Day 72: Carillon to Montreal

Up early or else, more heat is in store for us, slightly lower temperature but fewer clouds and more sun made it feel like the hottest day yet. A pleasant early morning ride along.the St.Lawrence slid by smoothly. By late morning we were entering the suburbs of Oka. But instead of cookie cutter houses, the dwellings of choice were boxy drive through cigarette store all lit up like Christmas while advertising all kinds of special deals on Native cigarettes. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the stand off at Oka, there was undeniably a Native pride that was in the forefont and seemed strong and courageous. An endless string of cigarette shops seemed sad, neither proud nor courageous.

The heat was building and was magnified expoentially by a long climb out of Oka toward Montreal. Eureka! Our first Québécois boulangerie at the summit with great air conditioning. The pain au chocolates were amazing.

We cooled off enough to continue and discovered the Route Vert, the bike route through the suburbs and into Montreal. This was good new and bad news. The good news was that we had a dedicated and segregated route most of the way into the city. More good news, even the suburbs have lots of bike routes The bad news- there is no accessible map for the Route Vert and poor signage. So bike routes are going every which way and we are lost in the burbs, and asking non-bikers on the street is not helpful. Decision making in a group on a sunny street in the sweltering heat quickly lost it's allure so we took a side trail to a park, ate lunch and regrouped, plugging in the iPhone at a Shopper's Drug Mart. We hit the mother load with a Montreal city bike map PDF. Soon we were back on track and over the bridge to Montreal and headed straight to Evan an Leah's favorite bagel shop. The riding was a challenge- bumpy city streets and paths, tons of bikers, lights at every corner and more city heat. But we made it by 6pm and wolfed down a dozen of the best bagels in the world, right out of the oven, along with several liters of juice. A shopping stop and we were off to the other side of downtown to Clare's new house (Evan's former appartment mate). Clare and Kim had just moved in but were out of town, so they so generously offered us a great place to stay in the centre of the city. Thank you Clare and Kim! What a wonderful deal though getting there was again challenging due to a series of road detours for construction and a music festival. Everything was sweltering still when we arrived at 8pm. Cold showers and a cold supper helped. We were whooped and there were great fans which we strategically aimed at our beds. All seemed hot but survivable with the fans. Off to sleep we went till Alan woke up in a sweaty delirium that felt like a high fever. The fan had stopped. Was it broken? Had it blown a fuse? What to do? The fan was not turning on by pushing the proper buttons and turning on the light would mean more people waking in a sweat. So he dumped his head under a cold tap, went outside for a bit and was able to finally sleep. Then Ginny awoke in a similar state. Her solution was to find a sleeping pad and sleep in the backyard. Happily the heat started to dissipate and we slept in (Evan, Leah and Shane all slept well with their fan). So what happened to the fan? More conspiracy theories were proposed but it took until morning to get to the bottom of it. Stay tuned.
Distance: 106.91
Time on bikes: 6:03:39
Average speed: 17.6 km/h
Distance from Vancouver: 5689 km
Start: 8:10 am
End: 8:00 pm
Wind: west (strong tail)
Conditions: hot and muggy (32)


Cheers
- The Warpotay Team

Location:Montreal, Quebec