ride for africycle day eight (part two)

niagara falls, ontario to bronte creek provincial park, oakville

120 km (part two)

after leaving the relatively toasty warm confines of the church

that had graciously welcomed us into their foyer for recharging drinks and lunch,

we headed outside for a team shot.

this is me scarfing down something or other.

here's the team in front of the support bus.

you'll noice that it's still raining. oh yes, even with some small degree of divine intervention,

the weather gods didn't get it all together for us. oh well! lots more riding to enjoy today.

we rode through the outskirts of hamilton along a windy route that took us along service roads, through subdivisions and light industrial areas.

i recalled a long-ago journey from toronto to niagara falls which required me to follow a similar sort of route. it's not the most attractive and in cold rain becomes a bit of a slog.

but, the company was good and we were able to talk about books and films

while spitting out little bits of road grit and wiping the rain off our glasses.

riding through hamilton and burlington was actually really good because you get to follow a nice wide smooth paved bike/walk/rollerblade path.

because it was raining there was pretty much no one else on it.

the views out onto the lake were all in the grey scale.

and the views inland were pretty industrial

but even then there's something energizing about the experience of flying along on a bicycle with good people. here we are stopped near a map - we didn't really need the map but it made for interesting viewing as we parked another granola bar where it was needed.

i figure i must have eaten a few dozen granola bars in the course of the trip.

this was the only one that was accompanied by the taste of rain.

eventually we arrived at the end of the bike trail.

this was cause for another americano which astonishingly was available right across the road.

here we are sitting on rain-soaked chairs but the rain has stopped!!!

hurrayyyyyy!!

from this point we gathered up as a group as the local press were out taking pictures and getting interviews .

after the photo fly-bys we headed east towards oakville.

after riding along a street lined with beautiful huge old homes,

we turned north and made our way through a complex construction zone towards bronte creek provincial park.

you might recall that there had been some concern as to what this might be like given its proximity to major highways, suburbia etc., but really i was honestly and pleasantly surprised at how lovely it really was.

you really had no sense of what was around you.

here we are setting up, working on bikes, chilling out.

during the course of the evening we were visited by an extremely friendly raccoon.

i was eating my dinner when one of the women riders called out my name.

when i answered she pointed out that a raccoon was making its way under my chair and between my legs out to where the food was. hmmmmm.

it was this evening that i started feeling a little wistful about the trip ending.

being in oakville put us on familiar ground and i think that was reminding me that

really there were just two days of the adventure left.

ride for africycle day eight (part one)

niagara falls, ontario to bronte creek provincial park, oakville

120 km (part one)

in case you've forgotten what i look like,

here's an action pic taken at speed.

total concentration.

nothing escapes my eyes.

lots on the plate today - rain, rounding hamilton harbour and through burlington, press taking pics and doing interviews and then of course bronte creek provincial park advertised by bike buddy michael as "a potential gong show of a park" placed as it is squarely in the centre of suburbia surrounded by major expressways.

for now though we had the rain to contend with. there are those of you who would draw attention to the fact that until this point we had experienced mind-numbing and damaging heat and might be glad of rain.

for a little while we were glad of the rain.

it was a welcome change.

but the wind that came with it soon reduced many of us to shivering wrecks who craved warmth, dry clothes, fingers that weren't all pruny and especially warmth - did i say that twice? yep i did.

it was cold!

here we are in saint catherines standing in front of bike buddy michael's childhood home.

i wonder what the little boy version of michael would have thought had he looked out the window

and seen this motley crew of rain-soaked cyclists gathered for a pic?

we rode on through orchards of unripened fruit.

i was so hungry i thought i kept smelling fresh pastry being baked - can you have food hallucinations? -

until i checked with bike buddy ben who agreed that there was a distinct scent of pastry every so often.

man is there anything more tantalizing than the possibility of fruit pie when you're hungry?!

this is what you see when you look down on a rainy ride.

look up and you see a rooster tail of dirty road spray comin' right at ya.

here we are stopped at a little lookout near a hotel/restaurant in grimsby

that i knew from my childhood as "the lighthouse".

i think it burned down at some point.

we're busy snaffling back granola bars, fruitbars, whatever can get into our mouths quickly.

a little further on and we reaching a sort of breaking point as we looked for the africycle bus and our lunch when we came across bike buddy greta who had left the ride a few days earlier for personal reasons. there she was in a sweet mercedes convertible with a bag filled with dry towels and a special arrangement with a nearby church to take us in and allow us to warm up and dry off. cooler than cool! the church really did take us in and gave us coffee and allowed us to set up our lunch in their foyer and were amazingly accomodating.

big thanks to bike buddy greta!!!

here are some of us looking forlorn in the front of the church.

here's a close up of bike buddy dave's ankle bracelets (being made of

the dirt that accumulated at the top of his socks).

after a suitably long and healing break at the church, we set off for hamilton.

ride for africycle day seven (part two)

hamlin beach state park to shalamar campground, niagara falls, ontario 120 km + (part two)

from youngstown we rode along some really lovely bike paths that threaded together to get us closer to the border crossing at lewiston.

here we are riding along in happy time comfort by the side of a small road that connects youngstown to somewhere further up the river!

speaking of the niagara river, here it is just past the trees that line the bike path.

here we are flying along a road that bisects some of the distance between youngstown and lewiston.

a much happier space for cyclists looks like this sweet and curvalicious bike trail that we hooked up with.

getting to the other side of the niagara river is something of a challenge at the lewiston crossing. there are on ramps and off-ramps and freeways ending up at the border crossing itself and the whole thing's not really set up for bikes but where there's a will there's a way and we eventually wound up on the scorching hot concrete pad leading up to the little row of booths.

it was so hot under my feet that i had to keep lifting one off the ground to let the temperature drop and then do the same with the other foot!

i didn't take any pictures of this whole process because they (the border people) can do things to images and cameras that might upset the trade balance between the two countries, not to mention the import and export of undesirable elements (and maybe i'd be one of those!)

so here's a picture of the bridge we crossed into canada.

big thanks to the golden fish airborne recon team who rented a very tatty hang-glider and braved the windcurrents in the gorge to get this sweet pic for me.

we walked our bikes one at a time through customs, handing over our passports getting them scanned and then off to say goodbye to bike buddy linda who was headed home from there and off down the escarpment at breakneck speed - bike buddy ben scored 70+ clicks while i settled for a demure 62 clicks down the escarpment. a very brief ride down part of the niagara parkway,

a sharp left and we were at our destination for the night being shalamar campground.

after setting up camp, we managed three intense volleyball games (which my team bravely let the team led by bike buddy mike take in a hotly contested and epic series of volleys).

today i put back twelve bottles of water.

they all evaporated off my body.

these are the google map directions from hamlin beach state park to shalamar campground.

tomorrow we head off to bronte creek campground in oakville.