All Uphill

I’m losing perspective: all roads that aren’t dramatically downhill are starting to look like big climbs.  Yoy.

Another night shift for RV2 and we’re totally rockin’ it. We’re still averaging 25km/hr even with these nasty up-hills.  The Sault area is nasty on a bike, but so much more amazing on a bike because you can take in the scenery.

We had a pit stop in Wawa for the RV change where we found out that the other team totally knocked down a high speed of 71.8 on the tandem.  Way cool…but way making Kerry and I want to destroy it!

We paced ourselves on a bunch of ascents and easy downs until, around 11pm, Kerry and I found our hill.  We got into top gear and were totally blasting the descent.  There was one big dip left in the road and we found another gear, pumping our legs as hard as we could, lungs burning, heart racing…and then we blew a pedal with 150 meters to go on the hill.  So disappointing!

There was a bit of panic going on…not too sure what order things happened in because we were going too fast to look down and figure out what was going on.  It was too dark.  I caught 69.8 km/hr on the bike computer, but we’d lost a little bit already.  We certainly didn’t bust through the 71.8, but we had at least 70km/hr, if not 71!

The threads on the crank were completely stripped.  The pedal was still clipped in on my shoe…pretty crazy.  It was a shaky moment, but luckily I was in the drops and Kerry is a real steady rider.  I didn’t need to move my hands to reach the breaks, so we just had to shake off a wobble and slow down.

We’ll get it tomorrow, Kerry, tomorrow. ;o)

Got into camp and Canadian Olympic rower Chris Jarvis had made the most amazing campfire-cooked banana bread with walnuts and chocolate chips.  Dude actually cooked it on the campfire in foil.  Made the batter from scratch.  Epic.

Really hoping to get some internet access soon…have some video we NEED to get up here and lots of pictures.

I’m also thinking of my beautiful wife, who is officially going to celebrate her birthday without her husband.  Love you baby…tomorrow we’ll be in Thunder Bay and I’m hoping Rogers has their act together for cell phone reception…