Jackie, good luck on your ride. You'll be fine -- look forward to the fotos and tall tales. Safe riding, and enjoy.
Not quite so dramatic, here's a story of an easy-going shakedown cruise from a month ago. (Too many complicated excuses to explain the delay in posting this, so I won't even try.)
Here’s my short report on a week’s riding in Eastern Ontario in mid-June, a shakedown cruise for Osi, my Raven built this past spring. I rode about 280 kms south and west from Ottawa to Prince Edward County, the “Isle of Quinte”, an almost-island in the north-eastern corner of Lake Ontario, joined to the mainland by a skinny neck of land on its northwest corner.
“The County” and I go back a ways. I grew up in rural Ontario about 35 kms west of there, and regularly visited when I was young – I often rode my motorcycle through the area when I was studying in Kingston, 50 kms to the east, where Lake Ontario eases into the St Lawrence. The County was known for its quaint and defiantly British quality—it had been settled by United Empire Loyalists (as they became known), refugees on the losing side of The Prolonged Unpleasantness Next Door between 1776 and 1783—and even in the 1960’s, people used to fly the Union Jack as the default mode. Unkind wags used to advise would-be visitors to turn their clocks back thirty years when they got there.
But it’s a very attractive “island”, with lots of sunshine, water all around, gently rolling farmland, and some spectacular sand dunes, of all things, along the western edge. The farms have long been fruit and vegetable producers, and in the last couple of decades, the sandy soils and sunshine have generated a flourishing wine industry. And, the County’s charms have been discovered by retirees from Toronto and other urban centres. So, there’s been a lot of investment in B & Bs, artists and artisans have set up, and there’s some A-grade food available, as well as quality local beer, cider and cheeses. It’s also become well-known for gentle recreational cycling – easy terrain, not too much traffic, lots of back roads, decent weather, and lots of reasons to stop and eat, and load up on wine to take back to your campsite, B & B, whatever.
So I arranged to meet some friends, also cyclists, from New York City, in the wee village of Bloomfield. Bloomfield is pretty much in the centre of the island, and I reckon would easily fit within Central Park. My friends would drive N & W for 8 or 9 hours, I’d ride S & W for three days, we’d spend a few days doing some easy day rides around the County, and my wife would drive down from Ottawa at the end of the week to join us for a few days.
It all pretty much worked out that way. I had good riding weather (my tarp kept me 'n' Osi nicely dry during a monster rain-and-windstorm on the 2nd night of my ride), my friends found Bloomfield with no difficulty, we ate and drank fabulously well, and our wandering Manhattanites were entranced by this odd little corner of rural Ontario, and especially the food.
Oh yes, my shakedown cruise. I did three days of easy distances, 80 kms on Monday June 16 to Merrickville, a pretty village due south of Ottawa. On the second day I did about 105 kms S & W of Merrickville, stopping just north of Kingston, and on the third day I rode west along the north shore of Lake Ontario, from Kingston to the County, again about 100-plus kms. My route for the first two days pretty much followed the Rideau Canal, the 200 km-long system of lakes, rivers, locks, and constructed canals which joins Ottawa and Kingston. This is a treasure—built by Irish and French-Canadian labourers under the command of British Army engineers between 1826 and 1832, it includes 49 locks, constructed with simple tools across hard terrain in appalling working conditions. It original purpose was military, to enable the British to move troops from Lake Ontario to Montreal without being exposed to cannon fire from the U.S., following The Renewed Unpleasantness between 1812 and 1814. Its commercial life lasted only a few decades, until the coming of the railways later in the 19th century. Now, it’s used for recreational boating.
The canal offers one of the world’s great camping bargains: show up in a boat, on foot, or on a bicycle, and you can camp for $5. Or, if you arrive after the lockmaster’s office has closed—as I did—you can camp for free. “Wild camping,” it ain’t, nor “stealth”; but it’s beautiful, and it’s cheap-to-free. And often, there’s good food and drink to be had nearby, in places like Merrickville, for example.
Osi managed everything with no fuss at all. Only the second day offered any difficulty: 100-plus kms of steady and tiring up-and-down across a spur of the Canadian Shield, beautiful as ever, especially in the green of early summer, but a sustained stiff headwind.
The Raven is a very comfortable bike to ride. This was my first prolonged encounter with larger tires, and the 1.6” Supremes were outstanding, especially in soaking up road buzz. (I used about 45-50 psi in the front, and 50-55 in the rear.) The Rohloff performed as advertised—no shifting problems at all. I did find that, after the first 500 kms (total), towards the end of my ride, that the cables had stretched slightly, so I adjusted those when I got home, and that made the shifting more positive. (Things had become loose enough that I wasn’t engaging my lowest gear – though it was a good sign that 13 were enough, riding with a camping load through hilly terrain. #1 reappeared after my adjustments.) The V-brakes (with Koolstop dual compound pads) are well modulated and have plenty of power, certainly by comparison with my Avid cantilever brakes on my Eclipse derailleur bike. The Thorn frame was steady and reassuring under all the conditions I met, including an unplanned ride over a 6 – 8 cm tree branch along the roadside. My raised handlebars (clamp above the nose of my saddle) proved to be very comfortable on the 2nd day, when I spent 60-70% of the time on the drops.
Here’s a collection of photographs taken along the way, with captions & more or less in sequence:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/e6guj05ceco6imw/AADgFJpjPQ6uirUNkRcBA4ffa Of course there were chance meetings, enjoyable conversations, and unexpected delights along the way:
? While I was camped at Merrickville, a fellow wandered by and asked about my bike. He had ridden across the U.S. with his daughter a few years ago, and was thinking about getting back into cycle-touring. But, he had a project to complete first. He was from Boston, and was just getting into an extraordinary safari by boat: he’d sailed to NYC, up the Hudson through Lake Champlain to the St Lawrence, west up the Ottawa River from Montreal to Ottawa, and was heading south to Kingston. From there he’d go west to the Trent-Severn canal system that runs NW from Lake Ontario across Central Ontario to Georgian Bay & Lake Huron. From there, he’d go through The Soo to Lake Michigan, south to Chicago, through the Chicago Canal to the Mississippi, south to Nawlins, then east along the Gulf Coast, around Florida, and up the coast and home to Boston. This would take him a year, he reckoned. He and his buddy had—wait for it—a handy tool for the job, a 34-ft power catamaran with 17 feet of beam and twin 75-hp diesel engines. Jesus, Mary and Joseph!!
? Eating lunch under a shady tree in the little village of Bath, en route to the County, I waved to a guy with a trailer behind his Trek hybrid. He was from Luxembourg, heading west from Montreal to Niagara Falls, then back again via friends in Toronto, with a view to cycling through eastern Québec to the Gulf of St Lawrence, including the Gaspé peninsula. An ambitious trip, and a good intro to eastern Canada, for sure, though the hills along the Gaspé would be a handful. But, he was young enough—40-ish—and had done plenty of cycling in France and Spain. We shared a grumble about the cost of campgrounds in Ontario, so I recommended he try the locks along the Rideau Canal if his route took him to Ottawa.
? On “the island”, riding with my friends, we found some A-grade cafés and wineries, one of which had just built a large outdoor sculpture gallery, due to open on June 21st, mid-summer’s day. We made a couple of visits, and some of the sculptures—imaginative, beautiful, slightly bizarre—appear in the photos in the link. We also found a new small cheese factory, specializing in goats’-milk cheeses. I have a deep sympathy for cheese factories and their products—there was one in the village nearby to our farm, all those years ago, and Ontario used to have hundreds of them, but the multinationals have gobbled them up one by one. So, a new one is worth celebrating; and this one sold the best goats’-milk brie I’ve ever eaten (with nettles added!), better than any from west Québec. (Colonial that I am, I can’t speak for the variants from France –- but this was better than any cows’-milk French brie that I’ve found here.)
? We stayed in a very good B & B, not too pricey, and just up the street was – a well-established bike shop! Bloomfield Bicycle Company managed to be busy and laid-back at the same time. I remarked that they seemed to be enjoying good business, sales and rentals. One of the mechanics reckoned that “Cycling is the new golf.” Not sure I want to go there … but hey! If it keeps another bike shop open & thriving, why not?
Worth another visit, for sure.
