Beginning Week 2: Sunday: Ancaster to Wednesday: Kingston

August 11, Sunday

Ancaster / Redeemer University                              

Awake at 5:20 but go back to sleep until 5:50.  The morning is quiet. The worship service is at 3 at Redeemer – good service and a full auditorium.

 Tomorrow’s ride will be about 80 miles to and through Toronto.  Unlike all of our days so far which have all had many rural miles tomorrow's ride will be entirely through densely populated areas so I expect the ride will be much slower and complicated, but surely interesting.  

August 12, Monday

83.6 miles Ancaster / Redeemer University to Ajax, ON                

Awake at 5:30, up at 5:45. Leave at 6:55 with a t-shirt under my jersey and arm warmers – felt good.    Head down the escarpment and through a range of local neighborhood streets, across the bay, and towards Toronto – or, as the locals pronounce it, dropping a few of the consonants:  “Tra-no”    I ride with a group of three new local weekly rider, which is really handy because all of the street signs are in Canadian, but around mile 25 I stop off for coffee and an Canadian maple doughnut at Tim Hortons.

  Inexplicably when I leave, about a quarter of a mile down the street I am asked “Where is your helmet?”  I had left it at Tim Horton’s!  I rode back and put it on.  I also had my first fall while on the the bike.  While on the lakefront trail into Toronto I stopped to look at a trail map and I clicked out of my right shoe as I always do, but somehow I leaned left and went down on the pavement as I stopped – the only result was a bloodied left knee. Between the helmet and the fall I’m not feeling very sharp, but the weekend rest has well restored my legs and the 80+ miles today come quite easily – that, and the ride is fairly level.   Downtown Toronto had a lot of road, path and surface construction.  A lot of stopping and even needing to walk our bikes.

   Several times during the day churches had supplemental sag stops: one place had a couple of homes open for bathrooms, and another church group had really good ice cream bars/cones for us along the beach trail.  I talk to several people about S2S today including a couple of Ghanaian men in front of a bar, a guy at Tim Hortons, and an off-duty Toronto policeman along the road, and a guy at the camp in Ajax.   Finish the ride at 3:20 at the Ajax Community Center.   Still no phone service, and no internet here at the community center.

But wonderfully enough the train track were less than a mile away -- only a couple of minutes by bike:

   A couple of final notes:  This site has us all tenting on a barely but sufficiently large field and we are close to both the gear and food trucks, but the bathrooms and showers in the community center are a 5 minute walk.  But we are also right next to a skate park and several soccer fields which are open with full lighting and have league games (including refs with whistles) with until 11 pm.   Also along our ride today a young Swedish couple who are riding their bikes around the world (2 years so far) chatted with several of our riders who invited them to camp and eat with us – they did.  I chatted with them a bit before supper – very interesting couple.  They hope to be home for Christmas.   Read in the tent and go to sleep art 10:15

August 13, Tuesday

85 miles  Ajax, ON to Trenton.      

Awake at 5:20 and go back to sleep until 5:45.  At mile 14 we get to Hope Fellowship Church on the east side of Oshawa. Lots of folks there to meet us and serve us all sorts of goodies.  Enjoy meeting Len and Yvonne Reimersma there.

  This is a rather long stop of at least 30 minutes.  We ride on Lakeshore Drive a good ways which is rather hilly but rural.  There is a detour at one point which adds a couple of miles to our day.  In Coburg (mile 50, 11:20) the CRC there has wonderful sloppy joes for lunch and lots of baked goods for us.   This too is a long stop.  I leave around noon and some spotty rain cells have popped up and sprinkles develop and then wet roads and we can see a heavy shower ahead that we seem to be catching up to.  I stop for 15 minutes to give it a chance to clear off and it does.  I press on but another pop up shower begins to get us wet, and it continues to intensify and stays with us as we ride in a pretty heavy rain for half an hour until we finally get to the CRC in Brighton in a downpour.  We are cold and drenched and the good folks from the church are all packed in a crowd under the front overhang to keep dry such that there is no place for the bikers to go but they are all waving for us to come in out of the rain before we get wet.   Well, that issue was settled half an hour ago.  You gotta love the heart of hospitality even if the execution is dim.  We eventually get in and within 15 minutes the rain stops and the sun comes back out.

  After some ice cream and "olle bollen"  (for some of you this is a Dutch "treat" translated "oil balls" -- that is -- dough balls cooked in oil)  – both of which were pretty good – the skies are clearing and riding is the best way to dry out.  I ask how far to Trenton and a dear elderly woman tells me it is only 15 minutes never realizing that I will not be driving.   The final 12 miles do dry out the jersey and shorts (not the shoes).  Get to the school at 3:20 and a very stiff NW wind as risen and setting up the tents is fun.  Bed at 10 and it is down to 59 degrees.

August 14, Wednesday

72.7 miles  Trenton to Kingston                

Light rain showers between 3 and 5 AM, but when I got up at 5:45 the skies were clearing; however it was 55 degrees inside the tent.  On the road at 6:55. It is 56 degrees and mostly sunny but I wear my thermal jersey all morning until the lunch stop at noon (mile 55).  There is a steady N-NW wind which at times today is very helpful but not always and the wind is tiring at times.  Stop at a CRC in Bloomfield for coffee and treats for our first sag.  This is a lovely rural and scenic ride along the Loyalist Parkway all day today to Kingston.  Just before the Picton ferry crossing we take the half mile steep climb up to Lake on the Mountain overlook for some nice views of the mountain lake and down to the ferry crossing.

The ferry here is just a continuation of the road so it is free (and cheaper than building a bridge)

.  We ride all along the water on good road and little traffic all the way to Kingston (73 miles) arriving at 1:25.  It was a good riding day, with several scenic stops and a good pace.although my right calf tightened up again late in the ride (I was 15^th into camp). We are camping in a park near the lake a few miles from the city.  Notice the "No Camping" sign.

Set up the tent and bike 3 miles into downtown Kingston to look around the town and take some photos.  Sort of like being in Britain, eh?

  Find a pub for a Steam Whistle Ale and Poutine.

 With the ride into Kingston I reach 80 miles for the day which is the third consecutive 80 mile day.  The 2 CRCs in Kingston  bring an array of salads and desserts to supplement the spaghetti and meatballs the tour provides for supper.  All very good.  
 Peloton  at 7:30 and find out that tomorrow’s ride is 20 miles shorter than the devotional listed it: only about 50.  With this news I am falling asleep during the meeting.   The meeting, local CRC singers (the Kingston Trio?), and tour reports are over at 8:40, and I go right to bed, read for 20 minutes and at 9:20 right to sleep.