Lake Ontario 1,000 Ride Report: June 28, 2003
Wind, wind, and more wind...
Now I know how the Dutch feel, where the hills are pimples but the winds
savage.
It was a ride that broke new ground for all of us - the first three-day
brevet for Michael, Rolf, Carey and Frank, the inaugural distance ride on my new bike and for Bill (who came up from NYC to join us), it showed that we Canadians are no wusses when it comes to putting together tough rides.
Carey and Rolf stayed Friday night at my house, where we enjoyed a large
breakfast of pancakes, moose sausage, juice and tea (cooked by my
girlfriend, who has now secured a nearly unfillable IOU) before cruising the few hundred yards to the Queen's Park start. There we found Michael Thomson, Frank Rasky and Bill Strachan, who proclaimed his allegiance with a NYPD reflective vest and a police sticker and cloth badge stuck to his helmet. (Carey and Rolf later noticed that he was carrying handcuffs - though we never found out if he was packing a gun.)
The group stayed largely intact until past the zoo, when the tailwind became too nice to ignore and Michael and I jacked it up to the mid-to-high 30s. We split up around Oshawa, where I hung back to redirect the others through some faulty instructions while Michael went on alone. We hooked up again in Colborne, where we had lunch and rolled out maybe 45 minutes later.
report by Oliver Moore, photos by Carey Chappelle and Peter Dusel.
The wind stayed favourable, the Glenora ferry was caught with moments to spare and we stopped for only a quickie break in Napanee. We had hoped to hit Kingston in daylight but one of the cues tuned out to be massively underdistance. Instead we arrived just around dusk and schlepped our bikes into a pub-type restaurant near the docks. We relaxed over plates of pasta and a half-litre of red until just before 10pm, when the waiter kindly reminded us to git ourselves to the ferry.
The hoteliers on Wolfe Island were less accomodating than last year - refusing to allow bikes in the rooms and hinting broadly that it would be rude for the following cyclists to arrive too late at night. They did find us an alarm clock, though, and invited us to join the karaoke competition in the bar.
I awoke at 6:30 and went to rouse the others. Strangely enough, Frank had a room to himself while the three others (Carey, Rolf and Bill) were shoehorned into a second room. (Bill mentioned that, as an American, he'd found it a bit disconcerting to see all the Loyalist signs and plaques. I urged him not to worry, telling him that there'd be plenty of 1812 revisionist history to placate him once we'd crossed the border)
Leaving just after 7, we dashed across the island and rode the ferry to Cape Vincent, United States. Over breakfast the group seemed a mixed bag. Michael and I were fretting about the late start, and Bill was also eager to get on the road, but Rolf and Carey were unflappable as always and Frank was unaccountably quiet, tired perhaps.
The restaurant was great, a place tailor-made for cyclists where they served up enormous portions in quick-time. Two of our group ordered oatmeal on the side, and meal-sized portions. I had the three-egg omelette with extra toast, home fries and sausage and couldn't finish it.
We headed out into a solid wind - tiring, emotionally tough and endless. Our mettle was tested by numerous 30-50 kilometre pulls without a bit of shelter from the wind and by a route that was much less pretty, generally away from the lake and often on unattractive roads. This also seemed to be a "poor-but-patriotic" area, where U.S. and POW/MIA flags abound and the crack of a .22 rifle twice put me on edge.
The route became much nicer through the day, and my sense of humour was somewhat restored by the sight of a four-person bike leaned casually against a bridge (no one in sight), but the wind never let up. Our daily average was well under expectations and we didn't make it to Peter Dusel's place until early evening. Pete and his wife Sandy - plus daughter Lyta, who seemed very excited to meet us - were incredibly welcoming and would give Carey and Donna serious competition for the host-of-the-year award I've mused about.
Pete had also greatly improved the route through Rochester (where we stopped to buy all the food we could carry, knowing that there would be nothing at day's end). The worst of the city was skipped, and so was the first part of the Lake Ontario Parkway. By the time we reached that road it was nearly deserted and we rode together down the endless tunnel of darkness - what Jaye last year described as purgatory, but which would have been very nice in the pre-dawn. (Future circumnavigators running late should strongly consider sleeping in Rochester, rather than riding such a desolate stretch in the "dead zone" between 2 and 4am; there's just nothing out there.)
We reached the hotel at midnight and were in bed a bit after 1am. By the time the alarm buzzed at 6am the room was packed with snoring cyclists and grimy bikes. I jumped up (accidentally stepping on Bill) and was surprised to see Carey also sleeping on the floor. I wished then that they'd woken me up when they arrived, he and Rolf had arranged the room and should have had dibs on one of the two beds. I was zonked enough that I would have been happy on the floor
Michael and I ate quickly and rolled out before 7am. Frank seemed interested in joining us for the third day but then did not actually come along as we left. The morning was clear and pleasant but the wind relentless. I got only a short respite when, after stopping for a pee, I drafted a huge farm implement back up the road to where Michael was - probably the only 40+ km/hr I hit that whole day.
Facing the prospect of another 200 kilometres of headwind, I was sorely tempted when I saw an an El Camino on sale for only $900US - I've always been an El Camino sort of guy, and it occurred to me that I could be home for lunch for the small cost of only $1500, and have that stylin' car as well...
We had an enormous breakfast at Lewiston, immediately before dealing with the worst part of the route. Our southbound road (a highway, really) didn't have an exit to the bridge, forcing us to lift our bikes over the concrete median and ride up an on-ramp carrying speeding vehicles down to the northbound lanes. Too dangerous for cyclists, there must be a better way
With the food sitting Jonah-like in our stomachs, our speed dropped way off until well after Port Dalhousie. The wind also seemed to be shifting slightly, meaning that even when we'd finished the more than 500 kilometres of near-perpetual headwind we might not actually get the gravy I'd dreamed of.
The old control at Stoney Creek has mysteriously fallen off the route, so we stopped to refuel in Flamborough, having puzzled our way through a few serious inaccuracies on the cue-sheet. We picked it up a bit over the last stretch, back on familiar ground and racing the sun. Although held up by just about every traffic light possible, we rolled up to Queen's Park only a bit after 9:30.
We signed each other's cards, exchanged a sore handshake and went our separate ways. Thirty minutes later I was sitting in a bath of epsom salts, eating pasta salad and drinking a Blackthorn cider.