Michael's Excellent Adventure

Day 23, 7-10-2002

Thames

Can you believe those Ontarians are cheeky enough to name their version of London's main river the Thames? I woke up to clear skies, pleasant 60-70 degree weather that lasted throughout the day, and a wind out of the northeast. Damn — that's exactly the direction I want to go in. Oh well. As has become my mantra on the trip, nothing to it but to do it.

I got the shit scared out of me on the arterials out of London. Ask any Ontarian about paved shoulders and he'll say, "what the hell is a paved shoulder, eh?" I finally did get on some back roads, where I stayed, to varying degrees, for the whole day, other than a stint on highway 3. Definitely a grind-it-out day, though the winds never got ridiculously bad, as they had in Dakota. I could still do the mileage, I just had to work a little harder at it. Eventually, the wind even shifted a little in my favor. I pulled into Niagara at around 7:00 PM, giving me, maybe 135 miles for the day.

Observations: It felt good to ride alone. I found my rhythm much more easily, and I could rest for exactly the length of time that I wanted to. Also, the Canadians have the cutest hieroglyphs on their road signs. Like the extremely detailed one of the ambulance rushing out onto the street to T-bone the inattentive cross traffic. Not quite as cool as the one in Portland of the cyclist doing the header in the trolley tracks, but the same general idea.