The Long Ride East

As the ride went on, I began to have a love/hate relationship with the Xtracycle. On the one hand, I was pleased to have it. It was going to carry everything I needed from Montreal to Quebec. How could I not like *that*? And even better, it was my old bike – the one I rode to Montreal on last year. I’d ridden it for thousands of KM and knew it fit well. When clipped in to the pedals, it literally felt like a part of my body. On the other hand, it weighed over 40 lbs. My riding style was tuned to the weight of the old bike – over 15 lbs lighter. And so, I would try to keep pace with those who rode as fast as I would have followed in last year’s rally. But at this stage in the game my legs were not strong enough to do that. So I found myself working hard to keep up with other riders going 30-35 km/hr and then burning out until the next break. After a few days of this, though, I learned from these mistakes.

On Day 4, I had my first mechanical problem of the ride only about 20 km in to a 100 km ride. I shifted my gears and there was a grinding, and the chain leaped off the front sprocket and tried to wrap around my leg. My guess is the bike got knocked when it was in the truck and needed to be readjusted. I thought I caught it in time by shifting back down but it was too late. Before long I couldn’t pedal anymore and had to pull over. Looking at the chain I saw something I hadn’t seen before.

The chain had turned sideways at one point and could no longer grip the sprockets. I was dead in the water. Fortunately, though, within 5 minutes a Road Safety van had arrived, and another 5 minutes after that, the mechanic arrived. Turns out the problem was relatively simple – the chain is so long that it somehow added a loop in when it came off the sprocket. The solution was simple as well – use a chain breaker to open up the chain, remove the loop and reattach it. Very easy with a chain breaking tool, but unfortunately we had to call ahead to the mechanic van which was already at the next break and in the middle of working on someone’s bike. Finally, however, they arrived and the bike was fixed. Unfortunately, though, just as it was fixed, who should roll up but a pair of cyclists, one with a pink pushbroom head in his helmet a la a Roman Gladiator. These were the sweeps whose job it was to bring up the rear and, if necessary, put really slow riders’ bikes on the van and haul them to the campsite. By breaking down I was at risk of not getting to finish this leg of the trip under my own power. So much for pacing myself. Once I got started I pushed myself as hard as I could, taking only a few minutes at the first break to refill the water bottles and grab some snacks for the road. I continued to push myself to the limit, even bending the rules a bit taking the Thousand Islands Parkway instead of the (terribly paved, rutted, sand-covered, tree-root-wracked) bike path adjacent to it. While it isn’t officially supported, a good number of cyclists, particularly those with road bikes who might be brought down by sand on the trail or by a tree root under the pavement), take this route. I took it last year as well, as my experience with the trail was that the pavement was so bad I checked more than once to see if I had a flat that was slowing me down. In any case, by the time I’d reached lunch, I’d passed easily 40-50 other riders and was well away from the pink broom wearing boogiemen determined to make this ride “A trip from Toronto to Quebec City – well except for 60 km spent in a minivan”. By the end of Day 4, I was pretty tired, but surprisingly far less tired than I thought I would be. Could I possibly have managed to get used to this bike?