Wednesday, 27 July 2011

Day 71: Ottawa to Carillon (hot hot heat)

In an attempt to avoid the midday hear we woke up at 5:30 am. A wonderful breakfast with our gracious host Besa before she left for her 6:30 am swim in the Gatineau.

Off and rolling at 7, but not for too long... BOOM!!! My tire exploded. Ginny tried to wave down the boys but no such luck. However, she did catch Valerie's attention.



Valerie, an avid biker, recognized that there was a problem. With no spare tubes that fit my tire (though there were 4 that fit Evan's tires!!), she wipped us off so fast to the nearest bike store in her 4 wheeled machine that we got a speeding ticket! Who knew there were random 30k m/h zones. Oops, $125 later we got some $5 tubes.

Off on the road again and an hour and a half behind we could feel the air heating up. By the time we stopped for lunch and the temperature had risen to a whopping 36.25 degrees! Ouch! We were lucky to find a "less hot" spot in the shade of the quaint town Montebello.


By the time we finally stopped to pick up groceries for dinner we all felt like a pile of steaming vegetables. With no possible campground or swimming option we went inside the air conditioned grocery store to cool our brains and let off some steam.


Our brains were so fried that the thought of cooking anything was unbearable so we found the first air conditioned restaurant (a pizza joint) before hoping back on our bikes and doing another 20km in the beautiful evening light.


The view along the Ottawa river was amazing. With the sun low on the horizon, it was a great, cooler time to be on the road.


The first campground looked perfect! A place to swim, shower and it even had an upcoming pirate themes event day. The gentleman at the desk was nice but with the cost of extra people and tents, it was above what we normally settle for. However he did say there was a cheaper campground a couple Kms away.

Joins arriving we at option 2, we were again told we would have to pay for extra people and have 2 sites!!! These campground don't seem to understand how small our tents are and really have no clue what tenting really is for us.

The heat had come back and humididy was now off the charts. In addition to lacking a swimming pool, this new camp sites charged $1 for showers that only came out hot. Oh well better than nothing.

Exiting the shower things got became a bit more dire. A thunderstorm had arrived and was seconds was from impact. We had ridden to the bathroom on our bikes and evan had forgotten his clean clothes. So, He did the only thing he could think of. Wrap the tiny towel around his waist and hop in the saddle.

This is when things went from bad to worse...the bike took off down a small hill and with shampoo in one hand and wet clothes in the other evan hung on. Unfortunately Evan's towel wasn't quite so adept and it slipped off as he rolled down the hill. Suddenly the dark cloud swept in began to pound down rain. What was a tired, hot sweaty, and most importantly naked biker to do? With a yelp he kept going. With caution to the wind he zipped through the campground and past RVs and cars feeling the air on his exposed rear. What a riske scene! There was a naked biker on the loose!

Unfortunately the hot showers and naked riding did little to cool us offs so we went to sleep dripping and hoping for cooler weather tomorrow.

P.S for the sake of appropriateness, we decided NOT to take pictures of the todays latter events.




Distance: 139.05 km
Time on bikes: 6:39:34
Average speed: 20.8 km/h
Distance from Vancouver: 5581 km
Start: 7:00am
End: 8:00 pm
Wind: west ( strong head)
Conditions: hot!!! 36 degrees



Cheers
- The Warpotay Team

Location:Carillon, Quebec

1 comment:

  1. Best. Post. Ever. However, not in the least surprising...

    ReplyDelete