Month: September 2016

Damn the mosquitoes, full speed ahead

Wheel full 70px My friend OldRoadDog commented on my post about pine tree gum (which you can find here [linkie]) and hit a sore spot.  The comment read

Also, in Canada the mosquitoes hang out in the shaded tree areas. Pitch the tent 20 yards or more from the trees.

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Wheel full 70px I hate mosquitoes.  A lot. A hatred based on intense familiarity at several points in time in my life.  So I started a response and realized that I was really writing a post.  So here it is- I wrote

I’ve had two nights with mosquitoes out of the whole trip. I’ve used a can of cheapoTarget 10% DEET spray to ward them off. It’s worked like a charm, but I’m well aware that I might come down with some DEET-induced cancer of the frammis gland when I’m 113.  And I don’t care.

Us old guys can do anything we want, pretty much. With a ~20 year life expectancy at this point I am not going to put up with getting bit by mosquitoes today in order to not use a product that has a miniscule change of hurting you if you use it regularly over a full lifetime. Sunburn is in the same category. I will finish this trip with parts of me baked pretty brown. Am I worried about skin cancer? Sure, in the abstract. Am I worried about it affecting me? Not a bit. Not one bit.

Wheel full 70px So there you have it. Sorry about the ranting… I do that sometimes. But, like they say, better out than in.

Bay of Fundy Ferry

Wheel full 70px I’ll be on the ferry across the Bay of Fundy this evening

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Wheel full 70px Boarding is at 5:30. The crossing takes about two and three-quarters hours, so unfortunately I’ll be riding around St. John, New Brunswick tonight as it gets dark looking for a place to stay. But that’s an issue for later in the day; one thing at a time.

Wheel full 70px I’ll be a bit sad leaving Nova Scotia. At 64 years old in a few days I don’t know if I’ll ever make it back up here again. But you can’t do everything and I’ve been privileged to have done a lot.

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The Camper’s Friend – NOT

Wheel full 70px Ahh, the delightful sights, sounds and smells of a tent site among the pines in the North Country.  The lush green boughs, the wind rustling through the needles, the plip-plip-plip of wonderfully aromatic pine gum dripping onto  your barely used MSR Hubba Hubba tent all night…

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Wheel full 70px Hey, wait a minute!  What’s this “plip-plip-plip” stuff?  Well…

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The Enemy

Wheel full 70px This pine gum is stickier than Crazy Glue and has a particular affinity for ripstop nylon.  I used about half of my first aid kit alcohol swabs this morning cleaning the tent, which would have otherwise glued itself to itself in a small red nylon mass had I simply packed it up.

Wheel full 70px Next time I am at a campground in the piney woods I will find the site in an adjacent meadow.  I can go sit under the trees any time I want.

Wheel full 70px Lesson learned.

Another great Nova Scotia bike shop

Wheel full 70px I took the Surly into Manser’s Bike Shop [linkie] in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia yesterday for a check up and some adjustments.

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Wheel full 70px Jordan, the shop’s mechanic, went over the bike from front to rear, tightening a loose quick release on the front wheel, custom bending a fender bracket that was causing occasional rubbing, properly torquing the headset, and making some needed adjustments to the front and rear derailleurs.  The bike has never shifted as smoothly as after him doing this.

Wheel full 70px All told, he probably spent an hour working on the bike, all the while chatting with me about my trip, Surly bikes, Brooks saddles, and other stuff.  The shop was busy, too.  He handled a couple of customers and dealt with several phone calls while I was there.  I was, if you haven’t figured it out already, really impressed.

Wheel full 70px I won’t tell you what he charged me; I’ll just note that I must have gotten the long-distance bike rider discount rate.  A Five-Star experience!

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Wheel full 70px Yarmouth is a nifty little city, with a great historic downtown.  I had some non-trip related business here that took a bunch of time out of the remainder of my day, but I’d come back here as a tourist and hang out for a few days in a heartbeat.

 

 

b2b Trip -Week #2

Wheel full 70px Yesterday, September 1st, I wrapped up the second week of the beach to beach trip when I rode into Yarmouth, Nova Scotia.   Yarmouth is the major city in the western part of the province, and from here I could catch if I wanted to a ferry to Portland, Maine.

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Wheel full 70px But that’s not the plan. I’m going to continue to ride in Nova Scotia for another two days, traveling on to the port city of Digby (left side of the above map about halfway down) where I’ll catch the ferry across the Bay of Fundy to St. John, New Brunswick. From the there I turn left and it’s just a couple of days to the international border in the just a couple of days to the International Border in the State of Maine.

Wheel full 70px As Treebeard said, it’s all downhill from there.

Wheel full 70px So here’s the 215 miles/345 kilometers I rode during the last week.

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Wheel full 70px The 30 to 40 mile days will end when I depart Nova Scotia. From there things will get much more businesslike as I plan to ride an average of 50 miles/80 km a day north of New York City and 60 miles/95 km a day south of there to Florida.  Right now if all goes as planned I will be arrive in Key West the first week of November.

Wheel full 70px I’m working on integrating the pictures I’ve been taking with a more detailed description of each day’s ride from my notes. No promises, but they’ll be coming along your way at some point.

What I Did on My Summer Vacation

Wheel full 70px No, not really.  All the purposeful riding I’ve done this summer has been in August here in Nova Scotia.  The rest was prelude.

Wheel full 70px Here’s how RidewithGPS [linkie] sums up my August activity.

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Wheel full 70px Not too shabby for a tourist, eh?  Or a flatlander.  The thirty thousand and change calories RwGPS says I’ve burned- an estimate based on an algorithm, I’m sure, but probably a pretty informed one- are from about zero exercise-related calories through the end of May of this year, and up from a handful- a couple of thousand a month- in June and July.  My elevation gain is more than if I had summited Mt. McKinley Denali from sea level, which of course everyone knows you can’t do on a bicycle.

Wheel full 70px On to September!  I’ll sum up the first two weeks of the ride tonight.