Rain, rain go away!!!!

How many cyclists can you fit in the Tour du Canada truck.
Sam and Joanne brought sunshine into our miserable morning. A chance meeting??? Terri and I were going to stop at the Petro Canada 3km earlier but opted for this stop.

Ney's to Obatanga Day 36

The fact there are few pictures is a testimony to the kind of day we had despite the fact that we rode 161km this day. As you saw from the picture "how many Tour du Canada cyclists can you fit in the truck?", the morning started off bad and got worse. From the previous day of splendid sunshine and beautiful scenery we went to a day that started out wet and got wetter. In addition, we were on a very busy road and had lots of hills to climb. This was one of those days you had to dig deep within to get to the end. We can now appreciate where the phsycological element of the trip takes over. Raingear is not really waterproof when you get the heavy downpour over 120km.

We stopped 30km out of camp to get out of the weather and hoped the motel would let us use their dryer while we ate. No luck so we spread our clothes (yes we kept a few on) and let them dry as much as we could. What a surprise we got when Joanne (from Lucknow) came over to our table with her daugher Sam. I had to admit that I might not have recognized her. I had met Joanne outside Armstrong's bakery on one of my training rides. She and a few young people came over to talk to me about my bike. Joanne and I chatted about Terri and I going on the tour and I gave her the link to the blog. She and Sam were vacationing in the area (they had stayed at the campground we had the night before) and were heading home. Sam is now enjoying biking and they had theirs bike son the roof. Sam has now completed an 80km trip. Way to go Sam!! Meeting the two put some sunshine back into our morning.

Farther along the road this day I passed three young cyclists that I had met on another training ride to Port Elgin. They left London on Father's day weekend and were to be in Vancouver on Sept. 6th, the day we arrive in St. John's. We passed at what would have been about the half way mark for both of us. I had been keeping my eyes open hoping to see them and it was a pleasant surprise when I did.

By 5pm Terri and I were more than soaked to the bone and very cold. We took advantage of a laundromat at a Husky Station and dried our clothes bits at a time. We shared the dryer with a couple other cyclists and it was what made it possible for us to continue to camp. That and the soup, coffee and donuts. When we left the laundromat it was like a different day, the sun was out, we were dry but we had 40 km left to ride. An error on our part was not calling ahead to say we were safe. We forgot about the protocol as we knew we were together and safe. We got to camp with just enough daylight to set up our tents, shower and get to bed.

Part of our day was spent in a thunder storm which the camp experienced as well. A tree near the truck had been struck by lightening and bowed over only to fall completely to the ground in the middle of the night. Nothing was hit and no damages and fortunately a couple of tents had moved expecting the worse.

The laundromat was in White River which is the home of the bear that inspired the Winnie the Pooh story.
Needless to say we did not visit the gift shop or even stop to take pictures.