Today: 116 km

To date: 1,043 km

To go: 757 km

Oh hills.  Lots and lots of hills.  More cumulative climbing today than any day I rode in BC – more than climbing through the Rocky Mountains!  And it was an overall rough day mentally too – I almost crashed…. 4 times? Almost ran over Alex once…..

My problem was that the hills were really steep grades and I kept having troubles getting out of my clipped in shoes.  That is why at the top of the first really long hill when I rode over to have a break with Alex, my tired shaky legs could not clip out – I think Alex could see the panic in my face and got out of my way.  I managed to avoid crashing but was shaky for a whole new reason – my brush with death!  Twice my chain fell off, almost causing me to crash again as I struggled to get free in time to stop myself from falling.  The final time was at the very end of the day and again I was riding up to meet Alex and could not get out – this time Alex caught me as I started to go over.  Curses.

I was having some troubled with my disc brakes – from overuse of course – because I hate getting going too fast when it is steep, or I cannot tell the condition of the road.  I kept on having to dial the discs in and out to stop them from rubbing, and at one point they got to the point where metal was rubbing on metal.  I made a couple of adjustments and it was…. getting by.  I complained to Alex about my brakes a few times and was touched to see him waiting for me at a section of road with a 15% decline.  We had never seen anything this steep – and he wanted to be sure my brakes worked.

At the end of the day, exhausted with rain pouring down, a kind man let us take refuge in his garage for a little bit, and another man offered to let us camp on his lawn.  For the first time in months, I really wanted a motel room, so we politely declined.  We met one more nice gentleman who wanted to practice his English, so he and I attempted a conversation half in English and half in French – neither of us doing a very good job.  We bid him “Au revoir” and rode out into the rain.

A few short hills later we found a motel, devoured our grocery store dinner and watched a movie on my laptop – pure luxury!!

Alex’s pic heading down into a town

!5%! Alex stopped here to make sure my brakes were working properly! Thanks :)

Winding road up

Categories: Across Canada, Biking, Quebec

Tags: Cycling, Quebec, Touring