Jun 2-4 - Never Again

Those were my words last year - never again - never again would I run a group up Eagle Lake / Riding Ranch / King Lake / Rye Road, that route from South River to highway 522.  And yet, here we were on our way again.

The rain was supposed to have moved through before we started riding on the 2nd, but it hadn't.  We had a short break as we rode from the hotel to the ride starting point and then, just at 5am, our official start time, the rain re-started in earnest.  Oh well, c'est la vie !  This is randonneuring, after all !

It's about 40 kms to Orillia and by then the rain had stopped and it stayed dry for the ensuing days.  We stopped at the Tim's on the way out of town, took off some clothing as the sun was then up and the rain had stopped, warmed up with some coffee and hit the road again.  Our next stop was the Summerland General Store; more coffee, more clothing packed away.

At that stop we met up with a rider from Manitoba who was riding to Newfoundland.  Heavily loaded - estimated 130 pounds bike and gear - he was doing amazingly well as we rode off together chatting.  I should have taken a picture of his bike, panniers front and back.  I do wonder about handling as I've never tried riding something like that (nor do I really want to !).

The next stop was Bracebridge and a real breakfast.  We hit the same place as last year.  It wasn't as busy as this was a Thursday vs Saturday.  Sure enough, before our orders arrived, the Manitoba rider joined us.  Jerzy was anxious to keep rolling but I convinced him to sit down.  That became the story for the rest of the ride -- Jerzy always wanting to get moving, often grumpy but, in the end, accepting the riding style that this ride would take. 

Before our next Control, Sprucedale, we lost Henk.  I was sure that he was ahead; Jerzy and Martin were sure that he was behind.  Before we left that Control, he showed up -- he'd had a flat and we had passed him on a big downhill, not seeing him.  

Continuing north, eventually we got to South River where we would depart good roads.  SR is the last civilization that we'd see before we arrived at our cottage.  We'd had a good tail-wind most of the day but that wind was shifting to the west.  We hoped that it would calm down before we had to go west along 522, and it did.

I called Sandy to tell her that we were running about the same time as last year, even though we'd left Barrie an hour earlier.  Last year we arrived at the cottage around 1:30 a.m.; I estimated 1am for this year.  It's not that we were riding slowly, rather we'd accumulated lots and lots of stopped time. 

I had checked out our logging road the week before, by car, and it looked a little better than last year.  However, they'd had a good hundred belly-dumps of gravel in between without grading and at times that soft gravel was 8-10" deep in the centre of the road.  Riding the edges worked most of the time, but not always.  15 kms of gravel; the worst part being 5kms; takes a long time.  Two logging trucks blocked the way at one point and we had to walk our bikes between them. 

It only took a second at any given stop for the mosquitoes to surround you.  We frequently had to stop and walk a few steps due to the depth of that gravel.  While you were riding, that cloud followed, biting your backside and legs.  We each had our own cloud.  Unlike last year, we were fairly close together getting to 522, the lead riders only a minute ahead.  We still had a little daylight left; I was encouraged.

Rolling on, within seconds Henk had another flat.  This was his third.  He had already discarded one tire that was wrecked.  We booted this tire and rolled on.

We'd gradually developed a riding pattern - Henk and Jerzy out front; Martin and me in the middle; David and Bob bringing up the rear.  David, on his fixie, was faster up the hills than Bob, who was faster downhill.  Riding a true fixie, David could only go downhill as fast as he could pedal -- there's no coasting with a true fixie. 

We regrouped at Arnstein, Henk, Jerzy and Martin sitting on the porch of the post office.  Rolling on together, we regrouped again at Osprey Road and arrived at the cottage around 12:30 a.m.  Hey, we beat my estimated timing !

Just before Osprey Road, Henk's rear derailleur cable broke.  He had wanted to replace the cable at South River but somewhere in the midst of those flats he had lost his spare cable.  I was surprised to find that I didn't have one ... I need to check my tools and spares before heading to Seattle.

So ... down to the basement we went, bringing in his bike and mine, while the others went inside upstairs.  Leaving his bike for now, we showered, some had beer, and the Costco Lasagna was again a hit.  Showers, libation and food changed everyone's mood.  David and Jerzy looked particularly dark, coming in, but that changed as we sat around the kitchen island.

Back to the basement, we got Henk's bike up on the repair stand and replaced that cable.  Luckily cables can be replaced on the Shimano 6700 shifters, unlike the 7800's that I was riding on the Rocky Mountain 1200k four years ago.  He was soon ready to roll again.

I then fiddled with my bike, trying to find the source of an annoying creak that had steadily been getting worse.  At first I'd thought that it was the S&S couplers, but they were tight.  Everything else looked ok.  It almost seemed that I had a saddle problem, as it creaked while sitting, on the left leg downward stroke.  It didn't creak when I was standing, nor did it creak when I was pressing hard, more so as I was pedaling easy.

On the repair stand or on the bike in the doorway, I couldn't reproduce the issue.  Somewhat worried but pretty sure that I didn't have something that would fail catastrophically, I went back upstairs to get some sleep.  Sleep ?  Do we call 45 minutes sleep ?  Everyone else got a least 1.5 hours.

Sandy did an amazing job setting up and serving.  I got up early to make coffee and prep breakfast.  I gave the guys a 3:15 a.m. wake-up call and we were rolling again just after 4am. 

My creaking, that had gotten gradually worse the prior day, had returned.  However, I noticed by the time we got to the gas station at Bing Inlet for a coffee warm-up, that it had almost disappeared.  It never reappeared.  I'm convinced that it's just the seatpost. creaking in the seat-tube. 

Jerzy had a flat at that gas station and he fixed it while we warmed up.  Once the tire was inflated, it was obvious that he had a sidewall cut that might not hold.  I convinced him to roll on anyway and when we got to Point au Baril, he booted the tire.

PaB has quite a good deli and I had a bowl of chili; Henk beef stew, others breakfast sandwiches etc.  Jerzy came in and had a muffin or something, not wanting to take any more time.  We agreed on when we needed to leave PaB to have enough margin for the Parry Sound control and we stuck to that schedule.  That became the order of the day, planning each leg's timing.  I had a lot of chili this past week -- Tim's chili and now PaB.  It's quite sustaining and mostly in keeping with a lower carb diet.

Onward ... again with a tail-wind -- how lucky can we get ?  We made the Subway at the Parry Sound mall in good time; next stop Bala, then that Tim's in Orillia and our ride finish at Hawkestone at 8:23 p.m.  From Hawkestone we still had to ride to our cars in Barrie and I got to the Comfort Inn around 9:40.  For each planned stop, we agreed upon an arrival and departure time.  It worked out well for all but Jerzy, who wanted to pace-line and get it over with.  That would have meant leaving David and Bob behind, and possibly me !.  We all agreed that we didn't care when we finished, as long as we finished (vs DNF) ... all of us, that is, except for Jerzy. 

I had spelled out in detail what the roads were like and how we would run the ride Audax style, regrouping at Controls.  I don't think that he really read or understood the emails and certainly didn't think that he'd be forced to wait for others.  He wasn't setup to navigate the route and would have been lost without a fellow rider, so he had no choice. 

In Bala, I had two wonderful cappuccino's at the Coke memorabilia store, a really neat place.  That corrected a sleepiness problem that I'd developed.  From there, we soon turn onto Southwood, about 35 kms of rolling terrain through the Torrance Barrens.  I love that road, but it does go on.  When we got to the swing bridge at Cannery and the little general store there, I checked Bob's Road ID link and saw that they weren't very far behind us. 

Our final re-grouping was at the Orillia Tim's.  We shared congrats, I collected the brevet cards, and we rode the next sub-20 kms together to Hawkestone.  I announced the time and will update all the cards.  We rode off separately to Barrie, each at our own speed. 

At the Comfort Inn, I saw Henk who was just pulling out.  Getting changed, I chatted with David and Bob who had just arrived and then I too set out.  The Subway fellow at Anne and Dupont asked me if I wanted another salad -- yikes -- and I said yes.  It was around 10:30 that I pulled out of Barrie and then pulled off at Mount St. Louis Road, into the parking lot, for a short nap.  Well, it wasn't short.  I woke up about 2.5 hours later and hit the road again, stopping at the Parry Sound service center for fuel and coffee and getting to the cottage about 4:10 a.m.

I hit the couch, sleeping until 7:30 when Sandy got up with Cassie.  Later on I would sleep most of the afternoon away.  It was a beautiful day and I did play with Cassie; she's happy to have Dad home again !

Tarini's pickerel for dinner, popcorn - as much a treat for Cassie as anything else - a little TV - and I was back to bed a little after 9pm. 

With so much sleep disruption, I was up before 4am but that's more-or-less normal anyway.  It's raining outside.  That's ok, I had no intention of going for a ride !!!

Onward !