The King, in all his gold lamé suited glory in Quyon, Québec.
Friday, August 17, 2007
More Tidbits
The fact that I am a mouth breather is not only unfortunate for me in that it's rather inelegant, it's also inconvenient and unpleasant to be reminded of this bad habit by way of inhaling a sizable number of bugs on any given day. According to my dentist, my mouth breathing has to do with my historical atrocious overbite. Truthfully, I think I only fall back on mouth breathing when I sleep or when I exercise (I guess when I'm breathing deeply, then), so it's not like I'm Napoleon Dynamite or something. Or I hope I'm not. Bugs don't zing into my mouth at high speeds and hit my teeth with a faint thwack to notify me of my gaping maw when I'm, like, buying groceries or something, so perhaps I'm walking around slack jawed half the time without realizing it. When this trip first started, I used to pause to give my mouth a swish with water followed by a dainty spit after a bug flew in, but now I just swallow and keep going. Just goes to show you you can pretty much get used to anything. (Aside: Once when I was jogging, I had a BEE fly into my mouth and start crawling around my tongue and I had to stop dead in the sidewalk with my tongue sticking out and heavy ropes of drool hanging out of the corners of my mouth until the bee decided it was done exploring the surface of my tongue and flew away. For everyone's sake, let's hope that THAT never happens again.)
Speaking of the surprising things that one can become accustomed to, it didn't take long at all for our lives to rearrange themselves into a series of ironic new relativities. Okay, I totally made up that word. What I mean is, things we now accept as Normal Life are pretty darn ironic relative to Actual Normal Life. Here are some examples: On days when we do what we call a "Half Day" (it's become an official term for us), which amounts to doing between 50-75 kilometres or about three or four hours of riding, I find I end up admonishing myself not to get dessert or reminding myself to get salad instead of fries*. I've only had three and a half hours of vigorous exercise, after all, and I don't want to get crazy here. Of course, there was a time not that long ago where if I'd done a three hour workout, I would have heartily patted myself on the back before tying into a piece of cheesecake. "Oh, go on," I'd say smugly while my fork pushed its way through the cool, dense mass of cheese and sugar, "you've earned it."
Along with what we currently both consider to be inconsequential amounts of exercise, there's also the whole "Enh, you can only smell this shirt from four feet away, so it's good for another day" thing, the daily "This knife is dirty; I will wipe it...heeeeerrree on this patch of grass to clean it," and the classic "Ooooh! A grassy camp spot! What unimaginable luxury a night's sleep HERE will be!"
And now, an impromptu reader poll: Do you find this picture creepy?
Notice how the world behind me is all streaming and bent? Notice how there's blurry shapes superimposed over different parts of the shot? Yeah. We took that in the schoolhouse in Delia. The one we thought was haunted (before we knew how the pics turned out).
Anyway, just to prove that I'm not completely hysterical when it comes to sleeping in creepy old buildings, we ended up spending the night in another old one room schoolhouse in Dyment, Ontario and I slept like a log.** I also successfully managed to sleep in the old jail in Ottawa (now the HI hostel), even though it was once featured on "Haunted Canada" and, indeed, there's daily ghost tours with a guide telling a rapt group of people things I would force myself not to hear. Despite my best efforts not to give my avid imagination any more fodder than is naturally provided by a 145 year-old jail (that was closed down due to inhumane conditions), I was unable to avoid learning that the hostel used to have the eighth floor--the floor that used to be death row--open to guests. But too many times guests staying on this floor ran screaming down the stairs in the middle of the night, waking up and terrifying the entire building, because a man holding a bible sat on their bed, so the hostel eventually shut that floor down. This did not happen to us in our cell, thank GODDESS, because I would NOT survive if the ghost of Patrick Whelan sat on my bed.
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*Uh-oh. I think a ripple of anxiety has just gone through all the family members who read this. Believe me, I'm as healthy and strong as an ox right now. I pretty much mean that literally. I think me, my arse, and I could pull a plow up a hill right now.
**That is, AFTER I convinced myself that the fugitive who was on the loose in Ontario was not what was making the creaking noises on the deck. It did take a certain amount of Creak Analysis before I was able to reach that conclusion. Weirdly enough, when we spent the night in Portage du Fort in Quebec, it was just after they'd caught that same fugitive of whom I'd been scared in Dyment, five minutes from where we were staying.
Yup. Still Alive.
Ontario tried, but it didn't kill us. By "tried to kill us," I mean "threw us in front of speeding trucks." Literally. Ontario's homicidal tendencies towards cyclists could very well have gotten the better of us at any time, so you can go ahead and call us lucky or blessed or whatever else fits into your world view for having survived. We survived the province with absolutely no shoulders on its highways, highways that are populated almost exclusively by caravans of speeding semi-trailers, and highways to which there are no alternatives. There's just the one route, the Trans-Canada, so if things get dangerously busy or rough or generally begins to resemble a giant steaming loaf of crap, you gotta just keep going.
So, I guess you could say cycling in Ontario is a lot like life: When life dishes out a big steaming pile of crap, you gotta just be bold, mark out the space you need to keep going, and then inhabit that space with your held held high (and your left hand at the ready to flip the bird to people invading your little survival bubble, delivered along with a complementary daisy chain of obscenities of course).
Seriously, though. Cycling in Ontario is hella dangerous. It's quite simply a tightrope act of keeping your bike upright in a rough, all but non-existent shoulder on a very busy highway with a LOT of truck traffic. If you're planning a cycling tour for anywhere, don't go to Ontario. And if you're planning to cycle across Canada, get yourself a plan for Ontario. We cycled only at certain times of the day, packing it in shortly after 3:00 when the truck traffic really picked up. And, in the middle of it all, we had to throw in the towel and admit temporary defeat. We hit the reputedly worst and most dangerous stretch of highway (the 700 km ride around Lake Superior, from Thunder Bay to Sault Ste. Marie) right at the start ofDrunk Driving Fest 2007 the long weekend. In fact, coming into Thunder Bay the traffic was already getting out of control, and I was literally blown off the road three separate times by trucks that came too close to me. Literally a matter of a couple centimetres more and the trucks would have hit me. As much as we hated to do it, we had to admit that our timing was off with the long weekend and it was too dangerous to continue at that point, so we took the Greyhound to Sault Ste. Marie to where there's less truck traffic (most of it takes the northern route that branches off at Nippigon) and to wait out the long weekend in order for traffic to thin out some.
Anyway, there was little to no joy to be had with the cycling part of our day. It was noisy and stressful at best. We did very much enjoy the places we stopped, though. Lakes and rivers and forests and quiet evenings steeped in moonlight. And now we're done! We're in Ottawa and simply have to cross the bridge and we'll be in Quebec. In fact, we've been zig zagging back and forth between Quebec and Ontario for the last couple of days and it's been lovely, lovely riding along the Ottawa River and The Joy is back. Indeed, things are lookin' up!
Some quick housekeeping items, which funnily enough is all I meant this post to be until I heard the pleasing and comforting clack of my own typing (what can I say, writing is home to me): Kieran left the cell phone in a motel in Northern Ontario and it's now on a cellphone version of The Incredible Journey, trying to catch up to us, so we've not been getting any messages or texts y'all may have been sending and we're sorry about that; although it's likely only our parents who have noticed, we've not been able to upload photos since Manitoba, which is becoming something of a gathering crisis at the same time as being annoying, as we don't have another memory card for our camera (nor can we buy one since it's outdated technology or something), so we're sorry about that too for all the people who have boring office jobs for whom we've not been providing sufficient distraction; on a related note, I find I can't blog about various anecdotes and spaces and places without their accompanying photos to jog my memory and, hence, the radio silence these last few weeks. Coming soon, though.
Until then, love to all!
So, I guess you could say cycling in Ontario is a lot like life: When life dishes out a big steaming pile of crap, you gotta just be bold, mark out the space you need to keep going, and then inhabit that space with your held held high (and your left hand at the ready to flip the bird to people invading your little survival bubble, delivered along with a complementary daisy chain of obscenities of course).
Seriously, though. Cycling in Ontario is hella dangerous. It's quite simply a tightrope act of keeping your bike upright in a rough, all but non-existent shoulder on a very busy highway with a LOT of truck traffic. If you're planning a cycling tour for anywhere, don't go to Ontario. And if you're planning to cycle across Canada, get yourself a plan for Ontario. We cycled only at certain times of the day, packing it in shortly after 3:00 when the truck traffic really picked up. And, in the middle of it all, we had to throw in the towel and admit temporary defeat. We hit the reputedly worst and most dangerous stretch of highway (the 700 km ride around Lake Superior, from Thunder Bay to Sault Ste. Marie) right at the start of
Anyway, there was little to no joy to be had with the cycling part of our day. It was noisy and stressful at best. We did very much enjoy the places we stopped, though. Lakes and rivers and forests and quiet evenings steeped in moonlight. And now we're done! We're in Ottawa and simply have to cross the bridge and we'll be in Quebec. In fact, we've been zig zagging back and forth between Quebec and Ontario for the last couple of days and it's been lovely, lovely riding along the Ottawa River and The Joy is back. Indeed, things are lookin' up!
Some quick housekeeping items, which funnily enough is all I meant this post to be until I heard the pleasing and comforting clack of my own typing (what can I say, writing is home to me): Kieran left the cell phone in a motel in Northern Ontario and it's now on a cellphone version of The Incredible Journey, trying to catch up to us, so we've not been getting any messages or texts y'all may have been sending and we're sorry about that; although it's likely only our parents who have noticed, we've not been able to upload photos since Manitoba, which is becoming something of a gathering crisis at the same time as being annoying, as we don't have another memory card for our camera (nor can we buy one since it's outdated technology or something), so we're sorry about that too for all the people who have boring office jobs for whom we've not been providing sufficient distraction; on a related note, I find I can't blog about various anecdotes and spaces and places without their accompanying photos to jog my memory and, hence, the radio silence these last few weeks. Coming soon, though.
Until then, love to all!
You'll Be Glad This One Has No Accompanying Photo
While the girth, smoothness, texture and overall quality of the highways' shoulders changes from province to province, the detritus borne of thousands of passing cars--sometimes the only reminder that highways are, in fact, human landscapes--has remained both constant and consistent across the nation. Take a peek at the shoulder of the highway anywhere in Canada and you will find: Tim Hortons cups; brown plastic lids that have become disembodied from their Tim Hortons cups; empty beer bottles (great, so we're drinking and driving AND littering); small crescent shaped pieces of metal missing two bolts at the top (for the life of me I can't figure out what these pieces of metal are, but they are ubiquitous); empty water bottles sporting claims of various and sundry origins and pedigrees; the rubber shards that indicate a tire's violent death; and, yes, weirdly enough, dental floss (the kind that's threaded onto a little plastic pick with two points so that, presumably, you can floss with one hand while driving). Aside from the dental floss and the apparently disposable pieces of mystery metal, I could probably have predicted what Canadians are throwing out their car windows. With one other notable exception.
I noticed almost immediately, way back in BC, that people throw out a surprising number of half-finished bottles of apple juice. Sure, none of these bottles actually bore apple juice labels and were more often than not Pepsi or Coke bottles with faded, peeling labels. But what do I know? Hell, I even half-envisioned parents lovingly pouring apple juice into an old water bottle (in an effort to reduce and reuse even!) so that their toddler could have a drink on their long road trip (only to have their toddler throw the bottle out the window in a Terrible Twos fit of temper, or...something like that).
It took me until Ontario. And even then I didn't quite get to it on my own. No, I went and said it out loud: "You notice people throw out a lot of apple juice?" And Kieran's face got a kind of squirmy look and then, finally, I knew.
It's PEE. People are PEEING IN BOTTLES AND THROWING THEM OUT THE WINDOW.
Now, sure, it was ridiculous for me to labour for so long under my apple juice delusion, but where I come from, well, you just don't do that. No, where I come from, you pull over and scoot behind a bush to drop trow LIKE A CIVILIZED HUMAN BEING.
Have we not already taken things far enough? I mean, we've all but moved into our cars as it is: eating, and listening to music, and talking on the phone, and watching DVDs, and, apparently, flossing our teeth while we drive. Now we're reaching under the seat to find an old Diet Coke bottle to act as an impromptu toilet? And, uh, while you're, erm, using your Coke bottle,WHAT IF YOU HIT A BUMP?!?
I noticed almost immediately, way back in BC, that people throw out a surprising number of half-finished bottles of apple juice. Sure, none of these bottles actually bore apple juice labels and were more often than not Pepsi or Coke bottles with faded, peeling labels. But what do I know? Hell, I even half-envisioned parents lovingly pouring apple juice into an old water bottle (in an effort to reduce and reuse even!) so that their toddler could have a drink on their long road trip (only to have their toddler throw the bottle out the window in a Terrible Twos fit of temper, or...something like that).
It took me until Ontario. And even then I didn't quite get to it on my own. No, I went and said it out loud: "You notice people throw out a lot of apple juice?" And Kieran's face got a kind of squirmy look and then, finally, I knew.
It's PEE. People are PEEING IN BOTTLES AND THROWING THEM OUT THE WINDOW.
Now, sure, it was ridiculous for me to labour for so long under my apple juice delusion, but where I come from, well, you just don't do that. No, where I come from, you pull over and scoot behind a bush to drop trow LIKE A CIVILIZED HUMAN BEING.
Have we not already taken things far enough? I mean, we've all but moved into our cars as it is: eating, and listening to music, and talking on the phone, and watching DVDs, and, apparently, flossing our teeth while we drive. Now we're reaching under the seat to find an old Diet Coke bottle to act as an impromptu toilet? And, uh, while you're, erm, using your Coke bottle,WHAT IF YOU HIT A BUMP?!?
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