Actual Kms: 59 km in the rain.
Overkill Kms: A few around town, including one where I got a piece of glass in my tire and got a flat. Thankfully, Nick cemented it for me and it’s good as new.
Road Stuff: a few dead birds, dead skunk, rabbit?, telephone cord
Money Spent: $20 phone card (1.7 cents to Canada-yeah!), $3.50 popcorn chicken from Safeway, $3.50 Starbucks caramel latte, $4 beer/snacks
Wipeouts: 0 for me, but I narrowly dodged a pretty big hole today. As Joel said "Good rock dive Sarah!". Thank you Joel.
Interesting Person Pick: Matt Zanting, a former Alliston resident. I biked with him, Hans, Joel and Ed Witovet (the co-ordinators) brother today. Matt and I talked Tolstoy, Dostevesky, and other good literature (he is also an English major), phone cards (he has a fiancé), Alliston students (shout out to Dael, Garrett, Nina, Andrew, and Steven), and other random things in the rain. Also Cynthia, who I sat beside today at the Petalton is hilarious. I could listen to her all day. Favourite Part of the Day: Definitely know this one. There is a guy (50ish) named Johnny on the tour who always shouts out "Let’s do something beautiful" which is a line from the song on the promotional Sea to Sea video. He’s hilarious and a big biker. Today, after we got into camp, we started cleaning our bikes and he was talking about his patch box. He said "You know, I’ve had this patch box for about 30 years". Nick (who is 22) said "Uh, really? That box has 8 years on me." Johnny slumped his shoulders, looked down at his dinged up patch box and said "Really? Oh man." His look of disappointment and realization of his age killed me. I laughed like I haven’t laughed in months. Mostly because he is very young at heart and all the young people love him. Shout out to Johnny for making me laugh.
Worst Part of the Day: Sweating in my raincoat (it is too many layers) in the rain…when I took it off, it had a slimy film on the inside. Yuck. That’s gotta be cleaned in the shower (which is how we do things here on Sea to Sea).
Today was a great day. We woke up a little later because we all knew it was going to be a short ride. It started to rain and people lazily cleaned up their tents. I was going to ride with Brian but couldn’t find him for around 20 minutes so I left with Hans, Joel, Matt Zanting, and Ed’s brother. We kept a pretty good pace for 35 km (about an hour) and got to the Zilhah CRC where they served us cherries, watermelon and coffee. We decided to book it to Sunnyside and have coffee there. But on the way, we saw a teapot and sang "I’m a little teapot" and took pictures. J Also, as we were driving next to a horse farm, the horses started to run with us. It was awesome! The field was long and the thirty horses just kept looking at us and running alongside us.
When we got to Sunnyside, we stopped at the Safeway and I shared some popcorn chicken with the boys and had a latte outside on the patio. Random older gentlemen came up to us and asked what we were doing. They also warned us about a big hill coming up tomorrow. We’ll see how their predictions prove. Then we checked out the local pool complete with a waterslide and decided that it would be good to swim later if it got hotter. Then we found a cow and a dutch girl milking and took pictures. We made it to camp and saw a lot of people cleaning their bikes. So I found a rag and enjoyed cleaning my pretty red and white bike. All the bikes look so shiny now.
Then Brian and I decided to go to town and we found Hans, Matt Z and Johnny and went swimming at the local pool. We grabbed some snacks and beer at a convienence store and then sat outside and chilled. I said to Hans, "I feel like a little kid", and he replied, "Because we are biking around and hanging out at the convienence store?" I said "Yep". Smile.
We headed back to camp and walked over to the local Christian Elementary school and had a wicked Mexican dinner courtesy of the local CRC. During dinner, I had a good talk with Ed who is the leader and organizer of the trip. I know he’s probably a great biker and I really admire the way he is leading the trip. He talks to us at each Petalton meeting about the route and any other announcements.
During the middle of our chat Ed asked about my life quite a bit, which was in a way, complementary, because of how busy he is. Then he said "That’s a funky hat. Your kind of a funky girl aren’t you?" I replied "Yes, I go for funky". He nodded, smiled and said "I like that". It’s funny, but it’s the nicest compliment I’ve gotten in the last week. Which is odd, because I’ve gotten a lot of compliments, from my ride to my voice but I think it was just a moment of realization that this guy was taking the time to be perceptive out of his very busy day because he knew that the tour is about people and not about getting it all done. Now maybe, just maybe ;) I’m taking too much from a simple comment, but intuition tells me I’ve nailed it.
There are fireworks later on tonight to celebrate the fourth of July at the local public high school and the CRC is handing out root beer floats, which got a good cheer from the crowd at the Pedalton meeting. Overall, life is good. As I was walking back from the meeting I was listening to some of my music on my Ipod and I was on top of the world. How can my life get any better? I am finally getting a tan (yes Pake, a real tan on these white legs), eating really great food and it doesn’t matter, biking another great route tomorrow, sleeping outside, my bike is clean, and I’m really getting along with everyone here. The only bad part is my boyfriend isn’t here to share it and I can’t find a phone to call him. Bummer.
