The Long Ride East

During the last couple of days of the ride, I started to notice a new habit emerging. Where on my first day out from Longueuil, I was very focused and interested in making it to my next destination quickly, the closer I got to Quebec City, the more I wanted to draw out the ride and savour it. I felt no rush to get anywhere and though I wasn’t particularly tired, I’d take more opportunities to stop. I sipped my coffee slowly at the house before I hit the road. And then when I saw a cafe in Princeville, just a few KM from where I started off, I stopped yet again for a pastry and another coffee, neither of which I particularly needed. On the other hand, the thing about making stops like this was that it put off the inevitable end to a ride I’d really been enjoying. Not long after I left Princeville the trail returned to gravel.

As you can see I make pretty decent time on a gravel path and it’s quite smooth and pleasant. However, after nearly 400 km of gravel path, I was impatient to get on some paved paths and about 60 km from Quebec City, I got my wish. That was the good news. The bad news, however, was that the pavement came as the path came out of the woods into some fields near the road. Without the trees to block the wind I found that there was a pretty stiff headwind, one that made it difficult to maintain much more than 20 km/hr – a bit slower, even, than I had been on the gravel. But not long after I got to the paved stretch, I reached a milestone:

The ride from Toronto to Montreal was 600 km. I reset the odometer at Montreal and so, after 400 km on my own, I had traveled 1,000 kilometres all under my own power. On the one hand this felt pretty amazing. The farthest I’d ever traveled from home by bike was to Montreal last year – and before that I had never gone more than 100 km on what at the time was a long and difficult ride. Now here I was, a distance ten times farther than that. On the other side of it, though, it was great to think of how far I’d come. Prior to 2007, the last time I’d ridden a bike regularly had been probably the summer of 1986 before I got my license. In 2007, I got a bike so that I could ride along with my son who had just won a bike of his own. In a few weeks, though, I got inspired to try to ride further than that eventually getting to the point where I would commute 40 km round trip to/from work several days a week. But it wasn’t until 2010 that I decided to try anything longer than that. So in essence, it had taken me two seasons to get to the point where I could ride this far. To put it a different way: if you have been reading this and thinking this was some great athletic effort that took years of preparation and immense physical ability to do, you’re wrong. I know many on the ride to Montreal who didn’t start training for the ride until 3-4 months beforehand. So if you’re sitting on the fence about possibly doing a long ride of your own – even if you haven’t been on a bike in a few decades, consider this your push over the edge. You absolutely can do it.

Fortunately an hour or so after I hit the worst of the headwind, I found myself back in the trees again – and nearly ready to kiss the gravel I rode on. I was back up to 24-25 km/hr and closing in on Quebec City rapidly. And about 30 km outside Quebec City the road turned back to pavement and stayed in the woods so I got the best of both worlds as you can see:

The last 30 km seemed to fly by. Not long after the road turned to pavement, I found myself ending up on a busy suburban arterial road in Levis. However, before you all worry retroactively about my safety as you imagine my riding on a suburban Toronto or Dallas street, remember what province I am in. On the side of the road was a physically separated two-way bike lane – the kind cyclists in Toronto dream about.

And then as I crossed over a highway I saw a view I’d dreamed of for over a year:
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20 minutes later I found myself at the iron bridge in the foreground of the previous picture. And again, this being Quebec, there was a bike path leading up to it and bikes were permitted on the sidewalk. The railings were made high enough that I had no worries about following over the side. The only difficult part was that the sidewalk was a bit narrow so when I met oncoming traffic I had to dismount and pull the bike very far over so they could squeeze by. The view, though, was stunning.

Crossing the St. Lawrence River again.

Once I got to the other side of the bridge, I was back in familiar territory, having spent 8 months in Quebec City on business and biked all around town for most of that time. However, that was 3 years ago, and surprisingly there seemed to be a ton of changes there as well with several more bike lanes added. There was a funny moment at one point on Grand Allee, one of the main streets in the city where I had stopped at a light. A pair of tourists came up to me and asked for some directions in English how to get to the mall, and what else there was to do. I stopped for a bit and gave them directions to both the mall and Rue St. Jean – a far better destination, in my opinion. When the light turned and I took off they thanked me and then remarked to each other, surprised – “Wow! He spoke perfect English!” I didn’t have the heart to tell them that I wasn’t from around there. And truth be told, in my experience, the majority of people, at least in the touristy parts of town, speak perfect English anyway.

As I approached the walls of Vieux Quebec, what I considered to be my “official” end point, I remembered my arrival in Montreal and how I thought I wouldn’t be overcome by emotion when I arrived and being proven wrong. Well, the same thing happened as I passed through the city gate. There was no police escort, no thumping bassline of dance music heard from several blocks away letting us know we were nearly there, no announcements or cheering crowds. All there was was a single man playing accordion – a lovely welcome in my opinion.

Just over 1,050 km from Toronto to Quebec City

I rode a couple of blocks further until I got to the hotel I’d spent all my time in when I lived in Quebec. Luckily for me, I got there just in time to book the last room available (and at one point they thought they didn’t even have that one). Later, as I walked to dinner I found that most hotels and the hostel down the street were completely booked as well. After a long hot shower and a call home to let everyone know I’d arrived, I headed down my old street, proud of myself for what I’d done and already thinking of what would come next.

Rue Ste. Ursule - my old street