On The News / On the Road

(this is a two-part post...)

Part the first

Yesterday, Jun 30, the seatosea officially got going in Seattle. I wished I was there.

However, in another part of the country, there was tragedy. In western Manitoba, a quartet of cyclists who were cycling across the country to try to raise funds for Juvenile Diabetes were struck by a car, leaving 2 dead, and one still in hospital. They were on the Trans-Canada Highway (a 2 lane road, despite the name) which in that particular area has no paved shoulder.

I knew none of this at the time. Like many other people I was sitting at my computer, trying to watch the live satellite feed of the tire-dipping ceremony. I say trying, because they apparently had technical issues and there was no video. At the same time I was visiting the track-the-tour page to see their position according to the GPS unit that a cyclist is carrying each day.

Then the phone rang, and when I picked it up I was speaking with Sarah McGrath from the local A-channel evening news. She told me about the above tragedy, and as she had learned earlier about the Sea-To-Sea tour, she wanted to to talk with some other cyclists who were planning/participating-in a charity ride.

One thing led to another, and to make a long story short, in about an hour I drove out to (fellow cyclist) Pieter Pereboom's house and met Sarah there with her cameraman Jerry. We talked about the sea to sea tour, about what we knew of the safety precautions that our tour was using, as well as about the cause, and multiple other related topics. and of course, we talked about the terrible accident in Manitoba.

Despite the tragic circumstances, it was a great conversation, and some good publicity for the tour. It turns out that Sarah is herself a long distance cyclist, and while we did not convince her to join us on our planned ride the next day (more on that later) we did invite her to join us on August 21 and cycle into London from Chatham. She seemed quite interested in that -- we suggested that while she rides, they could have a camera crew driving along and filming and all that. Who knows what will come of it, but it was fun to plant the seed!

They gave us a fair bit of coverage on the 6 o'clock news, including throwing up the seatosea.org website address, which was very cool.

I do not have a digital connection to my TV, and neither did they put it up on Youtube, so you'll have to be satisfied with some snapshots that I took of the TV while I paused the tape. ;-)

Part The Second

Today is July 1, Canada Day, and a holiday here in Canada. With permission from our lovely wives, Pieter, John deVries, Mike Talsma, and I, got up early to drive a metric century.

This one:


We met up at 7am and headed SW of London. Our destination was Glencoe, a small hamlet about 55km away from us. We planned out a nice loop, on quiet paved country roads, and had a great ride on the whole.

Once in Glencoe, we turned around and came back into London using the planned route that the Sea To Sea tour will follow on August 21. And we can report that it is a pretty nice ride. There is only about 4km that is on a somewhat-busy street. All the rest of it is on nice quiet paved backcountry roads. Well done, Ed Witvoet!

I did bust a spoke at about the 40-45 km mark on the ride out. On the back wheel that I had just had fixed. I suspect that the problem was my recently removed kickstand -- I had removed it as it had gotten jammed in and bent a spoke. The wheel had a slight wobble to it after the spoke snapped, but I just wound the broken spoke around it's neighbour to keep it out of the way and we pressed on. Time to visit the bike shop again!

The total ride was about 108km for me, averaging 24 km/h(!), with a total ride time of about 4:36 in the saddle. Riding in a group sure makes the distance shorter. My left shin started acting up a bit again at the 75km mark, but didn't get too bad. I tried adjusting my cleat on that cycling shoe, perhaps that helped, as it didn't get any worse after that point.

And that's all for today. You can now go back to browsing the blogs of the riders who are already on the seatosea tour...