Jul 15 - travels

Back at the hotel around 8pm, I'd chatted with John and some of the other riders and set about packing my bike.  It does get faster as I've now done this enough times.  Does it get easier ?  I'm not sure.  I did all the packing in the meeting room that had all the bike boxes stored in it, which was easier than hauling everything upstairs and then back down again !

I then got some sleep, which was nice, but of course I had an early pickup - 3:10 a.m. - for the ride to the airport.  4:20 at the airport, naturally Air Canada wasn't open yet since my flight wasn't until 7:40.  I found a Cariboo Coffee location and had a cappuccino.  Once A/C opened at 5am, I was checked in and then took advantage of being randomly selected as TSA PRE, and used the no-one-in-queue service vs the humongous queue. 

There were a few things open past security but I waited for a sit-down restaurant and had an omelet with all the fixings.  A little later I had a chicken ceasar salad at a take-out location, thought about buying two so that I'd have one for the flight, but didn't.  As it turned out, the cheese & fruit plate on the flight was better value than the take out salad !

I slept the entire flight, naturally, getting that sleep that I'd have had without the trip to the airport.  All told, I had a full night's sleep, but in two parts.

Things went pretty smoothly in Toronto; didn't take long to get through immigration and by the time I got to the baggage carousel, my bags were circling - about the first ones out.  The shuttle from the hotel was quick and I hit the road.

Heading north on Airport and west on Derry to the 407 was the way to go - no delays - and soon I was on the 400 to Barrie and stopped in traffic.  Apparently there was a car fire north of 89 and they'd closed two out of three lanes.  I called ahead to see if they would meet me at a park-n-ride and Aaron suggested the Onroute.  That was perfect because they can be on the non-highway side of the barriers and I'm on the fast lanes, so to speak.

Lauren and Lauren boarded and we were on our way, stopping in Parry Sound (Sobey's, fuel, Starbucks) and got to the cottage at 7:10 pm.

3:10 a.m. MDT to 7:10 p.m. EDT = 14 hours, could be better and could  be worse.

My back is sore.  The muscles on the right side are tight, hard, easy to feel the difference.

I didn't bother to unpack the car until this morning, have been doing laundry and bike assembly.  There don't seem to be any issues with the bike but I did check the chain and it was a waste bringing that back !.  Maybe I should just throw away the chain after every one of these rides ... I seem to go through more chains than tires !

Onward !