It’s now 500 kilometres on the busy Trans Canada Highway (TCH), from Bishop’s Falls to Port aux Basques. The TCH is what I most wanted to avoid but it is what it is so off I go. 

The first day is uneventful. I dodge pockets of rain until the last hour when I get a good soaking; I kind of felt like a soldier killed an hour before the armistice. No matter, I have a room for the night, at the Junction Inn. It’s the only place at the otherwise lonely junction of the THC and Hwy 401. It’s a simple place, no restaurant but with a food truck attached to it. The lady running the place is so sweet, she makes sure I have everything I need before she heads home for the night.  She has a gentle Irish lilt and in every sentence she calls me ‘sweetheart’ or ‘darling’. I like it and I start calling her sweetheart, too! Someone listening in would think we were long-time lovers, but there is nothing flirtatious at all, it's just Newfoundland. She suggests I get a moose burger from the food truck, which I do, and which is the best burger I’ve ever had. There is a fridge and a table in the hall, where there is coffee and tea and bread and homemade jam for breakfast, and muffins, too.  The motel is very simple but I have a warm, fuzzy feeling all evening.

Heart

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Same Same But Different

After having met but a handful of cyclists in my previous ten years on the road, I meet not one, but two, within days of each other. They’re like what I have heard said in Thailand: “Same, same, but different.”

The Silver Fox: I see him first, I wave, cross the road and pull up right in front of him. He stops but looks, perhaps, a little peeved at the intrusion. He has grey hair and is what my wife terms a ‘silver fox’, handsome and beautifully fit. He has covered 8,153 kilometres since the start of his trip in B.C. He knows exactly how far he has come because he has at least three electronic devices to tell him so. He gives me a tour of his bike; he has a Brooks leather seat, a suspension seatpost, tubeless tires, waterproof panniers, fingerless cycling gloves, in his panier a $400 Thermarest air mattress, and all sorts of other things that I don’t remember or even know what they are. I do know all the stuff he’s got hanging on his bike cost far more than my whole setup, including the bike. It’s taken him two years to put together his outfit and plan this trip. After giving the tour of his bike, he rides off confidently and resolutely while I sort of shuffle off, not quite sure if I’m even going in the right direction. 

Sweet Dude with Big Balls: Working my way up a hill I glance up and I see at the top the silhouette of a person. One hand is outstretched to the sky. I approach and find it is a young man, a fellow cyclist, with a smile big enough to break his face, holding in that outstretched hand a gorgeous, juicy peach, for me! I am beside myself with delight as, evidently, is he. Like a spring flood in Manitoba our words pour out of us, so excited are we to meet each other. I take huge bites of my perfect peach, sucking in every drop of its honeyed juice, and grin like a baboon. He's from Quebec and living rough, camping at the side of the road every night. He plans on cycling till November or whenever the snow stops him. What balls he has! His hunger to see the world face to face, sweet or bitter, without a guide or itinerary reminds me of myself in my younger days. I love this guy! We never do exchange names but we don't need to, we've known each other all our lives.