Pre-dawn rising: good. Snooze straight after: bad. Still, I got the stove underway within 15 minutes of the dawn so I didn't lose too much time. Like the full moon last night, the sun's dappled light through the surrounding trees shone into the tent.
It was after 9am that I retraced the bicycle wheel tracks in the grass back to the road that connected the coastal highway to Parlee Beach Provincial Park just outside of Shediac, New Brunswick. The breeze on this fine and clear day was from behind. Wow, what a pretty good run of the weather I've had across Canada. To date: one full day of rain and three half days in almost two months!
Someone else who thinks my experience of Canadian weather to be a charmed one rode up beside me as I was leaving Shediac's municipal limits. Riding a road bike and dressed in cycling gear, an older gent, say in his late 50s, early 60s, pulled along side and said hello. Expecting him to pass burning me off, he instead stayed along side and we started to talk. Riding abreast if nothing was coming at the same time as traffic following, we chatted as we rode.
As each other's story unfolded we each became more engrossed. He had also ridden Trans-Canada (TC), clocking up 7,800km in three months (also) averaging 145km/day. This year he had planned to walk the Appalachian Trail (AT) but when all his gear was assembled and ready to go he fell ill and is currently in the process of recovery. The AT in 2005 is his plan now.
After he listened to the route I have planned for the last week or so of my own Trans-Canada bike ride he hearteningly described the extreme grades of the Cabot Trail that I wanted to be prepared for as no worse than what I'd already cycled through from Thunder Bay, Ontario.
I mentioned how, as a TC traveller, I felt I had to make a pilgrim's stop at Terry Fox's monument on the outskirts of Thunder Bay. My cycling companion for the morning piped up that he had run with the Canadian folk hero in 1980 for about 5km on the St John (New Brunswick) bypass. Then, on his own Trans-Canada journey by bike in 2002, he was especially moved upon reaching Terry's Monument as he had himself become a cancer survivor, losing his left eye to the disease in the time since meeting Terry.
We were making excellent progress just chatting away keeping pace with each other, cruising at 30ish. As he'd offered, he bought me a hot chocolate at the Tim Horton's at Cap Pelé, his return point. I got the donuts. Very surprised I'd not yet tried Tim Horton's coffee or donuts even though I'd virtually crossed Canada, he was almost dismayed when I admitted not having sampled Dairy Queen either. "I used to love their milkshakes at the end of the day", he reminisced.
Now not busy riding, introductions: Adelard. Very pleased to meet one another. Asking more about preparations for the AT (as the seed was planted in my own mind), he reveled that he'd met 10 AT walkers in this one corner of New Brunswick (NB) who'd completed the whole 2,200 miles of the trail from Georgia to Maine, including two guys fresh from high school who walked it from February to mid August this year.
Another over-representation of this part of NB (Moncton to Shediac) Adelard said was the plethora of Tim Horton's coffee and donut franchises. As I took delicious sweet bites from Boston creams, chocolate-glazed and double chocolate donuts with sips from the hot chocolate, Adelard told me the story of Tim Horton's, a tale not so sweet.
"A great defender", he says, "a big man" of the famous Toronto Maple Leaf ice hockey player whose career spanned 22 seasons. "Not too bright is the reputation for hockey players", but Tim had seen how unreliable an income professional hockey in the 70s provided and although still good at 43, he wanted to retire to something else. Apparently Tim tried lots of different small enterprises including a car workshop before hitting on the idea of a coffee and donuts shop. Sadly, two years after starting the business Tim was not to see his entreprenurial creation take off. He was killed in a car accident in 1974. More tragedy as Mrs. Horton got carried away, hooked on drugs, says Adelard, and off-loaded the business to their business partner for a fraction of its value. Now Tim Horton's® has over $1 billion in sales annually employing 25,000 Canadians across the country.
We exchanged email addresses and Adelard returned the way we'd come and I continued east towards Cape Tormentine and the Confederation Bridge, the link between New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island (PEI).
Along this stretch of road following the Northumberland Strait it was all marked as the Acadian Coastal Drive, after the French who'd begun settling here in the 19th century. Collecting my ration of two packets of bagels at a supermarket in Cap Pelé I heard conversations mostly held in French. Quite pretty, the road that kept close to the coast wound through hay fields and past old weather-beaten two-storied homes or past proud dazzling white houses that had received more care than wear. The smell of the sea came from these houses as the wind was blowing off-shore. It reminded me of passing herring drying racks in Iceland. Not unpleasant.
Across Northumberland Strait I could see PEI as a low lone of dark above a flat body of water. The bridge looked every bit as expansive as the water it crossed. Its 63 supports hold the bridge 40 - 60m above the Strait for 12.9 kilometres (8 miles). Adelard had prepared me to having to take a transport across to the island. Dissapointed and having already run a few scenarios through my head like arranging to cycle at 2am or with an escort (as happened across the Bosphorus Strait in Istanbul) I was resignd to putting the bike on other's wheels. Because I'll be returning to this spot, the trip to PEI will only be a diversion, not part of the TC ride and therefore I won't technically be cheating.
Following the signs compliantly I rested the bike outside the reception building and went inside. Empty of people, just some tables with chairs attached a la McDonalds, two vending machines, washrooms and on the wall, the telephone I needed to use to usher a ride across the bridge.
The control room operator said I'd just missed a transport but another would come soon, "within the hour". I got out my lunch. Another person arrived (pedestrian), picked up the phone and sat down after picking up a magazine from a large rack behind me (mostly in French). One hour. Lunch was over long ago. My two dated copies of Macleans, the Canadian replacement to Time magazine, had been leafed through already and I was starting to try and decipher the captions of the cartoons in a cycling magazine in French. Getting close to an hour and a half and I pick up the phone again. "It's just left" (yeah, right, the cheque's in the mail). The foot passenger waiting in the room says she had to wait two hours a few times before. As I was on the phone to the control room she was arranging alternative transport for the bus she going to miss to get her to work. "I suppose because it's free (transport for pedestrians and cyclists)
Grumpy that I couldn't cycle and therefore had to abide by their rules and be subjected to the wait losing prime cycling I inform the two staff that this is the first time on the bike ride around the world that I had to resort to using a transport to get me across a bridge. All they had to do was tack on an extra metre and cyclists and foot passengers could take the bridge too was my tirade. "I know. I wish they had" breathed the staff-member. My two-cent hot air balloon deflated. I helped load the bike while they restrained it securely.
On the approach we climbing to 40m and squeeze on to one of the two lanes the bridge is wide (with shoulders big enough for cyclists and pedestrians). I get a seagull's perspective of the small fishing boats rocking in the Northumberland Strait. Trying to make conversation as I was riding shotgun I asked if any cyclists or pedestrians had tried to cross independently. "Yes." Did they make it? Any of them? "Nope." What happens to them? "We pick them up and take them back to the office. If they don't like that then we charge them with trespass." It all becomes clear when she explains this is a privately owned bridge. Their limitation of liability comes in providing a shuttle service and staffing a network of 22 cameras on the bridge. Any jumpers? "No." How about animals like skunks or porcupines (#1 and #2 road kill in Canada I've seen)? "No porcupines on this side. We see the animals on the cameras and send out a vehicle to move them off." Do any get half way? "None make it very fa
Tourist Info PEI provides free internet and I send off invites to friends in London to join me in just under three weeks on Saturday the 16th of October to cross the finish line at the Prime Meridian. I call the subject line of the emails "the end of the world is nigh". The body notes "the world" is "the world trip".
Reflecting on the invites sets me thinking about sharing the journey's end with friends. Back on the road I suddenly feel that this island, unconnected with my cycle journey, is remote and that without my friends and the journey I am lonely and sad. This melancholic fog lays over me as I cycle the pretty countryside. The end is as an inevitable part of the journey as the sense of accomplishment of having ridden a bicycle around the world might be. Now, at the end, I'm apprehensive about how my feelings might overwhelm me at the end. When asked candidly in Iran with new-found friends, "Don't you miss your friends?" I realised that cycling solo for so long that I do miss my friends and family. I broke down then (alaring my hosts) and I think I might in London from happiness at reunion and completion. I don't want a scene but I've sent the emails now.
As always, travel is my tonic and a new province, my 8th of Canada's 10, beckoned. As red as my girlfriend Cathy had told me it'd be, the soil of PEI has that look of Mars about it, but is also similar to a fertile area south of Auckland called the Bombay Hills. The smell of the soil in fields reminded me of the place too. Trucks hauling potatoes to the McCains factory near the bridge also carried the smell of spuds with them. PEI is famous for their potatoes, McCains is famous for chips which they sell to McDonalds who sells french fries famously well. "One world, one fry" McCains say.
As the sun goes down turning all around orange and tinging the soil even deeper red, I scout for a free camp spot. Tonight it's in a hedge row of pines by the Trans-Canada 1 highway. A field of pine sapplings on one side and the most quiet TC1 I've ever been beside on the other. It's true that when you're on PEI the pace kicks back a few notches and you go about your business nice and easy. Now adjusted thanks to time, reflection, a bright silvery moon and cinnamon rolls I feel I can relax and enjoy this bonus island away from it all.
