for the first time in decades.

Thursday, July 14, 2016

Duck Cove Inn

Margaree Harbour

Sam Kennedy, Badass

No breakfast buffet today, I order blueberry pancakes and bacon with housemade maple syrup.   I’m pumped.  Sixty-one kilometers and no mountains!  Well, there is something called Hunter’s Mountain but it is less than half as high as the real mountains.  I’m not worried.  The first forty kilometers are great; gentle rolling hils, lots of flat stretches.  We’re riding from the west coast back across to the east coast so no more coastline.  But we’re in a lovely river valley with pretty hillsides climbing above us on both sides as we ride along the riverside.  We stop at The Dancing Goat Café for lunch (it’s actually pretty early, so we’re not starving yet—Sam gets a half sandwich, I get a carrot muffin, we grab a six-pack of cookies for the road).  Out in the parking lot we’re standing by Sam’s bike when we’re approached by another bicyclist.  He’s a middle-aged guy wearing bike shorts and a spandex biking shirt.  He asks us about the 10-kilometer patch of ripped-up pavement.  He explains that he and his wife had planned to ride the whole loop but were dissuaded by the missing pavement.  We told him about our experience of it (rideable, but tough).  He says, “Yeah, those dirt roads can be really tough on your chain, too.”  We all look down at Sam’s chain at this.  It’s absolutely bone dry and has little specks of rust growing on it.  (Steve Dufresne oiled it for him in Falmouth as he left the Cape 4,000 kilometers ago and it hasn’t been touched since.)  I say, “Wow, Sam, that definitely needs oiling.”  Sam says, “I don’t have any oil.”  The guy offers, “I’ve got some in my car, come on I’ll oil it.”  We walk over to his car.  There are two ultra fancy high-tech bikes strapped to the roof.  He nods at them and says, “We really didn’t want to ride on dirt roads on the carbon-fiber wheels.”  Neither Sam nor I has a clue what carbon-fiber wheels are, nor why they shouldn’t be used on dirt roads.  But we nod wisely as if this sentence made good solid sense.  The guy fetches a toolbox from his trunk and takes a small bottle of lubricant from it.  He crouches down next to Sam’s chain and does a double-take.  “You’re riding a single-speed bike?!!!  In these mountains?”  He looks again, “And you don’t even have toeclips?”  Sam shrugs bashfully.  “How on earth did you ever get over those mountains?”  Sam shrugs again.  The guy looks Sam up and down appraisingly and says with a tinge of awe in his voice, “Wow! You’re a badass!”

I think Sam liked being called a badass.

We leave the Dancing Goat and tackle the last twenty kilometers.  We start climbing Hunter’s Mountain almost right away and it is good climb.  It’s no McKenzie Mountain though, it’salmost as if the Cabot trail was saying to me, “See, don’t get too cocky.  I could still crush your spirit if I wanted to.  But, you’ve done good, I’ll cut you a break.”  We get to Baddeck by two and riding into the hotel parking lot is the biggest high of the week.  Sam is sitting there waiting for me with smile on his face.  I give him a huge hug and a high five.  We both feel great.  At some point during the morning Sam asked me what we should do when we get to Baddeck, by that time it was clear that it would mid-afternoon when we finished.  I had an idea of an answer during the last leg.  “How about we jump in the car and drive to Skyline trail and hike it?”  I’m feeling like it was a missed opportunity.  Sam is agreeable, so we lock up the bikes, dump our bags, and jump in the car.  It takes a little less than two hours to get back to Skyline. (We stopped for sandwiches at Boulangerie Aucoin again on the way.  Sam had two, I had one.)   Skyline is basically a long walk in the woods that ends in a dramatically beautiful (and windy!) cliffside overlook.  Incredibly beautiful and wild-looking.  And I saw my moose!  Walking down the wooded trail we saw a small group of people excitedly milling around snapping pictures.  There, standing on the trail, eating the grass along the edge was a gigantic moose.  He had to be six feet high at the shoulders, so nearly nine feet when he lifted his head (which he did only rarely, he ate determinedly).  We watched from thirty or forty feet away for about fifteen minutes before he shambled off the path and far enough into the woods to make us feel safe passing him.

I saw my moose!

The trip back from the cliff edge was along the longer edge of the loop and the week’s exertions finally caught up to me.  (Or I came down from the adrenalin high of finishing.)  I just crashed.  I could barely lift my feet to trudge along.  Sam, understanding how tired I was, didn’t mock me or even comment, he just slowed his pace so I could keep up.  We drove to Cheticamp for dinner: seafood chowder, fried haddock cheeks and fries, butterscotch pudding for me.  Sam had poutine as an appetizer---French fries drenched in gravy, melted cheese, hamburger and bacon; it was even better than it sounds--- the Acadian sampler (fish cakes, beef stew (called fricot), Acadian meat pie and beans and a hot fudge brownie sundae to finish.  Sam drove back to the hotel, he could tell I was wiped out, and we fell into bed.

It was a great adventure, and I cherished doing it with Sam.  I loved getting to hang out with him.  He’s fun to be with; he’s funny and smart and knows lots of stuff and he’s humble and self-effacing (almost to a fault).  He observes the world and has interesting insights and points of view.  I’d enjoy being with him even if he wasn’t my son.  But even more than that I came to see another facet of his personality, one that made me admire him even more (and it is a great gift to feel admiration for one’s child, especially merited admiration).  He has unbelievable depths of grit and gumption.  Cape Breton threw hail, icy rain, gale force winds, 15% mountain hill climbs, endless ribbon-candy roads at him and he never complained, never got frustrated, never even considered giving up.  He just kept pushing on, mostly with a smile and a quiet grace.  I feel privileged to have seen that.  That biker guy was right, he’s a badass.

Days 41 to 45: Cape Breton (Sam's version of events)

Day 41

Kilometer 3697

Baddeck, NS (but really River Denys, NS)

Okay, picture this, if you will: you're biking in the middle of nowhere, in a foreign country, hoping to meet your dad at a pre-arranged time and place that's still half a day's ride away. And it's seven pm. It's been drizzling all day, and recently that drizzle turned into a full-on downpour. You're counting down kilometers, but the number is still in the fifties. Your spirit soared when you thought you saw a pay phone outside the one lone building you've passed in the past hour (a Presbyterian church), but it turned out to be a bulletin board. You haven't spoken to or heard from your dad in two days, and can only hope he comes looking for you. If not, then you'll be arriving at the hotel at around two am, at the rate you're going. And now, it's just started hailing. Okay, that's it. You'll stop a friendly-looking car and use their phone. Oh, but it's an international call. Or at least, a call to an American phone that's currently in Canada. Will it even work? Did Dad get an international plan? Better idea: stop at someone's house and ask to use their computer. That'll be a fun conversation to have, as you show up drenched on some old man's doorstep. But will you ever pass by a house out here?

You're only awoken from your road-weary, mildly-panicky, intensely-wet reverie by the honking of a passing Volvo with a familiar license plate. Ah, there it is, your ticket to a dry bed. Also, the man who brought you into this world. But mostly, the bed.

Day 42

Kilometer 3784

Ingonish Beach, NS

First day with Dad and it was another day of downpours.

I did get a lobster sandwich for lunch, which was both more delicious than, and probably single-handedly more expensive than, my past week of lunches combined.

The hotel tonight is in one of the most beautiful spots I've ever seen, wedged between cliffs on a narrow peninsula sticking out into Ingonish Bay.

Day 43

Kilometer 3865

Pleasant Bay, NS

This is how Dad rides a bicycle: first, he's got to mentally prepare himself. How far is it from here to there? So, going this fast, it will take us this long? But if we go that fast, we won't get to that town until then. And if we don't get to that town until then, then we definitely won't make it to over there before much later. So we've got to reach this place before too long. Okay, we can reach this place before too long, can't we? Second, he's got to take stock of the mountains. This mountain looks very tall on this diagram, but it may in fact be less steep than that mountain, so the overall time expenditure may be similar. Third, he's got to plan lunch. And this one always goes the same way: we've got to be precisely 66.7% of the way through the day before we are allowed to stop for lunch, even if that doesn't happen until after three o'clock and his son is keeling over from hunger. Fourth, he's going to need constant milage updates. After step four, step one is repeated, followed by step two, and so on. When the actually turning of wheels occurs in unclear.

Day 44

Kilometer 3936

Margaree Harbour, NS

Uff, these mountains! Not helped by the miles and miles of road construction today, or by the fact that we didn't eat lunch until the middle of the afternoon and I was about to faint. (Dad has this weird thing about meals: he only eats three of them! Whereas I might enjoy three lunches on a typical day, Dad (and now I) eats only one, leaving me alternating between painfully hungry and too full to move.)

I haven't yet adequately sung the praises of this region's beauty. Let the record show that it is very striking. The Cabot Trail itself winds around the Highlands of Cape Breton, following a narrow path between the shore and the mountains and occasionally, to Dad's very vocal dismay, up to the top of the mountains when then the cliffs are too steep. And virtually nowhere is it not beautiful. We stop frequently for photos of these austere cliffs, laced with a ribbon of asphalt.

Day 45

Kilometer 3999

Baddeck, NS

Short day today, but it was the end of the Cabot Trail! Woot.

Highlight of the day, though, if not pulling into the hotel mid-afternoon, might have been the quintessential Canadian experience we had after finishing and returning to the supposedly (and, upon seeing it, legitimately) "unmissable" hiking trail that we'd missed the first time around. Before seeing the trail's fantastic views we'd been advertised, we saw a full-grown moose right in front of us, grazing on the trail. Took a good twenty minutes before he left the path and let us pass. If I had a bucket list, I could probably check something off now.