Day20: Another short day but my pedal click is gone!

Monday July 1, 2019

Once again, I cut my day short which, as long as I do some longer days later is a good thing. Today, like yesterday, I also attempted to fix my clicking problem. Today I finally succeeded! At this point I'd replaced everything but the pedals, so now I could convince myself the problem wasn't the crank bearing, the seat, or the seatpost. It could only be a pedal, the frame. or the headset. The fact is that it was getting more and more to feel like a right pedal problem, but one that still only showed up when I was pedaling while seated, helped. That and the fact that it was still driving me crazy!

I rode the Waterfront Trail (WT) today and even when I got off that trail to take a break and look for a bike shop, I found one that is on the trail where the trail was on a regular street. Cycle Butik in Toronto is marked on the Open Bicycling Maps (OCM) as on the TCT. Van du Velo in Mississauga is also marked on the maps but it is not on a bike trail. Cycle Butic is right on the trail. Good folks who sold, and installed, basic pedals for $22.50. I've kept my old pedals and will rebuild them when I get home.

Speaking of finding things, I found the place on the WT where it goes straight up on Gmaps elevation graph. It always showed up around Toronto and looked like an error in the elevation data. Normal roads don't go up that steeply! Actually there was one that I rode on the second day of this tour that did. if you remember I could barely push my loaded bike up it.

This one wasn't a normal road. It is a paved bike path that goes up with a 20+% slope. It wasn't as long as the hill in southern Indiana, but it was as steep. I rested and snacked at the top and tried to nap. If I had succeeded in naping I might have made it farther today, but two small groups of loud kids ruined my nap just by being kids. I'm not sure they even saw me.

After I gave up on my nap, I discovered that the OCM maps were out of date and the the trail as they marked it no longer existed. It was fairly straight forward to discover the error because the neat WT routing signs painted on the road didn't match the, no longer existing, section of trail. The new route forced me to ride on Kellog St which is a six lane divided urban expressway. It was not fun but, since I was surviving the ride, I stayed on it even after the WT got off ASAP. In only a few blocks that brought me to a group of inexpensive motels that included the first possible planned motel for yesterdays ride. It was 2:30 PM and I had made it through Toronto and I needed a nap. One of the other motels was named "Need a nap" or something close to that and seeing this one right after it, I pulled in to check on a room ;-}.

The person that cleaned the rooms didn't come in until 3 PM, so I got my room, left my bike in it and had a late lunch at a small Chinese restaurant about two blocks away while the room was cleaned. The wifi here is marginal, at best, but the room is quite nice and it is almost $20 cheaper than last night room.

Riding through Toronto on the WT is spectacular! If you are reading this as email, you should go to crazyguyonabike.com, search for mjb, my user ID, and look at the web page. I did hear from the folks at Cycle Butik that it gets over crowded on nice weekend days. Once again my Gmaps route, which mostly follows it, went away but it was very easy to stay on the WT - with only a minor problem or two which I resolved quickly by checking the OCM maps on my phone. I only found the one place where OCM was apparently out of date. There were several long hills today that I needed my granny ring to climb, but, as you can see from the Gmaps elevation plot which I did include on the web page, it is overall a flatish route.

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