June 28, 2019
Just Passing Through
Port Dover to Port Colborne
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Jackie’s avg speed: 10.3
Scott’s avg speed: 10.8
Weather: 65-75 degrees, still, humid
Road fatigue is bound to happen on a 3,100 mile trek across the country. Thinking of the tour as a “job” might have been the first sign that getting to the end zone at times was more important than slowing down and savoring the unique environments we passed through each day. Or maybe we were suffering from SOS, sensory overload syndrome, the condition of passing through new places too fast to process all the new data we faced.
The day’s goal was to get through 60 miles fast to avoid the heat promised in the weather forecast. The day started with fast food, so aptly named. Scott picked up muffins, coffee, and tea at Tim Horton’s. The woman behind the counter would not let him add sugar to the tea because regulations required her to do it. Interesting. It was a little sweet, but I’m not one to complain about more sugar rather than less. Fifteen minutes for breakfast put us on the road at 07:28.
The Adventure Cycling route for Port Dover to Port Colborne gave us lots of miles along the Lake Erie shoreline. The first 38 miles on back roads were really pleasant with hardly any cars.
At Nanticoke just a few miles east of Port Dover we rode past the U.S. Steel Canada steel mill, owned by U.S. Steel. No activity, no cars moving to or from the compound, but some kind of exhaust was coming out of the cooling towers. Wikipedia told us the U.S. parent company locked out workers in 2009 and 2013 over labor disputes. According to a May 2018 article in the Toronto Globe and Mail, a Canadian judge sent another legal dispute to mediation. Nothing else. Our ride brought us up close and personal with a tantalizing geopolitical mystery. It was frustrating not to know more, but – we were on a mission to get through miles, no time to stop and chat people up.
Up next was a shuttered thermal generating plant, probably coal, Scott said, because thermal means heat, which happens when coal burns. (I love riding with him, he has a logical and mostly right answer for almost every question I ask). Huge electrical pylons were still in place, and we guessed they were getting electricity from the wind turbines and acres of solar collectors (which occupied area formerly of the thermal plant) that we passed in the same vicinity.
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Internet research later confirmed that the 260-acre solar array producing 44 megawatts had been completed in April this year. And we confirmed the coal plant had been decommissioned in 2013. A YouTube video from February 2018 shows the smoke stacks collapsing in a controlled demolition, game over for coal. Footnote: the coal plant generated 4000 megawatts; nuclear power helped make up the difference after the coal plant was taken offline.
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On, on. Second breakfasts had become a habit, so we stopped in Selkirk about 10:00 for coffee, carrot cake, and cheesecake. The route next took us through quiet residential areas along the shore. The breeze coming off the lake mitigated the humidity somewhat and kept us cool.
Our luck changed when the route cut north to Rainham Road, a busy highway full of trucks and impatient drivers doing business in Dunnville, a farm town of 5,600. When we got there, we sat in a shady park on the route and ate the Subway sandwiches we bought the night before. Refortified, we resumed the ride on North Lakeshore Road. traffic thinned out after a few miles, and we were once again cruising along the Lake Erie littoral. From time to time we caught a disconcerting whiff of sewer gas. In some places, lake front cottages were crammed tightly next to one another. We hoped sewage wasn’t going into the lake.
I take full responsibility for booking the Capri Motel on the north side of Port Colborne. I chose it for the price, $95 Canadian/$73 U.S. It was shabby, but clean enough. Anything in the city center would have been a better choice for getting a feel for the town and mingling with locals. We checked in at 15:00 and had immediate shelter out of the sun. We bought a few groceries for breakfast and made dinner of rehydrated beef stroganoff.
Today's ride: 62 miles (100 km)
Total: 2,172 miles (3,495 km)
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