Oh Canada!

07/16/09 - I’m sitting here listening to the locals speak Canadian. Today was a pretty leisurely day for us, we only covered about 55 miles, not because we’re wusses, but because we wanted to have a reasonable place to sleep. What I mean by that is that we had the option of staying in a nice campground just north of Fort Eerie Canada, or pushing on and staying somewhere in Buffalo. If you’ve ever been to Buffalo, you know what I mean. So we are here at the Riverside Campground, which was kind of expensive, but they have a laundry facility and we washed all of our clothes for the first time in a while with a washing machine and everything. We smell good. Now tomorrow we can power through Buffalo early, while we’re fresh and find someplace nice to sleep on the other side. Plus we got to rest a little because we had a relatively short day. Marc took a nap and I laid out on a lawn chair by the pool while I waited for our laundry to finish. Two Quebecois ladies just came in the laundry room where I’m writing this and, evidently, put a basketball or something in the dryer and left. It sounds like it wants to get out, badly. Anyway, it was relaxing, except that we had a kind of budget dinner because we don’t really have anything good left to eat and there is no grocery store near here. We met two cyclists today though, and had some good conversations with both of them. The first was a guy from Quebec City named J.D. (Jean something, no doubt) who has been on the road for 20 days so far of a planned year-long tour to…Alabama. Sort of. His first destination is Alabama, for reasons he could not articulate to us, but eventually he is headed for Argentina. We rode about ten miles or so with him this afternoon and he shared some really good bread that someone had given him. He is on tight budget of $20 a day, and consequently he is camping for free by knocking on people’s doors and asking if he can set up his tent in their back yard. It sounds crazy, I know, but he says it has worked every night so far. I don’t think I can do that. The next cyclist we met is camped in the site next door and he has been riding from San Francisco to Portland Maine following the same route as us, but in reverse obviously. He gave us some good insight and we had a nice long chat over dinner, as he came and joined us. The woman across the road from us, Jessica, brought us over some leftover taco salad and it was especially delicious. She has a three year old son named Aidan and he is a handful. She also has a husband named Al, and he is a meathead and not much help at all. I felt sorry for her. I happen to have a two year old friend named Aidan, and he really isn’t a handful, comparatively. I was thinking of him the other day when I was looking for a snack in a convenience store and I spied the Nilla Cakesters. I know Aidan likes the Cakesters. J.D. the French Canadian cyclist was riding a bike by the name of Falardeau or something like that. It was a funny word, I kept saying it over and over the whole time we were riding together.

We took the obligatory photos at Niagara Falls today, which we have both seen before, and while we were there I couldn’t help wondering why anyone would actually vacation there. I can see stopping and looking at it if your are passing through, the Horseshoe Falls is pretty spectacular, but the whole area is so tacky and commercial and grossly commercialized. Seriously, people can’t think of anything better than that for a vacation? It’s not even as if it’s particularly natural, it has all kinds of stuff built all over it and a hydroelectric dam and everything. Whatever. People keep coming in here and looking at me like I’m the one responsible for whatever large, heavy, hard object those ladies put in that poor dryer. It’s not me man, I’m just trying to steal some electricity and write in my journal. I came here on a bike, I don’t even have anything matching that description.

I’m having some issues with my pedals. You may recall that I purchased new pedals yesterday because my left pedal had worn out bearings and was making a clicking sound. Well, today, my left pedal started exhibiting signs of worn out bearings and began making that same clicking sound. They only have 100 miles on them, how can the bearings be worn out? Here’s the thing: that clicking may be innocuous enough on a typical ride. But I now have to listen to that incessant clicking for the next 500 miles. On every pedal stroke. I’m not sure what will happen but I’m not buying another set of pedals, I know that. It is a complete mystery to me how this could happen. I could see if it happened once, I’d chalk it up to defective materials or improper assembly, but for it to happen twice, I just don’t get it. The only thing I can think of is that maybe my crank is bent and causing the pedal to load in a way that the bearings weren’t designed for, but I can’t imagine how a crank could get bent either. Any ideas, anyone?

I’m up past my bedtime tonight. I guess because I had such an easy day I’m not as tired as I have been. Today is day seven and that means that the trip is half over, one way or another. We have to be where we’re going by the 25th, so we are done, essentially, on the 24th wherever we might be by then. Hopefully it’s Freeland. Seven days and we haven’t had to sleep inside yet. How long can we keep the streak alive?