Day 45: O Canada!

Today’s ride was possibly one of the best of the trip solely for the fact that we only biked 3 miles before immediately leaving Michigan. Goodbye land of bumpy unpaved roads and no bathrooms. Hello Canada!! 

Our morning started by waking up to rain on our tents. Usually a harbinger of doom for our day but luckily it stopped raining exactly when we had to leave our tents. It’s like the world wanted us to leave Michigan just as much as we did. We also met another biker as we were getting our bikes ready and found out he was on the last day of his trip! It’s crazy how close we are to finishing this adventure. The tentative date for finishing is the 26th but Dustin’s cracking the whip so we might be home even earlier than that!

We had camped right on the border so one of the first things we did was cross the river via ferry. Our last ferry ride cost us $130 so we were incredibly excited when this one only cost us $3! On the other side of the river we were immediately greeted by possibly the most relaxed border patrol ever. Maybe it was because it was a Monday morning, maybe they just didn’t care much about some bikers. Either way, they barely checked our passports before waving us through to start the day.

Initial impressions of Canada: 

- Incredible 

- Way better than Michigan

- The roads are fantastic 

- The people are so nice

We biked about 10 miles before stopping for breakfast for Pat and Leo at a convenience store. There were some cinnamon rolls and Taco Bell that everyone ate as well as a man in the store who was very angry about the lottery that we were convinced was an NPC. The day continued for another easy 30 miles before we stopped at a diner in Bothwell. When Dustin was telling us that we were stopping we couldn’t hear him over the wind and thought he said we were stopping at the Brothel so we were very confused, but Dustin had the GPS and where he goes we go. A surprising part about today was that we found out Julia, the big coffee drinker out of the three of us, had never heard of Tim Hortons. She has been to Canada before too which is the most confusing part because you can’t go 10 feet without finding one on a street corner. They essentially have a monopoly on coffee out here and while we didn’t get any today we will have her try some before leaving Canada. 

The second 40 miles of the day was considerably worse due to the fact that Dustin decided to go as fast as possible for the first 28 miles of it. He went so fast that Leo nearly puked and Julia cried. His only response? “Yeah I actually had to start breathing through my mouth.” Dispicable. By popular vote, we forced Dustin to slow down the last 12 miles so it was a much more relaxed pace and we still got to our warm showers with time for showers and dinner. When I was unpacking my bag though I found the unfortunate surprise that the peanut butter I’ve been hauling since Washington decided today was the day and exploded all over my pannier. So while everyone else was showering and getting to know our hosts Paul and Mahiko, I was scrubbing away at all my gear hoping that the smell doesn’t attract any Racoons in the future and they make off with my bags just like they did Julia’s. It was all made better with the fantastic dinner of Japanese Curry and apple and coconut pie. One of the best meals of the trip and it makes us miss home-cooked food even more!

Tomorrow we have a big tailwind and are hoping for at a minimum, 102 miles which will put us within 30 miles of Niagara Falls! If we are still feeling good we will continue on even past that to the falls themselves but that might be counting our chickens before they hatch. Tune in tomorrow to see how we do it!

Photo Dump:

The quote today is just the wordless scream Julia gave Dustin when he started going too fast and the speaker was moving out of range