Day 122 - Alliston to Georgetown - Two Far 2022 - Reunion Bound (the long way around) - CycleBlaze

September 8, 2022

Day 122 - Alliston to Georgetown

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We have left the waterfront resort areas behind and are now riding through the fringes of the Toronto urban area.  The riding is not so serene and peaceful as it has been much of time since we left Zanesville.  We have tried to make routes which avoid congested areas as much as possible, but we still have to get through this part of Ontario.

We had some quiet farmland early in the day.
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We wondered what this crop was. It looked as if it were recently planted.
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At the end of one field was this truck full of the harvest. We think it's onions and those little light green plants in the previous picture were young onion plants.
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It's fun to watch the crops mature with the seasons. The tiny soybean plants we saw in the spring will be ready for harvest soon.
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It's hard to see, but the bundles of chopped wood are wrapped in plastic. It's time to buy wood for the winter.
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More fall colors
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A train trestle. A few minutes later, we climbed a big hill and crossed over this same track just as a train was coming.
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The farther south we went, the less pleasant the cycling got.

No more quaint and pretty small towns today - just busy streets and lots of traffic signals.
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The small towns we passed through were full of new condos and homes - suburban expansion, we assume.
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The thing we will remember most about today is the climbing.  Our route on Ride-With-GPS showed a few significant hills early on, with one being 6% for half a mile.  We have learned through experience that the Ride-With-GPS grades are lower than what our Garmins read while we are riding.  6% is usually more like 8% on the Garmin.  

Well, we were patting ourselves on the back for pedaling up a couple of long 8-9% hills, but then the hills just kept coming.  Our elevation profile would show almost flat terrain as we were pedaling up yet another 6-8% grade.  After over 40 miles, this got to be a little too much and we did walk two or three places that were over 8% in the last five miles.  

Garmin and Ride-With-GPS often disagree at the end of the day on a ride's total ascent. Today, for example, the RWGPS route indicated 1,296' of climbing. However, when we uploaded our ride, it registered 1,899'.  Thats a 47% increase from what we were expecting!  You can tell we're Florida cyclists, can't you?  We complain about a temperature of 60 degrees and a few hills!  

Tomorrow looks like more of the same, so expect more whining :-).  After tomorrow though, the routes look much better and, best of all, we'll meet up with some friends and ride with them for a week from Buffalo to central Ohio.

Today's ride: 48 miles (77 km)
Total: 3,910 miles (6,293 km)

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Rich FrasierI have the same problem with RideWithGPS. Our Wahoos regularly record grades significantly steeper than what RidewithGPS predicts. I don’t know where they’re getting their elevation data from!
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2 years ago