Isn't It a Shame?

I am muchly amused...as many/all of you will know, my ottawa peeps hooked me up with my very own bike share bike as a christmas present. It was named after yours truly, and can now be found here...On the bikeshare website.

Played road hockey with simon and dickie today. was super dee duper fun, but terribly hot. Snuck into Price Club to buy ice creamn and unlimited-refill pop.

I'm trying to figure out what's happened to the formatting of this here website...its all in disarray, and the comments do infact seem to be broken. That's what I get for trying to be all fancy like!!

Well, after three long days of driving, we're home!. We stayed last night in Montreal, courtesy of Sara(and karen, but she's in toronto!). One point to Richard for putting up with my crankiness due to getting lost in montreal, and one extra point for deftly manoeuvering the tercel of love down montreal's ghetto assed downtown.

I'll be posting much more on here over the next few days, and hopefully uploading some pictures for the world to see!

Newfoundland was definitely stellar. Really enjoyed it, and have lots to say about it!

Off the top of my head here are some tidbits:
Total distance travelled:8879km.
Total biked: roughly 1200km
Top speed on bike64km/h, on relatively flat ground
Longest day127km in PEI(when Richard got lost and I got to our meeting point before him, and kept biking since I assumed he was further down the highway).

More of this kind of stuff later!

I'm hoping for a real rager of a canada day party!

Well, I gotta say, Nova Scotia has SORELY disappointed. Its not really the provinces fault per se...its the weather. It has rained, I believe, every single day that we've been here. And I don't mean a brief smattering of drizzle, I mean either hard hard rain, or absolute zero visibility misty foggy haze for the ENTIRE day. Its a major bummer, and has meant basically no biking, and little to no serious activity at all.

We DID get some very nice hiking in near Truro, in "Economy". Dick and I did a 10km hike up to Economy Falls, one of the biggest falls in NS. It was super dee duper nice...went for a quick swim, but the water was indeed cold! We camped at Five Islands provincial park, where NONE of the sites were flat enough for camping. We did a hike the next day to Thomas' Cove, which was also quite nice.

We have done some more seriously prime hobo camping. The two most hardcore hobo camps have taken place the past two nights. On Wednesday we left Halifax and went up to Mosquidobit Harbour where I hoped to do a nice little stretch of biking - for once the weather was nice! (and this is like 1 of maybe 5 stretches of TransCanada Trail in NS)...then we discovered that the little plastic nib for my hydration pack was missing! i.e. my hydration pack was useless because it leaked like a faucet out of the drinking tube. Because we're in more or less the middle of nowhere, our best option seemed to be to drive all the way back to Halifax and try to find a store that I could buy a nib at...well, luckily there was MEC, but they didn't have any nibs that would fit my tube! I was dead seriously contemplating stealing a nib off a new pack( my pack is from MEC, and they had the same pack)...but decided not to. After talking to one of the staff for a few minutes and explaining the situation, they just gave me a brand new bag. Poof, like that. Sweetest thing ever.

But that screwed out entire plan for the day, and put us way behind schedule...so we drove and drove and drove, through Sheet Harbour(you know how to pronounce it) and even through the booming metropolis of Ecum Secum(I kid you not). However, the light was quickly fading, and there was no town over 50 people anywhere in sight...so we hobo camped in one of those picnic stops on the side of the highway. The ground was actually super flat, and it worked out nicely! However, it started to pour rain like a madman around midnight, and it was zany windy all night.

In rained all the next morning, so we bypassed my other planned biking section, and went straight over to Cape Breton....where it was so foggy you couldn't see 5 feet in front of you. More rain. Did a short, wet hike. More rain.

Then, the unexpected happened. The hobo gods smiled upon us, and graced us with the perfect site...down a dirt road about 7km, we made our way to a gorgeous waterfall, and the site was equipped with a full on shelter, big enough for the bikes, a picnic table AND the tent. So yes...we set up camp in this shelter, even though the rain appeared to have stopped. Thank goodness...it, shockingly, rained all night(and has continued to rain all day today).

We're off to Newfoundland tonight at 2am. The ferrys run at the craziest times, and only run 2-3 times a day...and the ferry ride is 6-8 hours over(14 hours on the way back!!!). So essentially either you leave late at night, or arrive late at night.

Yay for 0 comments on the blogosphere!

We're in Cape Breton now after a few days in Halifax. Weather in Nova Scotia has generally been crapola. It has rained basically every single day, including last night and all day so far today. THis has seriously hampered biking plans.

We'll probbaly hang around here a bit today, then be off to Newfoundland tomorrow. Unsure if there'll be any blogsophere posts from there...but that's still the section of the trip that I'm the most excited about!

Just a 2 line post from the library in Halifax! Things are still going well...been doing some hiking the past few days with Richard. Going to do a bit of biking tomorrow I think, then off to Cape Breton for more hiking fun!

WEather has been wet, but we've still managed to have fun. Ate a lobster at a picnic table at the side of the road, using an axe today. That's right, we're classy hobos.

Greg

Hello World!

I'm writing from the basement of the library in Hunter River, PEI.

Rich and I have been here in PEI for I guess 3 days now...we did one of those fancy all Lobster Dinner things the first night we were here(hot hell these are expensive!)....we managed to put back 2 1/2 buckets of mussells though, so we got our money's worth!

To put things in perspective, check out the map of PEI here(click the pdf file link)

Yesterday I/we biked from Mesgouche up to Tignish, a whopping 110km. Long day, but lots of fun...disappointed that the trail here in PEI is basically right smack dab between farmers fields the entire time, nowhere near the ocean. Kinda boring. We hung out in the Legion Hall in Tignish last night, because the church bingo was half over by the time we got there(but let me tell you, Bingo was where it was AT. In a town of maybe 500 there were easily 100 people there). We hobo-camped in a park in tignish.

Today we drove back down to Mesgouche, and I've biked about 55-60k here to Hunter River, and will do another 40-50k this aft putting us past Charlottetown...i'll finish up this leg of things tomorrow, then we'll be taking a ferry to Nova Scotia! Hopefully i'll be able to post again in a few days...

I'm at the public library in St, John...Richard is waiting outside in the car so this has to be mega quick!

Have had ac ouple great days of biking...did 110km the first day. We spent two days at my cottage which was great...except for chilly weather. 31 degrees in ottawa...13 here. Yeehaw!

Am going to be spending about 2 more days in NB, then heading off for a few days in PEI! Richard LOVES anne of green gables...

Hopefully I'll be able to update more later.

# posted by Greg @ 7:28 AM 0 comments

Tomorrow morning is go time.

We'll be driving to Montreal for a quick visit with Karen, and a stop in at the trans canada trail offices to pick up a new brunswick trail guide.

Then we'll be driving the rest of the way out to New Brunswick, where we'll hopefully be staying in Edmonston just over the Quebec border. There's a map of the NB Section of trail here. The red path that goes down the middle then along the bottom is the trail I'll be doing.

Day Two is from Grand Falls to Woodstock/Hartland, and day three we end up in Fredericton. After that we'll drive to my cottage near St John and hang out there for a few days. By next week i'll be in PEI!