I'll Just Call the Mayor Then....: Day 88 - Corner Brook to Deer Lake - And Then We Pedalled...... Cross Canada 2015

August 29, 2015

I'll Just Call the Mayor Then....: Day 88 - Corner Brook to Deer Lake

We've got our end date targeted for 4 September. As a result and due to the spacing of towns and services in Newfoundland, today is just a short day today to Deer Lake. So we had a leisurely morning in Corner Brook, a really good breakfast at Cindy's and then a short ride down hill to Cycle Solutions. This is a cool bike shop that quite a few other cross country folks have stopped in at, and Mark needed to get a few adjustments done on his drive train.

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In addition to being a great bike shop, it's also a great coffee shop. So while Mark was getting his bike looked at, I was teeing up a large coffee and a huge chocolate covered oat cake. Hey oat cakes are healthy aren't they?

We also ran into a fellow cross country traveller, Troy Dowhaniuk from St.Catharines. Turns out we've been playing cat and mouse since Wycocomagh and we finally met up today. His plan was the same as ours, a short day to Deer Lake, so none of us were in a hurry to leave the shop / Cafe.

When we did get moving, Andrea from the bike shop / Cafe also decided to join us for the first part of the ride. Now Corner Brook, like just about every other Newfie town, is on the water. However the TCH is about 200 m above the town, and then it comes back down to the water about 5 km's past Corner Brook. Who wants to do a 200 m climb and then instantly drop that elevation? We certainly didn't, and there looked to be a good alternative.

Riverside drive left downtown Corner Brook and follows the inlet along the water to join up with the TCH just where it loses all its elevation gain, in other words a nice flat ride along the water instead of a great big hill. Perfect except for the construction right where it meets with the TCH. The on ramp to the TCH is closed to traffic but we scoped it out last night and there was lots of room to get around the construction. Settled, that's what we'll do.

Unfortunately, the construction dudes were working on a Saturday and they were not going to have a group of cyclists moving through their couple of hundred meters of work site no matter how safe we thought it was.

Well, what do we do? Make a run for it? Retreat the six km and climb the big hill? Well if your a local like Andrea you just do the logical thing and call the Police and explain the situation to them and ask if they can tell the worky guys to let us through. Amazingly, the Police said they would see what they could do and that they would call back. Yeah, right.

Well, within a minute they did call back but unfortunately they couldn't arrange for an escort through the construction.

Sigh, looks like it's the big dirty climb.

Don't give up so fast m'luv, I'll tweet the Mayor and see what he can do. About two minutes later they Mayor phones Andrea. Turns out it's a provincial construction project so he can't do much for us (implying that if it was a city project we would have got through).

I wish it would have been a federal job cause then we could have blamed "that damned Harper bye"

So retreat and climb it was, but I've got to admire Andrea's pluck!

The climb was actually pretty easy, the view was fantastic, and the downhill was a great 60+km/hr scream. And the 10 km we did out and back along the inlet was a beautiful warm up for the day.

The rest of the short day was great. Perfect cycling temperature, mostly sun with enough clouds to make the sky look interesting and a very strong tail wind!

The day was over before we new it! Time to get this blog done before supper. We are still waiting for the penny to drop and for us to get hammered with some classic Newfoundland weather. Every other cyclist has got some but we're four days in and unscathed (so far!).

As a slight aside from our cycling tales, when we were stopped for lunch today I got one of my regular calls from my buddy Clair. These calls usually come when we're sweating up a big hill in blazing sun or screaming down one at 60+.

Today's was convienient so I answered it. Mr Kimmett, in his pleasent and diplomatic way indicated to us that he thought we were slacking off doing only about 60 km today. He was also wondering if we had edited out our earlier comments about the music selection available in his car. During the call, I pointed out to Clair that just a few moments before we had just gone over 8,000 km for the trip, so even if we were having a slack day, we were entitled to it. I also pointed him to the correct spot in the blog referencing his AC/DC cd's.

After this call I've been considering editing the references I do have about Clair throughout this blog. If I can figure out a global replace, I may just replace 'Clair' with 'Hunter'. Hunter is another one of Clair's friends who we just met when we visited him in Roblin. Even though we only met this one time, we were soon on a face licking basis (at least from Hunters perspective) and so far Hunter hasn't been making rude comments about our progress or insinuating that we are writing him out of the blog. I think Hunter might fit better. What does anybody else think? Murray, you may have an opinion as you have met them both.

Anyway, back to today's ride....Here's the pics from today ..... This corner of the Rock is gorgeous.

Kirsten and Cindy heading out this morning. Thanks for the Newfoundland hospitality Cindy!

Troy from St. Catherines. He's on his way to St John's too. we should be crossing paths over the next few days

Heading out from Cycle Solutions in Corner Brook. Great bike shop and great folks working there. Andrea from the cafe side joined us for part of the ride although she's not in this picture

Great views of the Corner Brook Harbour. Beautiful morning for a ride

The Newfie Bullet. The steam train that used to run into Corner Brook

The Newfie Bullet - ran until 1939 when the rails and rolling stock were upgraded

Beautiful morning along the Humber inlet as we were trying to access the TCH without a big climb. This is a beautiful part of the world

View east of Corner Brook from the off ramp onto the TCH. It was worth the climb! Beautiful valley and a great ride down!

Mark caught Kirsten decending this stretch. She laid off her brakes because I never caught her!

Fantastic scenery east of Corner Brook. This is about 10 km east just before Marble Mountain Ski Resort

Marble Mountain Ski Resort just a few minutes east of Corner Brook. 520 m of vertical, 5 m of snow a year and some pretty steep runs at the top. This is a pretty nice local hill!

Went over the 8000 km mark as we were riding along the western end of Deer Lake. Not sure if I'll ever see this again on a tour! Nerd comment : our actual distance is about 15 km more as I had the Garmin turned off for a while by mistake on day 2 outside of Abottsford BC! Wanted to get a picture right at 8000 but I was going down a hill and didn't want to stop

And this is where we were when we hit 8000 km .... Western end of Deer Lake Newfoundland on a gorgeous summer day, sunny, 22 deg and a strong tailwind ....not too shabby!

Song of the day:

Better Things by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings

A modern soul number in the classic '70's style

"I got a new life and I'm feeling right on,

My head is high and my spirit is strong"

Historic monument of the day:

The Newfie Bullet - both Kirsten and I like trains

So far I think it's quite crazy that there are not a lot of old buildings here, yet Newfoundland was one of the first places settled in North America by Europeans. It's probably due to the fact that just about every place we've been to talks about the 'fire that burnt the town to the ground in 'fill in the blank year''

That sort of history doesn't lend itself to a great architectural heritage particularly if you always rebuild in wood!

Today's ride: 68 km (42 miles)
Total: 8,064 km (5,008 miles)

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