Sorry about yesterday. There was some internet available, but as I was being hosted by the Grootenboers for pool, shower, and laundry use, I thought it would be rude to ignore them and stick my nose in a laptop.
Tonight I'm home, at my own house, at my own desk, and my beloved has graciously allowed me some time here to write. (she herself is busy reading other blogs...)
So again, I'll combine two days reporting into one (BIG!) post.
Wednesday, Aug 20.
I forgot to copy the stats from my bike computer!!
I remember that I averaged about 22.2km/h which was not the best, but not too bad, all things considered. The scheduled distance was 90km.
It was an odd day, with 30km on the US side, then congregating at a park in Marine city, and then over on the Ferry, and then a party, and then riding on to Chatham. Heather already blogged some of this, so I can try and be brief.
Here is the nasty nail (Albert tells me that it is a concrete nail) that lodged in my rear tire while going down an unpleasantly busy road in Michigan, about 10-12km out of Richmond.
It was definitely NOT the nicest place to struggle with a wheel. Ralph Fledderus and Ed unknown-last-name helped me change the tire, which resulted in one snapped tire iron, and one successfully replaced tube. Pumped up again, and we were on our way to Marine city, which is a lovely picturesque little town on the water there.
I'll let the photos tell most of the story of this time at the park.
Hans Doef's helmet hair. Very cool
We made the local paper.
Pieter + Ralph relaxing along the water, as we had over an hour to wait.
Queueing up to get on the ferry. Y'know, 220 riders is a LOT of people in one place. ANd this is only a small fragment of them. We were all instructed to wear our SeaToSea jerseys (biking shirts) today.
The Customs agent told us not to take photos (I know we live in a post 9/11 world, but all of us thought this was silly.) but I'd already taken a few.
Alida van Dijk was beside me on the ferry and we traded cameras to take pictures of each other.
Yes, Margaret, Pieter was there.
lots of people with bikes on the ferry!
There was a MASSIVE party on the other side greeting us and feeding us!
Pieter and I stayed for a while, but as we had no family of our own there, we pressed on to Chatham. It was "just" a short 60km ride, into the wind. I lost Pieter about half-way. He kept jumping on faster and faster peletons of cyclists and ended up being #2 to arrive in Chatham. (Why no, Pieter isn't at all competitive, why do you ask?)
I ended up hooking up with Julia Wissink (even though she won't admit it in her blog. I'll have to razz her about that later...), Jonathan, Jeff, ... and a few others who helped pull me into Chatham to arrive still pretty early. There were maybe 50 bikes there when we got there.
It's really amazing what a difference riding in a group can do. By myself in that headwind I was doing maybe 23km/h and dropping to 21 at times with gusts. When they zoomed by, I popped onto the tail of the line and was crusing at 25/26km/h with the same effort, and with the benefit of great community. (I made sure to thank them afterwards, and they were delighted to have shared part of the ride.)
We ended up clumped a bit in Chatham with other riders due to being stopped by a train. While I understand the safety issues, it still can be a blast riding the roads with about 15-20 riders all fairly closely grouped. I promise, it was only for a short while, on very quiet streets, and we obeyed all the rules of the road -- plus all the smart rules of peloton riding.
The Chatham community rolled out the red carpet. There were people cheering us into the parking lot, showing us where to park our bikes, shuttling us to the bike store, offering us the use of their pools, showers, and laundry. And to top it all off they served us a scrumptious supper.
(Whoever made the brownies with a layer of caramel inside... oooh, YUM!)
I first caught a ride to the bike store for some more tubes (grumble grumble) and then went off for a swim, shower + laundry at Roger + Deb's place
I knew both of them 18+ years ago when we were all at Redeemer. (I was a young employee) And it was a big surprise to see Roger there looking for cyclists to offer hospitality to.
And this is getting real long, so I think I actually will break it in two.
On Wednesday evening I was asked to read the "Prayer for the road" after Peloton.
At night, in our small groups, we always go over the section in the sea-to-sea "Shifting Gears" devotional concerning the next day. And at Peloton they always pick someone to read the prayer for the road part. As I was from London, an as we were going there the next day, Alida van Dijk asked me (in the middle of the ferry crossing!) if I would read the devotion that night.
She told me that we were allowed to editorialize a bit, if it isn't too long. When I looked over the prayer, I discovered that it had nothing at all to do with London, so I came up with the following -- with 15 minutes prep time before Peloton! Since I wrote it down in my notebook, I thought I'd post it here. And I tried to be honest and not polish it up any more... I do tend to write better than I speak, I think.
"The Prayer for the road says absolutely _nothing_ about London. So I thought I would share this little factoid. YES, London was named after London, England. It was so named by Govern Simcoe back in the late 1700s (as Pieter Pereboom, trivia history buff extraordinaire confirmed for me earlier.)
"He had the grand idea that London would become the capitol of Upper Canada, which seems rather silly in hindsight, as London is not on any of the Great Lakes, which was of course the main "highway" for travel and commerce overseas back then.
"Lond is a town of about 308,000 people ... if I remember correctly from all the training rides when I passed a city limit sign.
"Like much of this area, London is heavily dependent on the auto sector. As well, it is the home of many of our fellow cyclists here tonight.
"... and NO, London was never the capitol of Upper Canada, or Ontario, or anything."
more later...
No comments:
Post a Comment