past Washago to Dorset: I can't even have a horrible day properly

September 17, 2016

I tried. I really put a lot of effort into having a terrible day, but in the end it just didn't work out.

First, here's a typical night in a tent for me: lie on left side. Wake up a couple hours later with terrible pain in left knee. Lie on right side. Wake up with terrible pain in right knee. Lie on back, right on painful sunburn acquired on Georgian Bay through carelessness. Repeat. Sweat into down sleeping bag because it's too hot out, way too hot for this time of year. Wake up early because of medication-induced insomnia.

This morning, I woke up early after a typical night in my tent, left my tent, immediately heard the whine of a mosquito by my ear, decided it was too dark to pack up, and crawled back into my sleeping bag with no plans to ever move my tired legs again.

What finally got me moving was the gunshots. They started just afyer 6:30 and came from two directions. I wasn't concerned that they were shooting toward me, protected as I was by the road, but I was worried someone might start shooting in my general vicinity from the road--I was fairly well concealed, having endured scrapes and inadvertently camouflaged my bike by getting pieces of plants stuck in it on the way in.

I packed up as fast as I could, which wasn't nearly as fast as I wanted, because one or both hands were usually occupied with smacking myself in a futile attempt to kill all the mosquitoes that were trying to kill me. The rain was starting a bit, too.

On my way back to the main road, which involved pushing the bike down and up and exhaustingly steep road with fresh gravel, I saw four turkeys standing proudly in a group. Ah, that must be what the shooting was all about. Throughout the day I saw many turkeys, or maybe just birds that looked like turkeys, but they always ran away from me. Cars didn't bother them.

Shortly after the first group of turkeys, I saw a porcupine that very absorbed in its task of whatever it is that porcupines do at the side of the road. It didn't notice me until I was alongside it and said hi, at which point it would have jumped a foot in the air if it was capable of doing so. Realizing it was probably a bad idea to go around startling porcupines, I moved on.

It was raining steadily by then. It would continue to rain all day, off and on, but mostly on. My left eye was stinging from getting water in it, which seemed odd, since I had washed my face and wouldn't have sweat or sunblock mixed with raindrops. Try as I might, I couldn't wipe my face well enough and water kept going in my eye and stinging.

Did I mention the hills? Do I even need to mention them at this point?

It was only 8:00. It was way too early to be dipping into my supply of motivational chocolate, yet there I was practically pouring it into my mouth.

A bit of fall colour is starting, but you can't see it because of the wide angle lens. There are also gorgeous layers in the rock cut on the left, but you can't see them either.

The day went on like that for a few hours. It was too warm and humid for raingear, so I biked in a t-shirt and leggings. Every time I stopped or pushed my bike up a hill, the mosquitoes attacked me. There was a gap between my leggings and socks that they particularly enjoyed. I hate it when mosquitoes bite my ankles, that's the itchiest place. By the end of the day my ankles were literally covered in bites, more than I've ever had in one small area. And this in mid-September!

I was gratified to see someone had put up a sign warning drivers about me

The hills were worse than I expected. I had plugged my intended routes into Google Maps to get a rough idea of elevation gain. All I can say is Google lied to me. The hills on the back roads were awful and constant; not long, but so steep that my momentum from the previous hill was killed instantly as soon as the next one started. It didn't help that my gears weren't working properly; even if they had been, I wouldn't have been able to shift down fast enough to keep me from stopping dead on each climb.

If Godzilla and King Kong had a baby? While I was taking this, a man pulled into the adjacent driveway, got out of the car to make a big show of waving to me, got back in his car and drove up to his house. Right, don't invite me in from the rain or anything.

I had intended to camp on Crown land near a hiking trail by Little Hawk Lake. The trail looked as soggy as the rest of the land, and apparently it was a special management area and I wouldn't be allowed to camp there anyway, which was stupid because it was general use land. (Crown land is public land in Canada and the general use land is free to camp on; non-Canadians need a permit but can still camp wherever.) It didn't matter because I couldn't find any access points that didn't involve wetlands or mud.

I decided I'd head to the Hawk Lake log chute and then look for a motel. My mitochondria were overwhelmed and I was walking up most hills by that point; I could almost hear them:

"Help! She's doing it again!"
"What? No! More fuel, more fuel!"
"It's no use, we can't keep up! What do we do? She's working us to death!"
"Screw this, these are horrible working conditions. I'm going on strike!"
"Strike, strike!"

But the hills continued. At the Hawk Lake log chute I met a young couple, recently returned from Western Canada. They insisted on giving me a granola bar and a banana, which irritated me because I had been fully immersed in my bad day and they were ruining it.

Hawk Lake Log Chute. The only one left in Ontario, of thousands. This one exists only because they rebuilt it for show, it doesn't do anything anymore.

Luckily, I stopped to filter some water from the river and was swarmed by mosquitoes. I could avoid them by standing in the rain, but it was starting to get cold. I changed into a drier shirt and put my rain jacket on, then suffered through more hills.

There weren't any bus shelters to take breaks in; there weren't even any bus stops. If you don't have a car, Ontario thinks you can just stay home.

Back on Highway 35, the hills were manageable and I didn't have to walk, but I was stopping for breaks every few minutes. Traffic was heavier there, the shoulder mostly not there. I noticed that cars (mostly pick-up trucks, many of them towing something, be it a camper, a flatbed, a boat, or a company trailer. It was like that for much of Ontario) were slowing down as they approached me, then speeding up again after they identified me as a cyclist. I laughed when I realized why: they were mistaking my blaze orange vest for that of a road worker, and in Ontario the law requires drivers to slow down when passing workers.

Rain continued to fall, the sky dark under heavy cloud, visibility getting poor.

I was crawling uphill when I started hallucinating. Through the rain I saw the shape of a bikepacker riding the other way. He raised his arm when he saw me, but all I could do was smile and I'm not sure he saw that. But it was okay, because he must have been a figment of my imagination--no sane person would be doing a bike trip on that road in that weather.

Still, for the next 5 km, I fantasized that he was almost home and would come back for me in his car and bring me somewhere dry, and we would swap stories and laugh about the day.

All that distance and I still hadn't seen a motel. I was getting close to Dorset, which I didn't want to pass because I needed to stock up on groceries. I scouted the old road, now a crumbling line of pavement turned into an ATV trail, for a campsite but found nowhere for a tent. I decided I'd just pay for the expensive B&B in town.

It was full. I continued to the town centre, which was empty, save for a woman having a cigarette outside the restaurant. I asked about camping spots, but she was only visiting. Then her boyfriend came outside for a smoke, told me he used to tour all the time, and invited me to share their motel room at the Nordic Inn on the edge of town. Just like that.

Then they bought me dinner. His mother and her boyfriend looked a bit uncertain about having a dishevelled stranger join them at their table, but I think it was just that typical British reserve. They were actually really good about it, much better than my parents would have been.

Ash and Maggie, a bit younger than me, had ridden motorcycles up from Toronto and thought they were going to die in that rainstorm, not being experienced in those conditions. So we all savoured making it through the day--and could only laugh about all our wet gear--and my horrible day was completely ruined thanks to their generosity and good company.

As I drifted off, my first night indoors on this trip, I could hear them talking in the other bed. Maggie was saying she wanted to tour, and Ash was talking about how intense cycling had destroyed various parts of his body.

"...torture implements..." I could hear him saying, "...named them Shimano."

Today's ride: 112 km (70 miles)
Total: 455 km (283 miles)

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