My Day Off

Sault Ste. Marie, ON, CA – Thessalon, ON, CA

The truth is that I was prettty tired by the end of the day yesterday. It’s not that we biked that far, or that the day was that hard. But eight straight days of 4-6 hours per day is a lot for this old body. I needed a day off.

Of course, we can’t take a day off. A day off would mean tacking on more mileage to all the other remaining days. And Diana would not permit a day off anyway.

“Day off? From what?” she would say. Because really, these 4-6 hour days are on the lighter side for her.

No, there was no use going there. We had to keep going . . . Even I knew that . . .

If only there was some form of power I could tap into to get me through the ride today. Maybe I could harness the wind with a sail? No, wind is blowing in the wrong direction – and that’s a dumb idea anyway. Maybe I could make my bike into an e-bike for that day? Like that’s going to happen.

And then I realized I have my very own store of nuclear-like energy, just waiting to be tapped.

My wife!

All I had to do was let Diana pull me all day – and it would be like a day off. Particularly since we would be going into the wind a fair amount. I would just tuck in behind her – she works really hard just to maintain a slow-ish pace because of the wind in her face, and my life is easy. Just sit there and do my nails, or eat bon bons.

And you know what? It worked perfectly. Nice day off for me. And the best part is that Diana is perfectly happy. She’s like one of those dogs in the Iditarod that are just bred to pull, and that’s all they want to do. Harder day on the trail because it just snowed? All the better. That’s my wife!

As we headed out this morning we went about two kilometers (that’s Canadian for a little over a mile) before I realized that I had forgotten my watch. We don’t lose much on trips like this – that’s partially because there’s not much to lose – but occasionally something slips between the cracks. And besides I bought that watch at Walmart for about $11. Not a big loss.

I called a halt at the first gas station we saw because it called itself a travel center. We were a little discombobulated after entering Canada because we haven’t been able to find any small scale maps. Michigan sent me a complete set of like twenty bike maps covering the whole state. Ontario. Nothing.

The thing is, Ontario is HUGE!. It stretches past Minnesota to the west and we won’t even get to the eastern end of it on this trip. And I don’t know how far north it goes. Probably to the North Pole. I think Santa has an Ontario address . . .So I guess a set of small scale Ontario maps would have something like 173 volumes. Probably not practical.

We checked at the Ontario Welcome Center when we arrived yesterday – but the guide person just said that the only road there was was the Trans-Canada Highway. (“Good luck with that” was implied, but not said . . .) She gave us a map of the whole province. It folded out into the size of a kitchen table – but our trip across 400+ miles of Canada covered 3 square inches. Not a lot of useful info there . . .

The gas station we checked in at yesterday was even worse. Nothing remotely helpful.

But today’s travel center at least had something. One of those big page-by-page road atlases covering “Northeast Ontario” – which somehow includes Thunder Bay and points west. Now, of the 250 or so pages, about 98% were completely useless. I mean, it’s interesting to look at the northern Algoma region and note that there are about 375 streams and rivers heading somewhere north, and there isn’t one road – but that’s not really useful information unless you are planning re-enact Canoeing with the Cree – a book I highly recommend by the way . . .

So we found the maybe nine pages that were relevant to our trip, tore them out of the atlas and headed on our way.

We at least had some kind of maps now. But the real plan was to follow the route developed by an Ontario organization called the Great Lakes Waterfront Trail – with maybe a little help from google. Not our greatest plan – but we thought we could piece it together.

As it turned out the Great Lakes Waterfront Trail is amazing. It’s all signed and easy to follow – and it takes you on amazing European-like empty roads through bucolic scenes with idyllic-looking farms with hilly wooded backdrops. It felt like we were biking through A River Runs Through It – if you remember what the ranch looked like.

Eventually the trail – and Diana, who had planned a great day for us – took us to a little town where we could have lunch. I glanced down at my watch to see what time it was and realized that it was noon, the perfect time for lunch.

What? WHAT? I guess my watch was on my wrist the whole time!

Now, being in Canada, Diana has lost some of her powers. She can’t write prescriptions for things like anti-psychotic medication. But her medical training isn’t completely gone . . .

“This is really concerning,” she said. “Rapidly progressive early onset dementia is a very serious thing.”

Me? I’m not worried. I can’t remember the last time something like this happened to me . . .

But that’s just a side note. I was talking about how idyllic today’s ride was. The only thing that would make it more quaint would the Amish or something like that.

Queue up the horse and buggies. Somehow we stumbled upon the biggest Mennonite community that I’ve ever seen. A Mennonite “farmer’s market” store. Mennonite men and women literally speeding down the road in their horse and buggies. There were signs warning cars about the slow farm traffic – meaning the horse and buggies – but the reality is that there should have been signs warning us about the speeding buggies. We seriously almost got hit by two of them . . . One with an infant hanging on for dear life – with nary a seatbelt to be seen . . .

The thing is it’s a much different experience to encounter a horse and buggy when you are on a bike then when you are safely in a car. I mean it’s obvious who’s going to win if you’re driving your Nissan Pathfinder. I think the Mennonites see a biker and they’re like: “Yep, now you can see how it feels to be afraid – sucka!”

But we ended up having an amazing Mennonite dinner. Great corn. Green beans, onions, and cherry tomatoes. And lamb chops. With fresh dill.

But here’s my question. Can Mennonites use electricity? ‘Cause if they can, why don’t they buy a Tesla and be done with the menacing horse and buggies. Here’s the thing, when we asked for lamb chops the nice bearded man with a hat (they seem much more gentle when they are not speeding down the road at you in their chariots of death) headed into his big built-in freezer and emerged with a few vacuum packed choices for us.

I mean why bother with the manual adding machine at the till if you can use electricity? Or is it just that they can’t use electricity unless it would be inconvenient not to use it? Confusing.

We’ll ponder these difficult questions as we fall asleep to the lapping of waves on Lake Huron tonight . . .