Saturday, August 27, 2011

Day Two: Presqu'ile to Kingston

When you reach the advanced age I've attained, a night on the ground in a tent necessitates something of an acceptance of pain or at the very least, discomfort. But that quickly disappeared as I woke up and remembered where I was,

why I was there, and who I was with!


The weather for today was expected to be on the gently moist side, so after breakfast, we set off along the bike path out of Presqu'ile


to hook up with Hwy. 2 headed for Kingston. There were smiles everywhere and lots of quiet early morning talk and beautiful rural scenes helped the kilometres go by.

This is Stephen VanDerHerberg who joined us for the two day ride.
We're hoping that he can join us for the full ride in 2012!

The drifting rain eventually stopped and we dried out as we rode.

The stops along the way are almost as important to the ride as the cycling itself. On this day there were two key stops. The first was at this fruit and vegetable shop where superb homemade donuts are sold in paper bags to people who honestly think that six is all they'll need!


The next stop was at the incomparable Bloomfield Bicycle Company. For those of you familiar with "The Hobbit" it draws a close comparison to Rivendell in its fantastic almost magical qualities.
Here are the Ride for Africycle bikes all gathered together on B.B.C.'s cool rack.


After a nice chat with the owners and a guy cycling from Calgary to Montreal, Ed set a new local record for the most graceful flattening of a bike display by selecting the key bike in a row of bikes and sending eleven others that were somehow linked together, in a slow-mo tumble to the turf!!

After reassembling the display, we headed out of Bloomfield to catch the Glenora ferry that would carry us across the Bay of Quinte. We were super happy to find that lunch was waiting on the other side, nicely set-up inside the RFA Hospitality Tent by Dave, Ben and Jerrett.

Without getting too graphic, by this point my butt had developed a problem known by many terms - "Monkey Butt", "Rider's Rash", etc. etc. It's an exquisite sort of pain (if you're into pain and I'm not really), comprised of thousands of red-hot needles stabbing into the fleshier portion of the butt area. The solution is simple - chamois cream. The timeline is undetermined as far as when the relief begins. Much to the delight of my fellow cyclists, I shared the process of repair and the suffering in detail.

After Lunch we rode along County Road 33, a beautiful stretch of road that is locally named The Loyalist Parkway

.

and before long we were riding past the beautiful limestone buildings that Kingston is famous for while working our way towards our evening accomodations at The Next Church who had graciously offered to have us back again!

An awesome dinner of the most incredible beef stew was followed by some quiet time and then we headed out to enjoy a little bit of Kingston night-life. My set-up: a church pew, a copy of The Rider, a beer, and a container
of Pringles.


Tomorrow we take the ferry from Kingston to Cape Vincent, NY, USA!

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