Some Unfinished Business...

As you should know, Tyler Buitenwerf was unable to complete the tour last year, due to a fall.

Well, it's summertime again, and Tyler is determined to finish. He put out the call on the seatosea forum quite a while back looking for lodging and maybe cycling buddies, and I had to respond.

Yesterday it was my pleasure to meet Tyler and ride with him into London.

We actually made up a small Peloton. John Vandersteen, Pieter Pereboom, and myself from seatosea08 were in the group. And joining us was Fred Nydam, who rode the day into Grand Rapids, and will be one of the first to sign up when (Not IF) the next sea to sea starts organizing. We are all from London, and we met at downtown just after 9am and headed SW, retracing the seatosea route backwards, heading towards Chatham.

The forecast was 30km/h winds from the SW, and rain starting near noon, with possible thunderstorms. Oh well, couldn't be helped. In reality, the wind was much lighter and from the South, so it was not really much of an impediment until near noon. The rain did not hold off, though, and we started getting sprinkled on soon after we left London. It was never that hard, but the moderate sprinkle kept starting and stopping all the way to Glencoe.

I had told Tyler that Glencoe was as far as I was going, and we arrived there around 11:45 and settled into a cafe to wait and have a bite. Tyler road in about 15 minutes later and we had a nice lunch together.

It was fortunate for Tyler that we had ridden out, because the one road that we followed for 20+km was in the process of being covered with tar+gravel, which was taking it from a nice biking road and turning it into a horrendously awful biking road. So we figured out a much nicer, though marginally busier, route to follow back and headed off to London. The rain had given up on us, and so we had nice dry weather all the way back to London. The wind was a big help now, as it was mostly at our backs. We rejoined the official seatosea route in Mt Brydges, and rolled into downtown London about 3pm.

(We told Tyler that he would have to use his imagination to see all the cheering and encouraging crowds that met us on tour...)

Tyler and I cleaned up our bikes last night, chasing those "chipmunks" out of our chains and had a nice restful evening. I had put in 110 km, which was just about double what I've managed so far this spring in other rides.

This morning John Vandersteen showed up at breakfast as he is escorting Tyler as far as Woodstock. Eritia Smit is doing the same thing today that I did yesterday, and cycling out to meet Tyler and then bringing him home to Hamilton with her. Safe travelling, Tyler, thanks for coming along, and we'll see you again sometime!

Art Mulder,
London, ON

----------
Stats: 114.8km, Avg 23.3 km/h, Max 48.4km/h, Time: 4:55