The Two Tires -continuation of the Fellowship of the Tour

Cancer Donations: Here

Ecuador Websites: Here

Ecuador Donations: Here

So if you didn't read the previous entry (Fellowship of the Tour), do it; because you evidently didn't read the title of this blog either :P

Lying in bed the night of the 200k day of riding, I could feel I overstrained the tendon in my left calf muscle right above my heel and knew I should rest the next day. So with that comforting thought I drifted off to sleep, my legs numb and tingling from the day’s exertion. The next day’s weather forecast brought good news and bad news: the good news being I wouldn’t have a headwind today, but 2 days from then it would be a 60km/h headwind, thus the bad news was that I needed to ride that day so that I could plan my rest day for the windy day (I don’t think I actually have a gear low enough to ride in 60km/h headwind).

So with that I set off from Malta, and if I thought the previous day was difficult and painful, I was definitely in for a surprise. Although the tendons in my leg stabilizers I had pulled during the crash were mostly healed by then, the road rash and hole in my left arm had been making it very difficult to sleep, both with its throbbing and with the shots of pain every time it touched something. I had also noticed that while I’ve been sick, my muscles have not been recovering nearly as quickly as they usually do, and I regularly had to have naps mid-day to prevent falling asleep on the bike. Waking up that morning and biking that day I also knew my bronchitis was getting worse, and that I was putting my body through too much stress and chills (riding in the rain and hail) for it to heal both the bronchitis and my arm at the same time.

Its hard to describe what it was like to bike that day, its almost like trying to get the last of the toothpaste out of the tube: you think you have nothing left until you give it a good squeeze, and as long as you just keep squeezing harder more will come, but every time you have to dig deeper and push harder than you ever have before. That’s what every kilometer was like, and there were 150 of them. Biking previously I’ve had experiences where my legs would give out, or my lungs would feel like they were going to explode; but this was different. My legs were almost overwhelmingly painful each time I started to pedal, and I had to keep my legs spinning while riding otherwise they would start to seize up and the pain would return.  Oh and the hills! Each hill seemed like a mountain, even though they were embarrassingly small (haha I never thought I’d complain about the hills in the prairies…). The sweat continually dripped off my brow into my eyes, and during the hottest parts of the day it would feel like my entire body was a heartbeat, pulsing in cadence with my labored breathing.

BUT I finally made it, and we met up Andre and Shauna there. They had been having some mechanical problems with their bikes, Andre’s gears weren’t working properly, and Shauna’s rim ended up exploding (it was literally shredded metal). So after we got all that joy of fixing those problems out of the way, we headed up to the campsite where there was a classic car festival, but more importantly all you can eat tacos with a table FULL of deserts. I ended up eating 8 tacos, 2 brownies, 2 caramel thingies, 3 rice crispie squares, and a cookie.

After I finished consuming an inordinate amount of food, and was subsequently revived from my food coma by the guys, we checked out the cars for a bit and chatted with the locals (who were quite nice, despite the fact that I knew as little about old cars as they did about bikes).

It was certainly a day to remember, and (in conjunction with the previous day- 200k) I had set a personal best of biking 350k in two days; with the addition of the next day (100k) and the day before I knew I had bronchitis (180k) made it 630k in four days…while being sick.

The next day I woke up coughing quite bad, I would end up doubled over after a coughing fit trying to clear my lungs. So I decided to take a slower day and stick with Andre and Shauna, who would take a lovely pace around 18-20kmh as opposed to my sadistic 31-33kmh. It was also a day to see if I could get my lungs feeling better, but even at the slower pace I couldn’t stop the coughing going up hills when my breathing increased, and felt out of breath even on the flats. 

But it was a lovely day nonetheless, we stopped for food and rest in some very nice small towns (I say ‘small’ liberally for the towns: my physics class had three times their populations). It ended up being an almost exact 100k day (100.54k) to Chester, and we had quite a pleasant surprise with a town fair that was going on when we arrived. But before we could enjoy the festivities we needed to eat, so found the most stereotypical western bar I’ve ever been to: they had everything from a “Fistful of Dollars” playing, to nothing but country-western music in the jukebox, to a bunch of old smelly guys with missing teeth, big wiry grey beards, and laughter that sounded closer to someone wheezing while dying from tuberculosis than anything. It was so dark in there that by the time we left, I actually forgot it was still day outside and was promptly blinded when opening the door.

The little festival was fun (I forgot what it was for…), but it was still hot and muggy and the mosquitoes were terrible. Actually this would be a good time to mention that the bugs this entire trip have been awful, with the insane amount of rain we’ve had there has been a cornucopia of still water for them to breed in. To put it in perspective I was debating shaving my leg and arm hair because I would literally have to smear the layer of bugs off myself every 20k, and the town I was in yesterday had 5 days of sun since January.

Anyways back to the fair; we basically got back just to see the finale, which were two locals doing motorcycle tricks. It was actually the coolest thing!! I was totally taken aback by how such a small town could put on a show like that, and how they were so trusting and generous (we were offered probably 3-4 homes to stay in, and one lady offered us her car to use, “my car’s across the street and the keys are in the ignition if ya’ll want it”). Although Victoria isn’t a large city by any standards, I felt like the biggest New York city slicker that afternoon. After the motorcycle show we wanted to show off our bikes too, but after concluding that no one would stick around to see us bike a few hundred klicks, and none of us could do anything else mildly interesting with our bikes (except maybe changed a tire really quickly), with resignation we made sleeping preparations and chatted with another cyclist heading east who was stopping there for the night.

I had a few more blogs posts that I’m working on at the moment, but for now I thought it would be best to get this one up, and see if I can get the video working on this site :) – to show you guys the motorcycle show. If not I’ll put it up on YouTube and put a link later.

The current score for blown tires-   Montana Roads: 4 Michael: 0 

Drying everything out in Andre's hotel room.

Part of the Classic Car show

Camping with Andre and Shauna

another long day...

Ohhhh Canada...

You: "hey Michael is the road flat?"

Me: "yes, I would say so"

They say if you loose your dog you can still see him 3 days later, its a lie. Its actually a week later.