Marsh 'n' canals

Total distance: 823.4 km

By Sundance:

Part 1: Well, it's been a little while since we've had internet access and hence been able to update the blog, but more on that story later. So let me bring you up to speed.

After a few days in Cleveland, recovering from our epic long-distance ride into town, going to food markets, collecting extra camping gear, and the like, we headed out of of town and inland, along the Towpath trail. This is a bike and walking trail that runs from Cleveland to New Philadelphia along an old canal, through the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. As that description implies it was everything a bike trail should be - flat, smooth, devoid of cars, and quite scenic. The old stone locks from the canal are scattered along the length of the trail, and it also runs roughly parallel to the Cuyahoga river, so we were surrounded by parkland and marshes clothed in autumn colours the whole way. The first day we set out a bit late in the afternoon and got as far as Perimeter Depot before it became dark. We decided that the scenery was so nice that rather than pushing on into Akron in the dark, we'd stop and camp for the night and set off again in the morning when we could appreciate it.  We set out to ask some of the locals where we could camp. At first we came across an art gallery where the residents were having a jam session, singing "Peaceful, easy feeling" by The Eagles, which brought back many memories of camping trips I'd go on with my mother up the east coast of Australia. Despite their nice singing, they weren't very helpful about where to camp, and so we asked in a local pub, and the local police station, and eventually as we were setting off to head back up the trail to a  place we'd passed earlier in the evening, a couple in a car asked us how far we were going to be riding. It turned out they were keen cyclists and were quite excited about our little trip, and convinced us that the best thing was just to trespass onto the local Boy Scout camp. Well, we cycled out and tried to find the grounds keeper but there was nobody around to ask permission, so we just put up our tent and dozed off.

Part 2: Now it's siesta time in A-kron, O-hi-ooo!...
The next day we packed up our stuff, bumped into the groundskeeper on the way out of the Boy Scout camp, and headed south again.  It was a pretty uneventful day. We passed through Akron, circled around a bit tying to find a place to have lunch, and eventually headed off along the trail again to make nightfall in the town of Clinton. We found a caravan park, where the owner was very surprised to see anyone showing up, as they were almost closed for the end of the season. He actually let us camp for free, and some of the local long-term residents came over and insisted on being helpful, running an electric light to our campsite, bringing us firewood, lighting a fire for us whether we wanted one or not (with an impressive "whoomp!' of gasoline-and -oil-mix home-made lighter fluid), and pointing out the location of the taps, and the showers (which, being about seven metres from our tent, we may have otherwise missed!).

Part 3: Been spending most our night, camping in an Amish paradise...

The following day the hills began. We followed the Towpath trail down to the town of Navarre, and then headed off the trail, as we wanted to make our way westwards, towards Columbus. We were instant celebrities in Navarre - while I was in the local deli getting supplies, a woman started chatting to Yana outside, and convinced us to come into her favourite pub for lunch. She and her friends were amazed that we were travelling so far on our bikes, and couldn't stop talking to us, which was pretty nice. One of the great things about a trip like this is meeting locals and connecting with them. After lunch we headed out onto the road and the countryside began to get hilly, which slowed us down and sucked, a lot. We pushed on into Amish country, and into Winesburg by nightfall. Just south of there, in a little village called Trail, we were directed to an Amish family who have a cabin that guests could stay in. That was a true delight, and surprisingly high-tech. Solar-charged batteries running the lights and a fridge, self-igniting gas stoves, teflon frying pans, in fact everything but TV and an internet connection. Hence no blog updates.



By Yana:

Part 4: I for one welcome our new Ohio-bike-path constructing overlords...

As the Amish fellow who let us stay in his cabin had predicted, we were greeted with rain the next morning.  Not much we could do about that, of course, so we saddled up and headed onwards.  We had more lovely wet hills to deal with, and the road was curvy, with only a very narrow shoulder.  I shudder to think of the crashes that could have happened, but thankfully didn't.  The motorists apparently weren't too worried about hooning over the crest of a hill on the wrong side of the road, if it meant they were giving us a berth.  Anyway, I don't think either of us have ever used the low gears of our bikes so much.  Of course, our progress was frustratingly slow, and we ended up wearing plastic bags as socks in the name of keeping our feet dry.

We had only done maybe 25km by the time we stopped for lunch, in a vaguely cute little town named Millersburg.  Upon asking a random local, we decided to stop into the nearest Pizza place, and proceeded to gleefully stuff our faces.  The food was excellent, and restored our will to live.  We were actually still peckish afterwards, and the delivery driver actually bought us our second round of food, which was lovely of him.  We have certainly run into a lot of kindness and generosity here in Ohio, which has been very humbling.

After watching a pair of Amish boys duck in, purchase rainbow-coloured ice cream cones, and wander out again, we got up the gumption to keep moving again.  At least it had stopped raining, and we had also found out about another bike trail to keep us off those horrible roads.  The bike trail was exactly what we had gotten used to: flat, smooth, and scenic. Not at all like those crazy Canadian bike paths, which some genius decided should be surfaced with a layer of loose, medium-grit gravel! We can certainly applaud Ohio for its bike paths.  We forged ahead a little longer, and ended up in Killbuck.  We decided to push on a little further still, and when the clock struck 6:30, we ended up knocking on a random door on the side of the road and asking if they minded us pitching a tent in their backyard.  They were very nice about it, and even offered us a hot shower, though I concede that this may have just been a case of us looking and smelling like absolute hobos.  They also showed us photo albums of their own extensive travels, which was inspiring, to say the least.  We eventually crawled into our tent, and slept surprisingly well.

Part 5: But I would ride 500 miles... and I would ride 500 more...

Yet another rainy morning, with hills to look forward to.  After a long and convoluted packing process, we hopped on our bikes and did the old rinse and repeat of hills in the rain.  It was actually surprisingly hard to push on today, at least for me - I'm guessing I'm fighting off the beginnings of a cold, which I suppose isn't surprising.  No prizes for guessing who is plying herself with Vitamin C and zinc now.

Apart from the pretty but wet autumn colours, and the occasional Amish buggy, there's actually disappointingly little to report about today.  It's both amusing and saddening though to note that apparently the Amish just aren't as hardcore as they used to be.  I've seen quite a few of them hop out of cars and suchlike.  Oh well.  I guess they know best what the important nucleus of their way of life is.  In any case, we eventually found another lovely bike path, and stopped for a very late lunch that basically turned out to be dinner in the town of Mount Vernon.  On the grounds of my incoming cold, we have decided to do the Motel thing tonight, which helps a little with the gumption. The woman in the Mexican restaurant where we had dinner even gave us part of the cost of our motel room, so that we could stay in a nicer place. The people here really are wonderfully generous and kind. I think we'll remember Ohio for that, if nothing else.  

The progress in the last few days has been kind of woeful.  Well, at least we'll supposedly be out of the hills by the time we hit Columbus, and then it'll be flat.  But I guess that's where we'll have to hope that we don't get swept away by any tornadoes.  Though apparently a more likely thing at the moment is snow.  Yep, another thing to add to our intrepid list - we did, after all, ride through a bit of hail yesterday.


In any case, once again today Sundance got chatting with someone in a shop, who said that there was a bike path right along the way we wanted to go. Ohio, you've done it again! So we hopped onto the Kokosing Gap bike trail, and it was partway along that trail that we passed the 800 km mark, which we figured was not exactly, but close enough to the 500 mile mark (Google informs us that 500 mi = 804.672 km. Like I said, close enough).

Euclidean geography

Total distance: 564.9 km

By Sundance:

Yesterday was EPIC! After our update from the Italian restaurant where we had dinner, we hurtled through the night, through the city of Euclid (which is much bigger than it looks on the map, and Euclid ave is much less straight than the name may suggest). We eventually made it into Cleveland, and got thoroughly confused trying to find our way to the house of the friend we're staying with. At least twice we found ourselves on bridges going over the roads we wanted to get onto. In any case, we finally made it to Samantha's place, for a grand total of 124.22 km travel in one day, pulverising our previous record for distance in a single day. And we can still walk this morning! Not surprisingly we'll be taking a day to rest and veg out and resupply. 

And after all the winding our way around the streets of Cleveland in the wee small hours of the morning, navigating by the GPS and Google Maps features of my Crackberry, I think I'm going to write DON'T PANIC in large friendly letters on the cover of its carry-case.

By Yana:

It feels like I should fill in some of the details we skipped in last night's entry.  As you have already read, we have gone pretty damn far, and we did also get to see a few interesting things during the day.  We actually spent an inordinate amount of time faffing around the first town we passed through, Geneva on the Lake.  What was supposed to be just a quick stop to buy some more jelly beans turned into something much longer, as we ended up chatting with some locals, who, of all things, had a pet dingo in the backseat of their car!  Okay, it was only a half-breed, but still, a bloody dingo!  Whose bright idea was it to import those to the US and turn them into pets?  It's somewhat reminiscent of an anecdote we read in a book a while back, in which the author's friend decided to purchase a wallaby on eBay.  It seems like the line between wild animals and pets is getting increasingly blurred.

We also meandered through the very cute little town of Ashtabula.  It was an intriguing mix of charmingly quaint and grittily industrial - it worked surprisingly well.  We read the various information plaques, rode up a steep cobblestone street (well, Sundance did, I only went two thirds of the way before wheeling it for the rest), took a few photos, and continued onwards.

The Seaway Trail we had been so fond of (now the Coastal Ohio trail) actually let us down a little bit in terms of efficiency at that point.  It was going to be a big day regardless, and instead of the usual efficient nearly as-the-crow-flies line to our destination, it actually took us on an extended zig zag.  Eventually, we got fed up with that and abandoned it in favour of the more direct route down the 20.  It also decided to start raining on us, but apparently that is just no longer a biggie.  We just put on our wet weather gear, and forged ahead.  And hey, there was little to no wind, so we ended up cruising at a surprisingly high speed.  We'd gotten so used to having to deal with a headwind that not having it makes us feel downright superhuman!

One thing which is a little bit bothersome: we have caught so many whiffs of skunk on this trip that at times, it seems like everything has a very slight skunk-like aroma as we're riding along...

Ohio gozaimasu

Total distance: 524.8 km

By Yana: Kaze no Tanai Sundance mo Yana

Well, it turned out that the blustery day we had yesterday in Erie didn't stop us for long.  After our huge and protein-laden lunch in the nifty little art gallery/shop/cafe, we decided to hop on our bikes and basically go as far as we could.  By then it was 5pm, but hey, what does that bother us?  Upon climbing out of the windy valley where we had camped, we discovered that the winds were much more bearable.  We hit our groove fairly quickly, and quite comfortably rode through the impending darkness.  A few times, we were afraid that we had lost the trail, but that turned out to be unfounded.  There were a few dips in the road, basically a crazy steep downward slope, followed by its upward counterpart.  Those turned out to be great fun, once you get the hang of them.  You go careening down those hills at 45km p/h (we checked our maximum on our speedo afterwards), and your momentum carries you up most of the slope, and at some point you start pedalling like crazy to keep up the momentum.  It makes it remarkably easy to go up the hills.  Of course, me not being that much of an adrenalin junkie, I do still have a moment of breaking out in cold sweat for a moment, visualising myself going arse over tit and breaking several bones.  Still, much fun, and I suspect it might have been partially the adrenalin that kept us going as far as we did last night: almost 60km.  We got into Ohio when it was dark, ended up going right through Conneaut, and camped at a campsite in the next town.  The cool thing was that, as we arrived, we actually almost rode into a little cluster of deer, which ran off with their tails high when they saw us zooming up to them.

We got to sleep at about 2am, but that's not exactly unusual for us.  We still got up at a reasonable hour the next morning, though getting packed up was still a bit of a long process.  I guess we'll get better at it as time goes by.  We had decided to bite off quite a huge chunk to chew today: try and get to Cleveland, which would be our first day over 100km.  We've gone 80km so far, had a lovely dinner, and will probably run for it soon.  More to tell later.

By Sundance: Tall in the middle and round on both ends

I'm just going to brag quickly, because the laptop's battery is almost flat, but as you will have noticed from the total distance counter at the top of this entry, we busted through the 500 km mark today! That's given us a great sense of achievement. We're also really hitting our stride, dropping into cruising speed (about 22kph) really easily and immediately whenever we hit the road. Last week has been good training, and I think we'll be really cruising in a few more weeks, powering across the country.

I may have to amend an earlier comment, as I've discovered that it's not just Canadians - the locals here also wish is a "safe journey" all the time. Must be a North American thing.

I've also decided that the word 'Ohio' looks a bit like a bicycle.

A chautauqua in Chautaqua

Total distance: 381.5 km

Part 1: Thanks, Bicycle-Repair Man!

Well, we've made it to Erie, Pennsylvania. Last night we camped out in a ridiculous windstorm, and we're having a very lazy day waiting for the headwind to settle down so we can head off again. But first things first.

We stayed in Buffalo overnight on Sunday, after a squeaky crank arm was causing trouble on my bike. At the recommendation of the folks in the hostel we headed to a bike repair shop up the road and got everything tightened and our tyres inflated with real compressed air-pressure on Monday morning, then headed out of town. There's a wonderful thing called the Seaway trail which we're following, that runs along the south shore of Lake Erie, although it can be a bit difficult to follow at times, as it disappears onto footpaths and around train tracks in places.

Eventually we found our way onto an easy-to-follow section of the trail that follows Route 5, a smaller road parallel to Interstate 90, with less traffic. Just perfect. Our path took us through Chautauqua county, a name we had only previously been familiar with as referring to a philosophical/educational discussion, used in the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Which is wonderfully appropriate, since this bike trip across the USA is partly inspired by ZMM. Eventually we pulled into the town of Dunkirk for the night, having broken our previous km/day record, by exceeding 80 kms. We can definitely feel ourselves getting fitter and more accustomed to the riding. We've had our fair share of "can we do this?" moments, but I think we're starting to get confident that yes, we can.

Part 2: Yana Sundance Barcelona

That being said, we had one of those gruelling bits a few miles before reaching Dunkirk.  Wonderful as the Seaway Trail is, it has its disadvantages.  While the bits of it that go along the waterfront are extremely pretty, they also leave us fairly exposed to the wind, so we have been buffeted by quite a few powerful cross- and headwinds.  Fun.  Still, it toughens us up pretty quickly, and for the most part, we haven't actually been that tempted to quit.  In fact, this morning was the first time, and that's just because we were stationary in one place for too long, and I (Yana) hadn't had my protein fix.  I'm more itching to go now that that has been taken care of.

Anyway, we have seen some fairly nifty things along the way.  The day before yesterday (I think that makes it Monday...?  It's so hard to keep track when the days of the week are irrelevant), we actually crossed paths with no less than seven deer, although they weren't all together.  We seem to have left most of that pesky Ontario rain behind, so we're no longer riding along looking like waterproof convicts in our bright orange rain gear.  Okay, I'm generalising, as Sundance is actually in red and gray, but I'm orange from head to toe as soon as the wet weather gear comes on.  So now instead of the rain, we get to ride into those quadricep-training headwinds, hooray!

Yesterday, we went through a cute little town named Barcelona, which just tickled us.  Ah, New York.  Speaking of which, we have come away from these last few days with a new appreciation for just how large New York State actually is!  I had expected it to be piddly and small, as a line in Crocodile Dundee II states that you can walk across it in two days.  It took us three days to cycle through it!  Admittedly, we weren't going at an absolutely blazing pace, but still, we were riding, as opposed to walking!  Anyway, we crossed into Pennsylvania yesterday, which has been an interesting change in some ways.  Wonder how long it'll take us to reach Ohio, especially with the way the wind has slowed us down.

Ah yes, the wind. Last night we cruised into Erie, Pennsylvania, and arrived at a campground near the entrance to the Presque Isle State Park, just in time for the rain and wind to start. The campsite office was closed, so we wound up cooking dinner in the camp laundry to shelter from the rain. A helpful fellow who was showering informed us there were 40 mph winds forecast for the night, and so we headed to the tent area of the campground (it's almost exclusively caravans), and crawled into our wonderful little blue tent to wait out the night. There was a LOT of wind, and the occasional concern about tree branches blowing off and falling on us, but we had set up camp in a grove of fairly young, flexible trees, so they bent instead of breaking. In the morning it was still cold and windy, but dry at least. And so we've had breakfast, showered, done laundry, and had lunch while waiting for the weather to improve. With food in our bellies we'll probably just push on regardless and see how far we get in spite of the wind. It's supposed to calm down tonight or tomorrow anyway.

Breakfast in America

part 1 – Dissing you already!

By Sundance:

Total distance: 169.9 km

We're no longer in Canada! Yeah! Last night just about sunset we crossed over the Rainbow Bridge at Niagara Falls from Canada to the USA. Despite all our concerns that the immigration guys might turn us back because cycling across a continent sounds insane, and we don't have onward
tickets to Australia they were actually pretty enthusiastic about our trip and wished us luck along the way. So we've now crossed an international border by bicycle. That's a new experience for me. And we did get some funny looks from people in their cars as we were waiting in line on the bridge amidst the traffic.

Anyway, since yesterday was my last day in Canada, I feel like unloading a bit. The three years I lived in Canuckistan were rather lonely and unhappy for me (for reasons I won't be so
self-indulgent as to go into here), and I want to take this moment to make a few observations about the frozen white northern land, and its people.

Canadians are nice. They're friendly. They're helpful. But they can often be closed-minded and unimaginative. To illustrate the point, on our way out of Hamilton two days ago we stopped to buy travel insurance. You know, we're gonna be cycling about 7000km across a country with exorbitant medical fees. If one of us has an accident and needs to go to the hospital, medical insurance could be handy. So I ducked into a travel agent to get a quote. After figuring out how many days cover we'd need, and how our respective ages affected the cost, I was all ready to do the paperwork, when the travel agent asked me for my Canadian passport. Hilarity ensued. Not.

It turned out she'd assumed I was a Canadian citizen. Get a f***ing clue, Canada! Not everyone who lives in Canada is a Canadian citizen! And the insurance we could buy only covers Canadians, or foreigners travelling within Canada. I'm sorry to say I've run up against this sort of parochialism time and time again when living in Canada, trying to deal with phone companies, government services, and the like. For a country that prides itself on its openness to migrants and foreign workers this kind of insular failure to recognise that some people who reside in Canada were not born in Canada, are not Canadian citizens, and do not intend to live in Canada forever is just staggering. It may not sound like much, but that's three years of irritation encapsulated in a single incident.

I've made another interesting observation. When telling people about our bike bike trip, Canadians universally wish us well by telling us to “stay safe!”, where as Aussies, Irish and Americans tends to say something like “have fun” or “good luck”. So Steve F, if you're reading this, I'm sure you'll agree that they all just want everyone to have a good safe time, eh? ;-)

So over the last three years living in Canada I've come to think of it as ... somewhere I was. British Columbia should secede, because it's awesome, and I'd happily go back and stay there for a while. And while I've made some great friends in Canada whom I'll miss, Canada in general and especially Ontario (Yours To Disparage), just doesn't do it for me. I'll stop complaining now, because that's in the past. But I needed a little catharsis. Now the road beckons, and every kilometer we chew up gets us closer to California, Maui, and Australia.

I realised something else since setting out on this trip. For the first time in years, I keep catching myself with a huge smile on my face.

part 2 - America, F**k Yeah!

By Yana:

Well, the last two days have been vaguely productive. We haven't been covering as much distance as we would have liked to, Leaving Hamilton on Friday turned out to be a lot more convoluted than we had expected! You know how going through a city in a car slows you down? Yeah, turns out it slows you down on a bike, too. Didn't help that we were going through the rain... we did sort of just hang around in front of the motel we'd stayed in the previous night, hoping that it'd let up, but by 2pm, we had to accept that it was just not going to happen. So with resignation in our hearts and gumption in our minds, we donned our wet weather gear, and braved the elements. Night riding the first day, rain the second, we may as well get used to all our adversity right from the start, right?

Luckily, my fears that we were going to stack it in the rain turned out to be somewhat unfounded. Yes, the panniers do make the whole experience a little trickier, but it was still quite manageable, and we both stayed in high spirits. As previously mentioned, it took us bloody ages to get out of Hamilton, and by the time we arrived in Grimsby, it was dark, and about 9pm. Yeah. Oh well. We stopped at yet another English pub for a feed, which turned out to be pretty tasty, after much discussion about where to leave our numerous packs and paniers. While waiting for our food, we asked around about finding any campsites nearby, and the consensus seemed to be that the best option was in the next town, Jordan, which was another 16km or so onwards. One fellow, who looked and moved uncannily like my friend Bren back in Adelaide, gave us some directions that led to the service road that went along the freeway. It turned out to be a little bit of a kerfuffle to find, but find it we did, eventually, though it was 11pm by then. I was still going strong, as I had actually succumbed to the siren call of caffeine, and was therefore high as a kite. Slightly different story for Sundance, who was in somewhat lower spirits, though we managed.

Going along the service road turned out to be smooth sailing, which was nice, and we more or less kept track of where we were. At about 12:30, we arrived at a hotel where I asked directions across the freeway and into Jordan while Sundance took a ten-minute catnap. We then pushed on for the last supposedly 6.8km, which took us into the Jordan Valley campground. By the time we had set up our tents and were ready to go to sleep, it was 3am. Holy moly. It's amazing how easily time gets chewed up.

Still, we woke up at 9am, which was semi-reasonable. Mind you, again, by the time we had packed up and showered, it was midday. Turned out that our campground was a very cute and charming little place. The same also applied to the town of Jordan itself, as we saw once we had slogged our bikes up out of the valley. We stopped for a late breakfast at the Zooma Zooma Cafe (chicken paninis with wasabi mayo), and then made tracks. The first stretch of road was hellish, as we immediately got smacked in the face by a strong headwind, which was of course catching our panniers and slowing us down even more. Not to mention that the areas was a little bit hillier than what we had been used to. Still, once that was done, we were pretty well off, and going at a semi-decent pace. We decided to circumnavigate the city of St Catherine's, in the name of not getting bogged down there, and headed pretty much straight for Niagara. On the way, we stopped for a cheap-arse high-protein lunch at a place called Blazing Saddles, which just tickled us. Then we powered into Niagara itself, and upon briefly pausing to check our map, we found ourselves trapped by a decent-sized thunderstorm. Still, the sun came out quickly enough, and we got a few moments of sparkling rain before the weather more or less reverted to what it had been for most of the day, which was quite pleasant.

After a bit of debate, we decided to cross the border via the Rainbow Bridge, which, as Sundance already mentioned, turned out to be surprisingly painless. It was already dark, but luckily our hostel of choice wasn't too far to go by then. We also ran into a gaggle of helpful locals who pointed us down the right way, and we were received by a very lovely owner. We also discovered that the place had a kitchen with a gas stove! In the light of this, after chatting to two Aussie girls who happened to be staying in the hostel that night too, we headed to the nearest supermarket and got some groceries. We cooked dinner quite late at night, though it was a joy to cook with gas again after all this time! This morning, we made use of the gas again for some fried eggs and baked tomatoes. Heaven! And now we must really make tracks, as I suspect we have outstayed our welcome, considering we only paid for one night. There are better things to do than to still be hanging out in the dining room! Our destination for the next couple of days: Cleveland, Ohio.

part 3 - Oy oy oy. Oy oy-oy oy!

Buffalo cyclist... in the heart of America... Okay, we had a very short riding day today. A bit of sight-seeing from the US side of Niagara Falls (which, unlike the casino-infested Canadian side, is actually taken up largely by a state park, and is extremely pleasant ), some rain and headwinds, and a flat tyre all slowed us down. So we only made it to Buffalo, but never mind. Tomorrow we have a full day ahead of us, and a readily-accessible bike path along the shore of Lake Erie.

Riding in the Rain

Hamilton, Ontario  67.73km

Yana: Well, our first day of travelling turned out to be surprisingly easy and pleasant, considering that we did literally set off at the "crack of dusk".  I can see this becoming a bit of a thing for us.  It was basically sunset at the start of our journey, and pretty much dark by the time we actually exited Kitchener Waterloo.  It's funny how you expect these things to be utterly gruelling, but you kind of forget that to a certain extent, you can make your bike do the work for you.  It was a bit of a blessing that for the most part, the terrain was flat.  Yes, we did labour up a few hills, but it was certainly not beyond our level of ability, even with our heavily laden panniers.  And boy, do those things give you momentum when you're coasting downhill!  Apparently, Sundance was doing 44.6km per hour at one point - at least, that's what our speedometor-odometer gizmo says.  Not too shabby!  Our cruising pace seems to be at about 20km per hour, which is nothing to be sneezed at, either.

The original plan last night was to just get to Cambridge, as we had started out so ridiculously late, but when we got there, we decided that we were still fresh, so we pushed on.  So far, the strategy of popping seven jelly beans every hour or so is working out surprisingly well - take that, energy gels!  Who needs you when we can get our sustained sugar high off good old-fashioned jelly bellies!  In any case, we made it to Dundas somewhere between 10 and 11pm, and stopped to ask where we would be able to get some sleep.  The camping thought had kind of gone out of the window, as campsites can be an absolute pain to locate in the dark.  The locals at the Winchester Pub were very helpful, and after we had ourselves a late night high-protein feed, we went in search of accommodation.  We ended up at the Hamilton Inn, which was a little more pricey than we would have liked, but turned out to be totally worth it.

We have also established upon waking up this morning that we aren't even sore!  Amazing!  Looks like we had actually underestimated ourselves, which is a relatively unusual thing to do on a trip like this.  Unfortunately, we also discovered that it is raining.  We've checked out of the motel now, but it looks like we'll just have to suck it up and put on our wet weather gear - it doesn't look like it's going to stop any time soon.  Curses!  Oh well, at least we're getting our adversity reasonably early on in the trip - we spent most of yesterday's trip riding at night, after all, so what's a little rain?  Okay, it makes for balance issues and slipperiness, but I guess we'll just have to wear our skid lids, and hope we don't smoosh our brains out on the tarmac.

Wonder how far we'll get today.

Now bring me that horizon!

By Sundance: 

The day has arrived at last.

Late. But it has arrived, none the less. Packing up and leaving the place you've lived in for three years is a time-consuming, frustrating process, which has left me with a whole new level of empathy for the launch crews who manage space missions. Another launch delay! Grrr! Frustrating and moderately embarassing, but you do eventually get through them all.

We had intended to set out two days ago, but arranging shipping for our belongings back to Australia and the removal of furniture has pushed that date back to last night. To say that we left our apartment at the crack of dusk would be generous, and it was tempting to stay for another day, but the landlords are moving new people in today and so we had to get out. And so we loaded up our bikes, like snails climbing into our shells, in the wee small hours, left behind our keys and made ourselves homeless for the next few months.

The first question was how well we'd manage to ride with the paniers and our backpacks, and fortunately neither of us had any trouble or toppled over or anything like that. We then rode out to our friends Rianne and Julian who generously let us couch-surf at their place This was a very useful practice ride, as it gave us a good idea of how well our gear would fit on the bikes. I'm glad to say it all seemed pretty good, although we're going to try to rebalance the weight and reduce a bit of bulk here and there. It also meant we got extra pre-travel hugs this morning, warm showers, and a nice spacious kitchen in which to prepare breakfast today.

And now the air is cool, as winter moves its way in from the Arctic, but the sun is out and we're ready to put some kilometres beneath our wheels. And the knowledge that we're on our way back to Australia and will be seeing a whole slew of new stuff en route is slowly seeping in. That's a good feeling.