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77.39 miles, 9:41. Maximum 35 mph, rating: 6
Motel was noisy (live entertainment). We were squeezed into one twin bed, for the first time this trip. (No way we’re going to spend the night in separate beds!) Ate breakfast at Grandma Lee’s, a chain we’ve been seeing. Claim to fame is thick sliced bread.
9:30 AM, Meaford: Escarpment or no, it’s hilly from Owen Sound to here. A bright, cool morning.
Highway 26 has heavy traffic. Vacationers, not trucks. Weekends should be eliminated when vacationing. Crowded, stores closed, etc. More honks and catcalls today than in rest of trip.
There was road construction at Meaford, so we turned south onto side road 7. At the junction of a possible eastbound route, I met a cyclist who turned out to be a cottager from Ottawa. We had a long talk, during which he confirmed that we could ride right on into Thornbury. He also confirmed the route we had tentatively selected into Ottawa.
He had delusions of grandeur about the grades he was able to climb. He pointed to a nearby hill and asked my opinion of its angle. I guesstimated it at 7% – he was devastated! He had thought of it as a 45° angle! I suggested that he get a level, ruler, and pocket calculator, and make a few measurements for himself. And hey, fella, being able to climb a 7% grade is nothing to be ashamed of! It just doesn’t sound very dramatic, that’s all.
Collingwood pleasant and quite industrial. Nice shoreline section coming in. Saw a sailplane being towed and released, and an ultralight.
I stopped at a tourist information stand at Collingwood. As I was sitting on the lawn reading the bumpf, a woman came up on a bicycle, and struck up a conversation. Clementine, probably a native German, told me I should stay with her that night; it turned out she was the manager of the Collingwood youth hostel. She’s handicapped, can’t walk well, but was just back from a multi-day canoe trip, and wants to become strong enough to go on long cycling tours. We talked about touring – what to take, how things work. She’s a real character. Jacky commented later that I was starting to collect characters.
Which direction
do the roads run?
Usually when you look at flat, easy country, settled fairly recently, the roads are surveyed on NS-EW bearings. In southern Ontario, they are perpendicular and parallel to the shore, in large blocks. In some cases, the pattern is diamond shaped, rather than rectangular.
There must be an interesting little history lesson here somewhere. Who made the decision to survey Ontario’s roads, and how, and why? Is Ontario the only place with this anomaly?
We had lunch at Stayner. The restaurant turned away some very drunk tourists who wanted to use washrooms marked “For custumers [sic] only.” They were really pissed.
Better after lunch. Two pioneer cemeteries with stones moved into semicircles. White pine forest. Guy out practicing for tomorrow’s triathlon. The afternoon was cloudy and a little sticky. The light wind sometimes helped, usually didn’t. The country is flat. We are starting to see a few farms, with crops of corn and hay.
Smells: a herd of goats. A vinegar factory (after all, the stuff has to be made somewhere).
We never did find out who Bruce was, he of the Bruce peninsula. Nor Grey, Owen, Barrie, or Simcoe for that matter.
We camped at a KOA north of Barrie, three km south of Craighurst. Pretty place. We walked into Craighurst to eat. At the Pine Tree restaurant, after a glance at our informal attire, the maitre d’ told us there were no tables available for quite some time. We crossed to the other restaurant only to find it closed.
Hobson’s choice. Back to the Pine Tree, where I asked to be put onto the waiting list. Surprise! It turned out that someone with a reservation hadn’t shown up, and we were shown to their table straightaway. I suppose it was churlish of me to notice that at least two other tables weren’t filled at all, during the entire time we were there. But after we got past the dog guarding the gates, they were nice to us, and it was a good restaurant.
Back in the tent, we listened to the Brits at the next campsite discuss their day of birdwatching. They were noisy, but not as bad as the Frenchies who were there initially. Apparently they had had a big fight while we were in town eating, and packed up and drove off, with one of their party, abandoned, walking sadly down the road in their wake.
61.63 miles, 7:25. Maximum 38 mph, rating: 9
8:30 AM, Price’s Corners
Ate sweet rolls at the campsite, and breakfast at Price’s Corners. 8 km out of Orillia and turning into bedroom community. The morning is cool and cloudy, but there’s no need for a jacket. Highway 22 is hilly.
There’s a triathlon at Orillia this morning. It’s half an Iron Man, and is an Iron Man qualifier. We’ve seen several cars loaded with bikes going that way. Yesterday we met a cyclist checking the cycling course, which will apparently be on these very roads.
I had to stop for racing cyclists crossing. The traffic cop asked me why I wasn’t competing. As always, I didn’t think up a snappy answer until it was much too late to be snappy.
A man in a wheelchair in Orillia asked me about the triathlon. He had had an electric scooter, which he wanted to convert to gasoline power, but the ministry of transport wouldn’t license it to operate on sidewalks. He mostly wanted to bitch about things, and I happened to be an available ear. He got on about how terrible it was that his government disability pension was fixed in value, and how terrible the 9% proposed tax was going to be – who does he think is going to pay for his handout, anyway? – minus a percentage, of course. He’d just changed his wheels from black to gray rubber, so they wouldn’t mark indoor floors and carpets, and thought C$66 for a set of wheels was too much...
Tourist information in Orillia is at the railroad station. Orillia is the original home of Stephen Leacock and Gordon Lightfoot. Overall, it doesn’t seem like a very interesting town. We crossed the Narrows (they really are!) and got onto highway 44, then 45, finally 503. East of Orillia, the country gets flat in a hurry. There are lots of farms, but still some unused land. Tailwind and lower hills.
I have been searching for a good photo opportunity to characterize this area. Uphill, surrounded by perfectly flat country, does it! In fairness, Uphill is at the top of the Head river valley, possibly 200' deep, with wide gentle slopes. The river itself is still, black and uninviting.
About 8 km from Norland we stopped at Head lake (very pretty) and had lunch.
6:00 PM, Norland
It was cloudy, and we had a tailwind; an easy ride and a short day. Saw frogs today, and the usual collection of crows and dogs. A quarry that looked like an amphitheatre.
Found a really wonderful cottage motel built on a fairly steep rise just across the road from Shadow lake. A grassy spot on the shore was private for guests, but we didn’t get down there.
The kitchen in our cottage gave us an opportunity to eat something different from restaurant or straight grocery store fare. We raided the grocery store, got some appealing food for breakfast, and fixed up a big batch of tuna and noodles with crunchy green pepper, undercooked onion, and fresh frozen green peas! Dessert was vanilla cake with mandarin orange segments. Pretty, pretty, pretty good!
After we were safely ensconced, it came on to rain, lightly, all night. Very homey evening, cosy and pleasant. Listened to classical music tapes, read a book and studied the Haliburton tourist bumpf. We listened to the rain on the roof and slept late.
59.43 miles, 5:14. Maximum 35 mph, rating: 9
Slept till 7. Ate toast and cereal in the cottage. Did the dishes, left at 8:30. This morning is cool and cloudy with a tailwind. Hilly and several stops, so it’s slow going. Sun starting to peek out by noon. Warm even when cloudy.
Five white domestic ducks waddling up the hill. Large predatory bird – eagle? Beautiful marbly rocks. Occasional lakes. Lots of dead snakes along the road. Some frogs.
3:00 PM, Bancroft
After snacking, we rode to Bancroft as a single leg, without intermediate regrouping. The country is moderately hilly, with a river and lakes. [Once again, we didn’t notice crossing 45°N latitude, this time going north.] Highways 503 and 121 had light traffic and a surface that varied from excellent to fair. The last 13 km into Bancroft was on Highway 28, with heavy traffic including logging trucks.
All these little towns are very pleasant – usually hilly, often with a lake, river, or falls. Bancroft has the charm of a Sierra town. It’s the self-proclaimed mineral capital of Canada. Some 80% of all Canadian minerals are found in the vicinity of Bancroft. There’s an annual rockhound festival, several rock shops, and facilities for outdoors activities.
The inevitable errands: bank and laundry. Best Western very expensive (C$70). Lake and playground, canoe, two rowboats, two paddleboats, indoor pool. We ate Italian food. Walked around the town – very nice – until it started raining. Little theatre, rock shop, Chinese restaurant in a neat old building, and a historical park.
85.07 miles, 9:14. Maximum 40 mph, rating: 9
We breakfasted in the motel room. A cool day, with a pretty sunrise over the clouds. Clear, then cloudy, clear, then cloudy. Hilly country; fog filled the valleys. Gorgeous rocks – how do blasters get it to break off only on the highway side?
9:30 AM, near Highways 28 and 514
We saw a crew cutting trees along the road. We later learned they were clearing the right of way for a hydro line (Hydro is Canadjan for electric). Even though they weren’t loggers, they clearly weren’t going to waste the trees. They were trimming the branches, leaving logs suitable for picking up, and feeding the small stuff into a chipper. Two men were cutting off the stumps at ground level.
We had a second breakfast at a pancake house. Jacky saw a billboard for it yesterday, so we were looking for it. Nolet’s – a wonderful, huge home-built well-insulated non-smoking place. Owner also built his own house. R35 insulation. The man was very talkative, interested, and interesting. He wants to sell out and retire, and asked about bikes.
The construction was of solid timbers, perhaps a foot square, with the corners removed. The top and bottom of each timber were cut with a pair of channels into which 1x3 or 1x4 lumber was placed, to seal the space between timbers and contain a packing of fiberglass insulation. He had a sample section on display.
He claims the real insulation value of wood is about R3 per inch, and the wood builders associations are trying to correct the inaccurate public view of R1 to R1.5, which is only valid if there are cracks between the logs where cold air can penetrate.
We watched hummingbirds at the restaurant, and saw a blue heron at a lake. We saw the first colours of autumn in the maples across from the pancake house. Big Yirkie lake – not yirkie at all. Highway 41 has some trucks, but only moderate traffic. It’s not bad. It stayed pretty cloudy all afternoon and threatened rain. Ate crackers, dried apricots and granny bars at a picnic table. Dave went on into Renfrew to seek lodging. There are lots of log and timber buildings in this part of the world, many of them new or at least newish.
Renfrew is a really nice little town. Too bad we lived so near it for so many years and never checked it out. We stayed at Margaret and Larry Ritza’s B&B. It’s a nice, modern house about half a mile from downtown. The couple had been married 53 years and had pictures from their 50th anniversary on the wall. They were dog sitting for a big white fluffy pooch.
Before he retired, Larry managed the local movie theatre. He’s saddened by the extent to which it’s gone downhill. From the pictures on their walls, everyone in Renfrew would seem to be their friends.
Smells: cedar lined closet, scented soaps. Being downwind from a Chinese restaurant, from Scott’s (Colonel Sanders’) Chicken Villa.
We ate at Finnegan’s bar/restaurant. The food was good, but the pie wasn’t. Afterward, we spent an hour in the library reading the Ottawa Citizen, books on Maine, etc.
Breaking cables
My front shifter cable is failing. As always, I found out because the sharp broken end stabbed me in the finger when I shifted.
Why does the front cable fail first, when the rear shifter is used so much more? And come to think of it, I don’t ever recall a brake cable failing.
Because the front cable goes out of tension much more frequently, every time you shift to granny. The rear shifter only goes out of tension when you shift to the largest chainring, not as often. Brake cables never go out of tension.
Now I just need a metallurgist or mechanical engineer or someone to explain why relieving the tension on a wire should cause it to fail.
41.56 miles, 4:22. Maximum 31 mph, rating: 8
It stormed hard during the night. The wallpaper had rain stains on it this morning. The wall was dry, so I don’t think the stains were our fault.
Margaret may be shocked to see that we only used one of the twin beds. She had laughed at another couple who went elsewhere to find a double. “They must have just got married,” she said. So did we – 21 years ago. Maybe Margaret merely meant that we old hands knew how to squeeze into whatever bed was available.
Breakfast was bran muffins, cereal, rhubarb, jam, coffee, and cheese, with the dog looking on. Excellent. This morning it was cool and damp. We didn’t want to show up at our friends’ too early, so we took the scenic tour. We came via Burnstown and White Lake. Stopped in Burnstown for coffee at the general store. Chatted with a woman transplanted from Toronto with her four-year-old daughter. White Lake was also nice.
Arnprior is a pleasant little town. When we got to the weir on the Madawaska river, there was no flow; they turned on the river while we were watching, presumably by shutting down a hydro turbine somewhere. It took less than a minute to go from no flow to full flow. We saw a fisherman on a little island catch a 15-18 incher.
There’s a pretty sandstone museum and library, a building that used to be a post office. Stopped at the museum, asked where the stone came from. They didn’t know, but I think the woman’s curiosity was piqued – I’ll bet if I went back today, she’d know. After the museum we stopped at the library, where I did five minutes of historical research myself; however, I wasn’t able to answer the question.
The museum contained a lot of information about lumbering. I remembered the skid roads and the ox teams used in the western forests; apparently nothing of the kind was necessary here, probably because the trees are smaller, possibly because the country isn’t as difficult.
By 1:30 when we left, it was quite clear and blue with a really strong wind usually in our favour.
Lots of towns across North America still follow the custom of blowing a whistle or siren at noon. That brings back memories of my childhood in Chadron.
5:00 PM, Kinburn
The family consists of Harold, Donna, and Marion, 5. Sons Trevor and Morgan, and the cat Allison weren’t there to be photographed. They cooked a wonderful meal of steak and potatoes on their charcoal grill. Salad, lemon pie, brownies. Unfortunately, my new filling came out [discovered later that the new filling had stuck fast, but the primordial filling upon which it rested had broken loose]. Great kids. Trevor spent July in Alberta on a bee ranch, and told us all about beekeeping. He is in French immersion school. He was away part of this evening, kid-sitting for a working mom.
Morgan is the builder. He’s tried building a wooden go-kart and a water slide (no water, but that’s merely an application detail). He didn’t complete either project, but he’s learning. His job is to help out at a dairy farm down the road. Marion will be in the first grade this year, and can read a little.
The kids say they’re being taught US spelling at school. Harold says BNR has a style book with US spellings for all publications. ’Twere pity if the differences should disappear, but I suspect the diehards will preserve the old ways for a long time to come. I still favour some of the old spellings myself! More colour, more flavour!
Harold, true to tradition, is fixing up their place in stages. Most of the house has hardwood floors, and most of the walls have been painted. There’s no trim yet. Our room was still exposed subfloor. When it’s finished, it will be the family room.
We went to Fitzroy Harbour to watch Morgan play soccer. The other team showed up at Kinburn due to an erroneous schedule sheet revision. Each team claimed the other should forfeit, but they agreed to reschedule the match.
Harold and I chatted with Len, a colleague from my days at BNR. We were surrounded by black flies, the gnat kind, but they mostly didn't bite. I think Harold got one bite. I don’t know what’s the right name for the insects that look like houseflies, that are black and bite. People call them black flies, too. We had them with us since Nebraska, but I think we finally left them behind somewhere around Wawa.
The evening was for brownies, junior scrabble, and tales of bee keeping and cow sitting. We slept on a mattress on the floor. I wanted to give the kids our surplus water bottles; figured we weren’t likely to encounter any more 40-mile deserts on this trip. Four bottles, three kids – I asked Harold whether that was likely to cause a problem. “Not at all,” he said. “If there were only two water bottles, that would cause a problem!”
