Posted by Nadine & Mark in Packing! But wait, what about the kitchen sink?
I haven’t mastered the art of light packing. I wish I had thought of taking a picture of the mountain of stuff that we had piled up in the living room the night before leaving. But, as you’ll find out, I’m not very good with documenting pictorially for the purpose of blogging. So we’ll just have to rely mostly on words and my ability to translate the images I see in my head. I suppose I should apologize in advance.
Packing
Thankfully, Gary from ACC touring doesn’t restrict the amount of stuff we bring. There’s no weighing of bags. No size limit. The downside to this is that the more stuff you bring, the longer it takes to get ready in the morning – at least this is my theory.
We packed the standard camping gear, minus the cooking gear (which is provided). Clothes — more clothes. Too much clothes! Cycling gear. Rain gear (more on this later). After much organizing and sorting and re-evaluating the need and value of every item, we managed to stuff everything into a LARGE hockey bag and two of these containers (which I recommend highly).
Driving
Ottawa, ON to Saint John, NB
We didn’t get to bed until well past 11:00 PM and we were up at 3:00 AM (there is a 3 AM, who knew?) finishing up some last minute packing. A heavy storm hit the city (Ottawa) and we decided to wait it out a little before starting off at about 6:00 AM. To say that it was a long drive would be an understatement. We picked up the kids (who were vacationing at my parent’s cottage) and dropped them off with Mark’s Mom before crawling into Saint John at 10:00 PM. Exhausted would be the best word to describe how we felt. Yup, exhausted works.
Day 1 – The tour starts!
We stayed at a local Comfort Inn, which was supposed to have been close to our meeting spot but ended up being much further than expected and navigating in Saint John proved to be challenging ‚ even with a GPS. Eventually, we met up with the rest of the cyclist at the UNBSJ campus for the tour kick off. Twenty-four eager cyclists filled the room, eating breakfast and catching up with old friends from previous tours. We were happy to see Len and Ar as well as Ed and Denise from the St John River tour the year before. Ed and Denise ride a tandem with such ease and grace. It’s really quite amazing to watch them zoom past you on flats and hills. I’ve often wondered how Mark and I would fare on a tandem – something to add to the list of things to try before I die. Mark isn’t convinced this is a good idea.
Gary handed us the maps and did is traditional welcome speech, which I must say is always entertaining. He warned of many things from sunburns to saddle sores and wished us the best of luck (the maps are always a little off, it really can become an adventure at times). We dropped off our gear at the baggage truck, labeling each item (this is their tracking system to figure out who’s still out on the road towards the end of the day).
Let the riding begin!
Start: St John, New Brunswick
End: St Martins, New Brunswick
Distance: 57 km
Weather: Cool and cloudy
Overall: A nice easy day to kick off the tour.
Bike route 63414 – powered by Bikemap
The weather was wonderful, a bit on the cool side and cloudy – a perfect biking day. Saint John is a hilly city; it took us a good 15km to get into a rhythm of sorts. Our bodies may still have been suffering from spending over 16 hours in the car on the previous day – maybe.
The hills and the terrain were manageable. It was a very pleasant ride (except for the 2 km stretch of construction and gravel road). We got into camp relatively early. The campsite was close to the beach and we took advantage of the low tide to do some rock hounding. We had dinner at a lovely family restaurant.
We stood by the campfire later that night and were able to talk to some of the other cyclists; everyone had had a great day. Only a handful had gotten lost (a temporary state which occurs when you confuse your left and your right). By 8:30, the sun was starting to set, it was getting cooler out and the majority of us called it a day, crawling into our respective tents and glancing at the map for Day two. A 90+km day with a lot of hills. Finally, Mark and I would be able to put our hill training to the test! Remember my jaunt to the Champlain Lookout?
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