September 2, 2015
Powered by Haggs: Day 92 - Gander to Clarenville
"Did youse want 'ole or what haggs?"
Huh.....
"Did youse want 'ole or what haggs?"
Still confused, no coffee moving through my system yet.... Kirsten chimes in, " what kind of eggs do you want dummy...."
At this point the girl in the Gander Subway cracks up and says " I been speakin all Newfie to youse m'luv".
Great, even the teenagers are calling me m'luv!
And so began our day in the middle of Newfoundland.
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When we woke up it was 6 deg c, drizzle and a very strong north wind, not a huge incentive to get going. So we didn't.
We lingered over tea and toast at Gail's, then she had to go to work, which meant we did too. It was blowing pretty hard, and it was cold so the plan was to get to subway and get some food for the road as there was not much between Gander and Clarenville. That's when we had our haggs encounter. Translations done and food procured, we set off down the highway. We made it one km when there as a turn off to the memorial to the 101 Airborne Division air crash in 1985. We turned in and visited the site and it was quite moving. If you want to have a really good description of the memorial I would recommend you read Brian Costello's journal ( day 77). He was here a few days before us, unfortunately we didn't meet up on the road but we've been reading his journal, which is very well written and funny, to get an idea of what's in front of us in Newfoundland. Link to his journal is:
http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/15745
And if you are reading day 77, read his day 78. It pretty much sums up Newfoundland. Our experience hasn't been as extreme as Brian's on this day.
When we left the crash memorial the skies continued to lift and the temperatures continued to rise and the wind continued to blow on our backs. All good. The payback came with the hills. They just kept coming and coming. Nothing extreme, and for every uphill we got a good downhill, but there were lots of them.
At the 70 km Mark we entered Terra Nova national park. The road, which was already pretty good, got even better with a full 3'm shoulder of really smooth pavement. We also got some pretty nice views of the bay's but to really appreciate the park you need to get off the TCH. This wil have to wait for next time for us.
After leaving the park it was more up and down all the way to Clarenville where we bunked up and were fed and watered (beered too) with Mark's brother-in-law and his family.
So all in, what started as a cold and windy day ended sunny, around 18 deg c with a nice helping hand tail wind.
In between was 150 km of really nice up and down biking. Today was our second highest elevation gain day of the entire trip, within 50 m of the biggest day back in BC when we entered the western mountains! Here however we got an equal amount of downhill.
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Song of the Day:
Sick Bed of Cuchuliann by The Pouges
It's not Newfie but it's as close as I can get! It also fits with the song that Mark's brother in law Kirby sent us to bed with last night. Now Kirby, like just about every other Newfoumdlander I suspect, has a garage full of drums, guitars, electric pianos and all sorts of other musical instruments.
He also has a new pair of Bubbles glasses ... Bubbles as in Trailer Park Boys.... So he plays us the Bubbles Song to send us off to bed (and does it extremely well). If you've never seen the Trailer Park Boys this probably won't mean anything to you. However, you could listen to this classic Pouges number and you'll get the same general idea of the Bubbles song.
Historical monument of the day:
Memorial for the 101 Airborne Division crash
Today's ride: 149 km (93 miles)
Total: 8,546 km (5,307 miles)
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