Blue Skies

Home in the Hammer

So I’m back in Hamilton, as of this past Sunday. It’s starting to feel more normal now, but the first couple days after tour were really weird. I was shopping at the nearby grocery store and saw a figure in my peripheral vision. “Theo? What’s he doing here?”, I thought to myself. Turning to look, I of course saw that it was someone else. It just goes to illustrate how conditioned I’ve become to seeing only a certain set of people around me.

I do plan on relating more about the last two weeks of tour, and throwing more photos on flickr, but that sort of activity will come as time allows… and lunch break is over now.

Still behind

Don’t be too confused by the blog - I’m a few days behind in my posting still. I have stubs and partially written blurbs for each of the days since the last post, but they’re not up yet obviously.

I take privacy issues seriously, and sometimes I find it desireable to ensure that I have permission to mention certain things before posting them. Also, SAG driving has left me with less time than before. No worries though, it’ll all be up there soon enough.

June 7 : St. Catherines, 150 k

So between only remembering to write when at work, and only having the photos on a computer at home, this got delayed a little. My compromise now is to edit in the photos when I get home…

Edit: And here it is…

Last Saturday Eritia and I went on a 150 km bike ride. It was a bit more than I was expecting, since the organizing email estimated the distance to be about 100 k, and we were only going to add another 10-20 by cycling to the starting point. So we set out (slightly late) on a gorgeous Saturday morning, heading along Main to Chedoke Golf Course, and taking the stairs up the mountain (which by the way is a great cardio workout especially when you’re hauling your bike with you). We ended up arriving 10 minutes late, and most of the people had left already, except for a couple who showed up 5 minutes late and also missed the group. We cycled with the couple to St. Catherines, with a nice strong wind on our back. The weather was beautiful (although i did forget sunscreen and the sun was pretty unforgiving), and we maintained a relaxed pace till we got to our destination.

When we got to St. Catherines, we managed to find the church where they were holding a pancake breakfast for some cyclists from that area. We met up with the main group there, and had a bit to eat… a bit too much in my case. The way back was much rougher, since the wind (about 25 km/hr) was directly against us and I was fighting nausea from the food. The food, by the way, was excellent; the quantity of food sitting in my stomach was the main issue. We went with some faster cyclists, but unfortunately ended up not being able to keep up. Well, Eritia was doing a decent job keeping up, but I just couldn’t. Somehow my energy reserves had become depleted, and the Gatorade wasn’t quite helping enough. So the two of us made it home by ourselves. I was pretty beat after that… had a bite to eat, a shower, and then I slept for 2 hours. Had a good sunburn too.

The total for the trip ended up being just over 150 km, and it took just under 6 hours of cycling. We had initially planned to go to MEC that day, but I was so tired and it was so late in the day when we returned that the trip had to be postponed. That distance, by the way, is the furthest I have ever cycled in a day by a good margin. I’m pretty sure that I haven’t done much more than 80 km in a day ever before.

I managed to get a bit more cycling in this week too (after a good day or two rest from Saturday!), and ended up trying Sydenham Road again. This time I did not almost collapse at the top, I didn’t feel like throwing up, and I didn’t stop to rest at the top. Apparently a bit of extra training, plus just taking the hill a bit slower will do wonders. That, and the stiff wind on my back.