The Long Ride East

When I woke up on Day 10, I took one look out the window and was a bit disappointed. A storm was rolling in quickly and before long it hit full force, eventually even knocking out the power for a bit.

My hosts graciously offered to host me for an additional day but I resolved to watch the weather while I ate breakfast and see what it looked like. And after a bowl of oatmeal, dried fruit and nuts cooked in coconut milk, I looked outside and it seemed like the storms were going to move on – at least for a few hours. And so, I thanked my hosts, filled my water bottles, and headed out.

Google directed me out of Sherbrooke along a relatively busy road with hardly any curb lane. All in all, until I was well away from Sherbrooke, the riding was stressful and unpleasant. Of course that sounds worse than it really was. Relative to what I’d been enjoying it was pretty bad. Relative to some of Toronto’s suburbs (I’m looking at you, Mississauga) it was still quite pleasant. And eventually I escaped the city and made it out into the outskirts where the smell of exhaust gave way to those of woodsmoke and manure.

Eventually, I came to an intersection where Route Verte #1 crossed the road and I was able to get away from the cars again. Looking at my map I saw that just north of Sherbrooke there was another stretch of trail marked as steep and poorly maintained. However, it looked as if I had passed that by and so joined the trail. However, after some time, I began to get the sinking feeling that perhaps that part lay ahead and if that was the case I wanted to avoid that stretch and take the road instead having had such great success with that approach the previous day. And so, when the trail crossed the road I sat and deliberated a bit. With few cell towers around from which my phone could guess my position, google maps wasn’t particularly useful guessing my position to within 5 km or just over 3 miles. Not particularly useful. Looking at the signs I guessed that my best bet would be to turn left and see if that would bring me to a main road that led north. The road led down some great hills that let me relax and coast a bit and enjoy the speed for a bit.

After a few km, the paved road turned to dirt. Not the most comforting thing I could have seen. I passed a few roads but when I put them into google maps, I had no luck, often being given locations hundreds of km from where I was. Eventually, though, after a few more km, I found a farm with its address written on it and it came up in google maps. Sadly, where it came up was back in the outskirts of Sherbrooke. In other words, I’d gone in a bit of a circle. I decided that best thing to do was to cut my losses, turn back around, and head up the hill to the path and take it regardless of the condition. And so I started back. And to add insult to injury, the weather chose that moment to bring on a bit of drizzle. Apparently, mother nature, unable to provide a sad musical soundtrack for me decided to give commentary in the best way she could.

In about 5 minutes, a minivan pulled up and a 60 something man who reminded me a great deal of my grandfather pulled up and said something I couldn’t understand in French. I told him my French was pretty bad and he switched to English letting me know I’d strayed far from the trail. He told me where the trail was (of course I knew that as I was headed there), but when I mentioned that the trail was a bit rough for my liking he said that that was no problem, I could easily bypass that part of the trail and pick it up later. All I needed to do was continue on this road to the village of Waterloo. I thanked him and he headed off leaving me to pedal back up the hill in the rain.

Fortunately the rain stopped, and after about 40 minutes, I found myself in Waterloo right near a sign for the Route Verte. Not wanting to get myself hopelessly lost again or to head back down to Sherbrooke one more time, I stopped on the side of the road and broke out the map again. After about a minute I heard a shout behind a playground fence off in the distance. It was the man from the minivan calling me over. I ran over to him and he told me that I was on the right track and only needed to continue straight ahead to make my way toward Victoriaville.

And so, once again confident of my directions, I continued onward. The road eventually turned from being paved to a dirt road much like the one I’d grown up on with hardly any cars to be seen.

After some time on the dirt road, I was directed to another bicycles-only path along the Saint-François River. As I rode along the path, the wind began to pick up and it looked as if another storm might come in. It seemed like as good a time as any to take a snack break and so when the next rest stop with a shelter came up, I took advantage of it.

A bit of rain did eventually come along but barely any worth noting and so I had a couple of my carrot cake bars, drank a bit of water, and prepared to get back on the road again. I did take a wander down to the edge of the river. The Saint-François River reminded me a lot of the White River near where I grew up and I felt a bit of regret that I didn’t bring along a bathing suit on this trip.

Finally, though, I knew that if I didn’t continue now I might just end up relaxing in the shelter all afternoon – which could mean that I’d end up sleeping there for the night at the rate I felt I’d be going before long. And so I got back on my way, making it to the next major city, Melbourne, before long. In Melbourne, I crossed the river and entered the town of Richmond where the path turned north again, crossed some railroad tracks, went a bit further and then abruptly ended. I went back and checked it out again from where the bridge entered the town and still no luck. All there was was a trail that continued a bit past the tracks with a sign indicating that it was part of the Trans-Canada trail (which I’d been riding all along). There was another gravel trail that followed the train tracks east, but there was no Route Verte sign on them and there was even a sign detailing a bunch of daily, weekly, and monthly usage fees. Figuring that the trail went further north along the road I continued onward. After a short distance I lost any indication of a bike route, but I did find a restaurant with a patio and as it was nearly 3:00 PM, I was definitely ready for lunch. As I sat on the patio waiting for my fish and chips, another storm rolled in and then back out – this one a bit stronger than the one that came by as I sat by the river a few hours before.

Once I’d finished my lunch, I consulted google maps which directed me to the main road between Richmond and Victoriaville. After some trial and error, I found it and concluded that it was much worse than the road into Sherbrooke. In fact, it was actually a bit scary – filled with many large transport trucks and without any curb lane to speak of. I rode back into town and tried to look for the Route Verte again.

I finally rode back into town and stopped just down the street from what appeared to be an old railway station and opened up my map. As I stood there straddling my bike reading my map someone called to me. I looked up and there were a pair of cyclists on the other side of the road heading for the Depot. I headed up to meet them and we had the same question for each other – where the hell did the trail go? The couple, a man from the south of France along with his Torontonian girlfriend had been riding from Longueuil and were on their way to Quebec as I was. And, in fact, as I looked at his partner’s bike, I recognized it. She was the person from whom I’d heard that Granby was out of hotel rooms several days earlier. Meanwhile, it was not only getting later, another nasty storm appeared to be headed for town. I’d had enough, and it seemed to be something of a message that the Depot we were at happened to be a hotel. A note on the front door instructed us to use the phone outdoors to call the proprietor for service. Within 5 minutes he arrived and let us into his hotel. There was only one other room occupied and so we each booked a room. The Hotel de la Gare appeared to be stuck in a time warp. Not only were there no telephones or Internet available in any of the rooms, there wasn’t even cell phone service available. On the other hand, the rate was 1/4 that which I spent at the Chateau Bromont, and the room had everything I needed, was quiet despite the proximity to the railroad tracks, and was spotlessly clean. I wheeled my bike in and proceeded to shower and took a few notes about my recent travels.

Eventually dinner rolled around and I decided to wander out into the town. Though it was early in the evening – no later than 7 PM, everything seemed to be closed and the town was deserted. As I left the hotel I managed to get some cell phone service and let folks who follow the twitter account for this ride know where I was. More than one person suggested that perhaps I’d unwittingly stepped into a horror film – perhaps Psycho. Fortunately that was not the case though I never did see anyone outside the hotel all the way across town to the pizza place – the only restaurant that appeared to be open.

After dinner I headed back toward the hotel under a nearly-full moon listening for any sound of life – cars, people, dogs, and not really hearing anything. As I got closer to the hotel, I said a quick goodnight to everyone on twitter telling them where they should send help if they didn’t hear from me in a day or two before heading back into the hotel from the past.