Yah! What’s All This Then?! is back. Today, all about Toronto’s current cycling issues: the Rob Ford bike plan, the potential removal of the Jarvis Bike Lanes, Critical Mass, etc, etc…

listen:
What’s All This Then?! no.29: Cycling!

or download (right click):
W.A.T.T.?! no.29: Cycling!

If you want to get involved, check out the Toronto Cyclists’ Union’s work to save the Jarvis St. lanes! ===> BikeUnion.to/Save-Jarvis

Kakabeka Falls - Ignace (218 kilometers)

The same railway line that ran through Lake Superior’s north shore mountains toys with the road northwest of Thunder Bay, crossing and re-crossing the highway; disappearing into woods and hills to and emerge hours later. This railway zigzag-paralels the Trans-Canada for, I think, its entire length.

my friend the railroad

After almost two weeks of solitary travel I’d begun to take comfort in seeing the trains as they slowly ambled past and vanished, sometimes passing in the distance, and sometimes quite near. Their presence reminded me that there were destinations beyond the russian doll horizons of this empty northern void. And, when a train passed nearby, often the driver would sound its whistle and we’d exchange friendly waves. Trains are beautiful; their whistles are beautiful; way they move is beautiful. Second to cycling, they’re the kindest form of motion human beings have made.

this sign lies

By midmorning a stormfront of dark clouds I’d watched inch towards me for hours finally dropped its shadow and a mist of rain across the road. I pulled to the gravel margin to find my waterproof jacket and put it on. This was useless: as I remounted my bike and set myself to going on, the real storm broke – a wall of water surged across the road, so thick that I was nearly drowned in the first instant. Continuing on was impossible; I looked about for shelter.

There was nothing: no half-abandoned shed; no thick stand of trees – and besides, my near-paranoid fear of snakes (the result of being almost-murdered by a viper as a child in Saudi Arabia) made me loathe the thought of sitting in abandoned sheds or dense woods even more than the prospect of huddling for hours in the downpour. There were a few farmsteads but their dilapidated condition and the rusted overgrown cars ornamenting their properties marked them as the habitations of rednecks. I loathe and fear rednecks almost as much as snakes.

Then, through a gap in the rain I saw a beacon:

a beacon

Like the Bat Signal succors law-abiding citizens with the knowledge that the Dark Knight exists to confront the merciless evils that stalk the back alleys of Gotham, the enormous smile painted on Gary and Alyss Rentz’s bright red barn offers wanderers on this lonely stretch of road reprieve from rain, snakes, and rednecks.

Following this beacon through the storm I made my way to that farm; past the half-open gate across the dirt driveway; past a joyous army of kitschy lawn ornaments; and to the foot of the stairs leading onto the covered veranda. There I saw an old man, resting his hands against the wooden railing as he stared off into the downpour. He hadn’t noticed me arrive, him looking away from the road towards the woods that fell away into a deep valley at the back of his property, and the deafening roar of the rain having obscured the sound of my approach.

“Um… hi. …I got caught in the rain,” I said.

He was startled for a moment – obviously not having expected any living thing to emerge from the deluge. But he quickly took in my soaked misery and the bike at my side.

“Oh – hello! You better come in, young man,” he said; as if having recognized the situation it had become perfectly normal and commonplace, “Bring your bike up here on the porch. Alyss!” he yelled into the house, “we’ve got a young feller on a bike!”

Gary and Alyss Rentz: Rural Superheroes!

I stayed with the Rentzs for the two hours the storm lasted. Alyss made some coffee and brought out a tray of cookies and muffins, and I told them how their barn had been a lifeline for me in the storm. And that led them to explain how they’d become a fixture in the world of International cross-Canada Cycling:

It had started with a European cyclist being caught in a similar situation and being drawn in by the barn. They were so welcoming that, when some friends of his were doing the same trip the next year, he gave them a letter to drop off at the Rentzs’. They were so moved by their hospitality that the cycle repeated itself and grew – more and more people stopped by, including a documentary film crew from Spain making a movie about cycling across Canada who included an interview with the them in the film. And, of course, people still see the barn through the rain and come by, as I had.

my bike resting on the Rentzs' porch

The Rentzs give everyone a meal and the chance for a hot shower, and they let them camp on their property, surrounded by the happy horde of lawn ornaments. In return, they get to trade stories with interesting people from all over the world. They love it.

I asked Mr. Rentz about the road ahead. He said there was just one campsite, only 80 kilometers or so away in Upsala; after that it was empty wilderness until you reached Ignace, 110 kilometers later. But, he said, there were abandoned logging roads along that stretch one could go down and find a clearing to camp in.

“Any bears around here?”

“Nope: the wolves have been getting into their dens during the winter and eating them. Not many bears, but lots of wolves.”

a pretty corner of the Rentzs' farm

“Seriously?”

He was serious. He told me about how, earlier in the summer, he’d been collecting wood in the forest behind his house when a pack of wolves had surrounded him, barking hungrily and glaring at him through the brush on all sides. Apparently the monsters had run out of bears to eat: they were overpopulated and hungry.

After the rain finally stopped, Gary took me on a quick tour of his property before I set out. After losing so much time in the mountains I was resolved to aim for Ignace – a total distance of almost 220 kilometers from where I’d begun the day in Kakabeka. As I was already down two hours from sitting out the storm, that’d be a hard ride. But with the alternative of camping amidst voracious bear-eating wolves, I’d damn well make it.

I passed a time zone on the way to Ignace but didn't feel any older.

Kids vs. Hippies vs. Cops vs. Me

I rolled into Ignace at dusk, barely clinging to enough conscious awareness to buy a bottle of whisky from the LCBO/convenience store/gas station on the edge town, and found the campground. It was a big, nearly-empty place. The owner, a friendly hippie, kept a trading library in the office and saw an opportunity to trade in my travel-worn copy of Wyndham’s ‘The Midwich Cuckoos’ for something fresh and pulpy the next morning. But, too exhausted after the days ride to bother with that now, I instead bought a stack of firewood and pitched tent in a lonely corner of the campground, intending to get drunk by firelight.

But I’m no good at lighting a fire and my brain and body were far from working in harmony by this point; so I quickly went through the supply of newspaper I’d been given and got no action out of the logs. So I resolved to march down to the camp’s washroom and steal as much toilet paper and paper towels as I could carry to light on fire and chuck at the logs. While I was gathering up this stuff, I noticed that some naive ass had left an iPhone plugged in to charge in the bathroom power outlet.

I believe most people are good at heart; or at least I believe most people believe they’re good; or at least they want to believe that so desperately they become absolutely brilliant at rationalizing their acts of cruelty or apathy: necessity, pragmatism, and cultural norms are cheap and and easy substitutes for decency; allowing the most thoughtless assholes to tick all the necessary boxes in their vacuous mental checklist of ‘goodness’. Whoever had left his phone here was fucked.

On my way to the bathroom I’d noticed there were only two other occupied campsites in the place: one a quiet RV; the other a pack of rural delinquent kids, the ball cap-and-penis bearing members yelling and throwing beer at each other across a roaring fire while the tit-bearing set sat beneath their hair in mute bovine stupidity. I hoped the phone belonged to the kids. But, alas – not so.

About an hour later, well after I’d gotten my fire going with the help of a wad of toilet paper the size of a beach ball, and well after I’d settled down with my bottle of whisky, the campsite-owning hippie came by with another hippie in tow – the fellow from the RV. Of course I knew what had happened, but I waited for them talk.

“Um…” said the nice Campsite Hippie, “well… this guy’s phone was in the bathroom and now it’s, like, gone.”

“Yah, I saw it there an hour ago.” I didn’t say anything about it being far past stupid to have left it there; that’d be rubbing salt in an open wound. “Did you come by to ask me if I stole it?”

“No,” said Campsite Hippie. “Nah, not really,” agreed RV Hippy.

“Damn Right!” I said, “‘cuz you fucking well know those kids stole it.”

“Yeah,” said RV hippie. Campsite Hippie nodded solemnly, and continued: “but we’ve already been there and they say they didn’t even see it.”

“Well,” I said, getting to the point, “what are you going to do?”

“I dunno,” said RV Hippie. “I think we otta call the police,” said Campsite Hippie.

“Yah, you should do that,” I agreed, and they went off to do it.

About twenty minutes later the OPP showed up. They talked to the two hippies; they drove down to where the kids were camped and talked to them; they drove to my campsite to talk with me. There were two cops, a young cop with a brush cut and an old cop with a moustache: a cop moustache.

“I guess you haven’t found the phone yet?”

a cop moustache

“Nope,” said Moustache Cop. “Did you steal it?”

“Nah — the kids stole it.”

“How do you know they stole it?”

“Because I didn’t steal it and I’m the only other person here.” That’s called a process of deduction. “So,” again getting right to the point, “what are you going to do?”

“Well, there’s not much we can do,” said Moustache Cop.

“Guy was fucking stupid to leave it there,” chimed in Brushcut Cop. Moustache Cop gave him a dirty look.

“Yah, I kinda thought so too. Why don’t you search all our stuff – go ahead, I won’t sue ya.”

“Nah, we can’t really do that,” whined Moustache Cop.

“Well, what would you normally do when, like, something gets stolen?” They looked at me blankly, as though such a contingency had never arisen before. “I mean… either I stole it or the kids stole it. It’s around here somewhere, so why don’t you dig around and find it?” You know: do your fucking job?

Brushcut looked keen, but Moustache wasn’t happy with this doing-actual-policework line of thinking. “Well, we can’t really do that,” he said.

“Ok. How about this: why don’t you go over to those kids and make a big show. Say: ‘Ok: someone’s stolen the phone and nobody’s leaving this campground until we’ve found it. So we’re going to go to the office for half-an-hour and, if that phone’s not in the bathroom where you found it when we get back, you’re all staying here tomorrow morning when we bring in the dogs and search the entire place.” That’s what Poirot would’ve done.

Brushcut Cop looked hopefully at Moustache Cop, but the latter shook his head again: “We can’t do that.”

It was pointless. I sat and sipped my whisky and, a couple minutes later the cops pissed off.

As I said: people are good at heart; or at least good enough to let their laziness transform goodness into a meaningless formula. Moustache Cop had ticked all his boxes and poor naive RV Hippie was fucked.

EDIT: My drummer, Dave MacDougall, just read this and asked: “why didn’t the cops just call the guy’s phone?” Duh. It didn’t occur to me either, but I’d had a lot of whisky at the time.

as dusk fell on the road to Ignace packs of imaginary dire wolves emerged from the forest to devour my mind and reduce me to panic. Yet I stopped to take this picture, because it was pretty.

This is one of an ongoing series of posts transcribing my journal from this cycling trip. If you want to check out the rest of them they’re here.

Thunder Bay – As Artist/As Tramp:

Arriving at Thunder Bay on this, the tenth day of my cycling odyssey from Toronto to Saskatoon, represented the second time I’d been there. The first was for a concert Kristin and I were doing: she’d won a “very prestigious competition” and the prize included a national tour, a good bit of money, and the great nuisance of having to deal with the most obnoxious artistic director imaginable. During that stop-over we’d stayed with a Lakehead University music theory professor and his wife who, as well as being very nice and a lot of fun, are also the collective owners of what has to be the most-bizarre-ever portrait of Jesus in existence. They keep it in a special room in the basement, covered by blankets. I wish I’d thought to take a picture of the thing — it’s just not an image one can recreate in words.

A charming review of that concert in the Lake Superior News:

“The programme included song cycles by Richard Strauss (1864-1949). In this music Mädchenblummen (Girl-Flowers) Strauss compares some of the women he knows with various types of flowers, the doleful “Ivy”, the mysterious Wasserrose (Water Lily) etc. The music was carefully prepared, and at this point I begin to appreciate the piano playing of Benjamin Mueller-Heaslip. Kristin’s collaboration with her husband is near flawless. There is none of the usual measured entries intended to get the tempo correct, the piano part in music of this type is equal to the soprano. When the piano is a 9 foot concert grand, it takes a very good soprano to hold her ground. Kristin has a huge voice…”

Yeah, I suppose my piano playing is definitely of the “slash-and-burn” school. But that’s what happens when you regularly play with bands so loud that if there’s no blood on the keys at the end of the night, you know nobody in the audience has heard a note you’ve played.

“As an added bonus, Kristin sang a piece entitled “My Hat” as her encore. This was a great piece and it featured a vintage chapeau, hat box, and mirror as props. This colourful addition provided a visual presence to the nature and humour of the ladies hat. Props are good.”

…words to live by!

BONUS! …a concert excerpt of Kristin and I playing on that tour:

Thunder Bay – As Jane Jacobs:

Which way to the world? Sign outside an international backpacker's hostel in Thunderbay

During my one former visit, I’d not had an opportunity to see much of Thunder Bay: just the professor’s home outside the city, the University where we performed, and a strange-but-awesome Finnish restaurant where we had dinner (apparently there are lots of people of Finnish background in Thunder Bay). But now I got to ride through the entire city: passed the famous Sleeping Giant, along the lakeshore, downtown, and out the other side. It is, in parts, unexpectedly attractive. A little river runs through it, crossed by some aesthetically-pleasing bridges; and there are some beautiful parks. These things show that, at some point, someone of authority in the municipal government gave a fuck about making it a beautiful and humane place to live. But the rest of Thunder Bay – a portrait of car culture proudly pissing on the corpses of beauty and livability – makes it clear that that municipal ethos existed a very long time ago.

But I’ll put aside my rant about awful municipal planning and cultural degradation for a few more posts; until I reach the place that stands head-and-shoulders above all others on my list of “The Shittiest Places I Passed Through”. Can you guess which it is?

Thunder Bay – As Pilgrim:

While I was in Thunder Bay I had a mission to fulfill: Ray – the wise Native wanderer I’d met at the beginning of my trip; and whose advice had inspired me as I’d wrestled the north shore mountains for the past several days – had told me that when I reach Thunder Bay I should stop by Petrie’s Cycle Shop and thank Mr.Petrie on his behalf. Somewhere near the Manitoba border, one of Ray’s wheels had developed a crack; and by the time he arrived at Thunder Bay it was falling apart. So he limped it into Petrie’s Cycle and Mr.Petrie had built him a new wheel for unbelievably cheap.

Petrie's Cycle, in Thunder Bay

So I found the shop, bought a few spare tubes, and asked the clerk if Mr. Petrie was around. He was, and he came out from the back of the shop to say hello.

“Do you remember a guy named Ray?” I asked him, “he stopped here a while back… you made him a new wheel?”

“Oh yeah, I remember him… did you meet him on the road?”

“Yup. I ran into him at the ferry station in Tobermory. He told me to tell you that he’d made it, and that he’s really thankful for what you did for him.”

I could see he was touched by that. “Well… I’m always glad to help you cross-country guys out; and Ray was…” he stuttered, trying to find the right words, “…well, Ray was just such a beautiful man.”

He was little embarrassed to find himself speaking a bit emotionally, but it’s hard to talk about someone like Ray any other way. His kindness, generosity, and unpretentious charm isn’t something one encounters often; and I was glad to find I wasn’t the only one who felt that way about him. So: if you’re ever passing through Thunder Bay, stop in at Petrie’s Cycle – they’re good people!

Thunder Bay – As Missionary-for-Hoboism:

It was early afternoon when I left Thunder Bay along the Trans-Canada Highway, and just west of town I stopped for a quick rest in a shady spot behind a roadside Husky gas station/restauraunt. It turned out that this was where the restaurant staff congregated to smoke and share resentments about their lousier customers. One young guy from the kitchen took an interest in my bike and asked lots of questions about the trip:

“Where are you going?” Saskatoon.
“Why?” My sister-in-law’s getting married there.
“Why don’t you drive?” That would mean being in a car with my mother-in-law for three days.
“Is it dangerous?” Well… I did almost crash into a bear. But other than that, no.
“How far do you go every day?” About 140k, give or take.
“Isn’t the bike heavy with all that gear on it?” Try picking it up!
“Fuck! It’s really heavy!”

I asked him about where I could find a place to camp nearby, and he gave me directions to Kakabeka Falls Provincial Park; about 30k west along the highway. As we talked it became fairly obvious that he’d never been very far from the environs of Thunder Bay. But I hope his curiosity and enthusiasm for what I was doing might encourage him to give it a go himself sometime.

Kakabeka Falls – Rangers & Critters vs. Me:

Kakabeka Falls... it sounds Australian, but it's not.

This being by far the most beautiful campsite I stayed at during the whole trip, I’m just going to let this picture gallery speak for itself. The only things of interest that happened were: a) my being gently reprimanded by one of the damn Park Rangers for burning a bit of wood that was laying about (he said that the thing might be the habitat of little critters, which seemed a reasonable view: so this led to a new policy of going about a campsite soon after my arrival to gather up the official Ranger-approved firewood others had bought but not used up before leaving), and b) someone stole my cycling gloves the next morning (I suspect it was that same Ranger, taking revenge on me on behalf of the little critters). But I didn’t care, because by this time the callouses on my hands could stop bullets.

Pictures of Kakabeka Falls:

I'm sure glad this wasn't a canoe trip...

The rumble of the falls as I slept was comforting... just like hearing the gentle ebb and flow of traffic outside our house in Toronto.

The true hero of this story posing in front of the falls!

Like any good falls, Kakabeka had sunk the river into a deep gorge over millennia. Desperate trees cling to its sides; as fragile as humanity clings to the Earth, and as heedless of their trivial existence and inevitable doom. Otherwise, this is just kind-of a shitty picture of a rock. I really have no idea why I took it at all.

i. a congealment of hitchhikers:

Regardless of how tight the fist of contemporary respectability, insecurity, and normalcy squeezes the human spirit, some tiny portion of wanderlust will always squeak through. That being so, I’m happy to report to you that hitchhiking culture is alive and well in Canada.

Throughout my cycling journey from Toronto to Saskatoon I found roadside rest stop washrooms graced as much by their marker-drawn slogans as by their misaimed urine: bold words like “pickup hitchers motherfuckerz!” and “the food at the Voyageur Restaurant is shit” mark the passage of generations of these brave souls. And along the entire breadth of the Trans-Canada Highway through Ontario, they’ve erected inukshuks to mark the spot where a man stood, thumb outstreched, fearlessly mocking the whims of fate and horny truckers alike.

a possibly-hitchhikerer-made Inukshuk!

Near the end of this day’s ride, climbing a newly-paved road up a great hill leading into Nipigon, I encountered a great congealment of hitchhikers. I’ve thought about what one might call a group of hitchhikers: a flock? a mob? A senate? But I’ve settled on congealment; because that’s what grease does when it settles down en-masse: it congeals.

packed and ready to go!

This was the hottest day I’d yet spent on the road, and the sun reflected off the shiny new blacktop in visible waves. I was sunburnt and exhausted, the helmet-strap tan that would take half a year to fade already beginning to mark me as a veteran of this long road. And the hitchhikers, having come this far only to find that they couldn’t carry from this point without a lift, had congregated here, and were now engaged in an intricate and unforgiving game of high-strategy:

The more scuzzy and intimidating amongst them jostled for position at the top and bottom of the hill, each struggling to be the first seen by a hitcher-friendly car coming their way. They played out this vicious game with complete nonchalance: as a hitcher eased slowly past whoever was in pole position, he did so with the pretense of ‘just stretching his legs a bit’; and when passed in turn he’d make no complaint but merely bide his time for a suitable interval before upping the stakes with another five-meter stroll.

The milder hitchhikers, occupying the middle of the hill, adopted a different strategy: these formed partnerships-of-convenience in hopes of speeding their way by sharing a car that, while unwilling to stop for a single thuggish hitcher at either end of the hill, might yet be willing to stop for two friendlier looking hitchers despite their inferior strategic positioning.

ii. Dominic “Hollywood” Filane… where is he now?

Have you ever considered what becomes of our sporting heroes when they find their brief spark of youthful glory isn’t equal to the three score and ten years we’re allotted on this Earth?

a younger Dominic Filane meeting the Queen!

Well, if that sporting hero is Dominic “Hollywood” Filane, Olympic boxer and Canadian Lightweight Champeen from 1990-1999, he moves to a small northern Ontario town (in this case Schreiber) and puts the Filane name on everything associated with the place. On the way into Schreiber is a gargantuan wooden cut out featuring a picture of the boxer and a proud scroll: “Schreiber: Home of Dominic “Hollywood” Filane!”

And he’s obviously invested his boxing earnings, as well as his weighty name-recognition capital into a multi-pronged but strangely localized business venture: Filane™ bottled water; Filane™ clothes; and, when I saw the Filane Hotel this morning my curiosity demanded I stop in there for a coffee.

The Filane Hotel, in Schrieber

The ex-Lightweight Champion himself soon pulled up in a SUV bedecked with the logo of the Filane™ clothing line, and I said hello. He seemed a very nice guy. But I wonder if there isn’t some sadness beneath the surface of this scene: pride and physical prowess translate awkwardly to a rural corporate logo. Regardeless, and as I’m sure isn’t the case for the majority of athletes, he seems to have found a way to step from his career in sports to something he finds worthwhile, even if it’s a little cheezy and a hell of a lot less flashy.

iii. blueberry cult!

Sometime after Schreiber, nearing the end of the mountains, I stopped for a rest in a beautiful valley which is the home of a Native band… I think called ‘Pays Plat’? Anyway, if you ever happen to be passing that way I highly recommend you keep an eye out for this place, because the owner of the little gas station/convenience store there is awesome!

the top of the last big hill... almost there...

“Don’t give up man!” he yelled when I opened the door, “there’s just two more big hills to go!”

“Hallelujah!” I replied.

...going down that other side!

“Yup,” he continued in the slow, inflectionless I’m-Native-and-I’m-gonna-make-a-joke-now voice I’d gotten to love by this point, “when you get to the top of the second hill, look west: on a clear day you can see Calgary from there.”

“Heh, heh.”

“Yup, it’s a big hill, but I bet you won’t have to pedal for an hour on the way down.” That was pretty-much true.

I bought three chocolate bars, two cans of pop, and two packs of cigarettes. “If you’re gonna eat shit like that, you oughta buy some of my blueberries,” he said, his eyes expressing deep sorrow at the blueberryless state of my diet. Then he pulled up a big tub of blueberries from a cooler behind the counter and, with more pride than you’d think it possible for a blueberry-monger to express, he rhapsodized on the freshness, taste, and healing power of his blueberries.

My heart was moved by his love of that humble fruit and I bought a pint of the things. Nodding in solemn satisfaction, like a preacher who knows he’s converted a wandering soul to the path of Righteousness, he said “hold on – you’re gonna want more of those later.” And he drew me a map to the location in Thunder Bay where his brother also sold blueberries.

iv. it’s good to laugh loud.

As I sat at a picnic table outside the store eating my magical blueberries, a husband and wife team of rednecks pulled up in an ancient pickup laden with furniture. The fellow was curious about my bike and we chatted for a bit while his partner went inside to replenish their supply of jerky.

Nipigon!!

They were on their way to “near Ingersoll” after having driven to Alberta to pick up the furniture his wife had recently inherited. He gave me his impressions of the road ahead (confirming the 2-hill hypothesis) and I told him about what I’d been up since leaving Toronto. As we talked I noticed that he’d laugh at every little joke as though it were the funniest thing he’d heard in his life. At first I was confused by this: this man obviously wasn’t a stupid yokel – to the contrary he was very smart and funny. But I soon realized that he was doing this because he felt precisely the same way speaking to me as I felt speaking to him: we looked; and talked; and were so entirely different from each other that laughing loud was the best possible way of expressing friendliness and understanding. It was a generous thing, and I liked him. When his wife got back from the store with jerky, cigarettes, and the inevitable pint of blueberries, we wished each other good luck for the rest of our respective journeys and went our separate ways.

v. Stillwater C.G.; southwest of Nipigon

The day’s ride ended at Stillwater Campground, about 10k southwest past Nipigon. This is another spot I can heartily recommend: unlike most campgrounds, which charge the same rate for a single peaceful cyclist as for a minivan full of screming, campsite-destroying, injury waver-necessitating children, at Stillwater C.G. if you get there by bike you can stay for $6.

Gus' Restaurant, Nipigon. I took this photo solely because I have a basset hound named Gus..

If you’ve just discovered this journal and are interested in reading the rest of the entries, they’re here.

Zeno’s Paradox of Infinite Disitance:

Before arriving, one must get halfway there. Before he can get halfway there, he must get a quarter of the way there. Before traveling a quarter, he must travel one-eighth; before an eighth, one-sixteenth; and so on. This requires one to complete an infinite number of tasks, which Zeno maintains is an impossibility.

Along the north shore of Lake Superior, the Trans-Canada Highway becomes a 300km long slow-motion roller coaster. The slopes seem to grow as you grind slowly up, unfurling an endless length of road behind while maintaining a constant distance between yourself and the summit. Then there’s an endless drop down the other side; a short trip across a forest valley; and another, bigger, hill.

hills, hills, hills

As I was struggling up one of these endless climbs, the strange apparition of a tandem bike flying the Quebec flag and ridden by two beautiful girls in shorts and bikini tops appeared at the crest of the hill. In a moment they’d shot past me and around the curve, their tinkling bike bells fading away; and I wondered whether it had been a hallucination brought on by the heat and exhaustion. Ray had been right a week ago when he’d told me “the north shore is rough, but it’s worth it because it’s beautiful”, and right in more ways than he knew.

By mid-afternoon, I had to once again decide between settling for a shorter-than-planned mileage for the day and stop at a provincial campground or pushing on and trying to reach Terrace Bay. As usual I decided to go for the longer ride: a policy of keeping ahead of schedule that would eventually pay off when, in a couple weeks, I’d collapse at a campsite in Gladstone, Manitoba and sleep for a day and a half.

hills, hills, hills

So today’s ride took me as far as Terrace Bay. The campsite there was a strange and vaguely disreputable place: a ragged putt-putt golf course, an office/store exclusively devoted to huntin’ and fishin’ supplies (and the display of stuffed corpses of various critters who’d been hunted and fished), a rotund and surly hostess. But she gave me the good news that “another bike guy is staying here”, which was great because I hadn’t yet had a chance to hang out with another cyclist.

The camping business at this campground happened in an isolated clearing well away from the sad putt-putt. Aside from a little tent with a beautiful bike next to it, the place was completely deserted.

The little tent belonged to Henri:

Henri!

Henri is from Montreal. He’d started in Vancouver (I don’t remember how long it’d taken him to come this far). We hung out and chatted about strategy, various methods of tackling hills, and the good and awful places we’d stopped in. As an adventurer, Henri was a true professional: in the true spirit of camaraderie he pointed out that the gears on my bike were useless for hills like these, a fact I’d clued-into just the day before.

He even had a cute little butane stove with which he cooked a nice pasta dinner for himself as I foraged for bits of wood to make a fire and boil my horrible Mr.Noodles; and sat sipping wine while I mixed whisky and coke by taking sips from both bottles in quick succession. True to form, I couldn’t get the damn fire started and had to borrow Henri’s stove. I felt like Rob Ford at an astrophysics convention.

hills, hills, river, hills

I finally got my fire going just after Henri had gone to bed and bitterly regretted that he wasn’t awake witness my success. But I soon had other company in the form of a German who’d pulled into the campsite on a motorcycle a little earlier. He was doing a circle-tour of Lake Superior, and gave a heroic account of his übermanly touring philosophy: a man; a bike; a bag of pepperettes; a block of cheese.

And he took up the justly-common theme of blasting the Provincial Park campgrounds, making the distinctively German sound of contemptuous dismissal: a sort of raspberry-spit-pop (if you’ve been to Germany, you know what I mean), while complaining about how regressive a country that doesn’t allow campgrounds to sell beer must be.

Too right!

***

If you’ve just joined this story, here’s a link to the rest of the posts in the Cycling Blog: Toronto-Saskatoon series.

I’ve been a fan of Tank Riot for a long time and I’m really proud that something I made contributed in a small way to one of their shows.

They use a track from The Torture Memos as the outro to the show, and say some nice things about Kristin’s voice. It’s part of Episode 103, which is mostly about their all-time favorite novels.

If you don’t know Tank Riot you’re missing out. It’s the champion of all podcasts. Check it out!

Woke up in my bushcamp outside Tobermorey feeling surprising well rested. I was back in Tobermorey by 7:30, intending to catch the Chi-cheemaun Ferry to Manitoulin Island but discovered that the early ferry had left at 7:00 and the next trip across wouldn’t be leaving until after 10:00. So I had breakfast and decided to spend a bit of time cleaning my bike (pushing it through the bush to and from my guerilla camp hadn’t been good for it) and patching the tubes that were punctured yesterday, in case I needed them later on.

doing some bike maintenance while waiting for the Chi-Cheemaun

While I was working I looked up and noticed a native guy with sun-bronzed skin wearing a cycling outfit had stopped and was watching me. He saw me looking at him and broke into a big friendly grin. “You biking?” he asked the obvious in a slow monotone.

“Yup, I’m biking,” I said. “Are you biking?”

“Yup. Where are you going?”

“Toronto to Saskatoon,” I said.

He thought for a moment. “Take you four days so far?”

“Just my third day today.”

“You’re pretty quick. Good stuff!”

“How long have you been on the road?”

“Hmm… I left Vancouver on the 13th of May.”

“No shit! You’ve been on the road for three months?!”

“Yup. I’m slow.”

my comrade-in-wheels: Ray

I hung out with Ray for more than an hour. A really great, if enigmatic, person. When I asked him why he wanted to do this trip he answered “Just thought I’d take care of some of my bucket list”. Not many people can say something like that in a way that’s neither ironic nor insipid, but he could. He talked always in a slow monotone without any inflection to differentiate between seriousness and jokes. I found it very striking: most people do everything possible to make sure know when you’re supposed to laugh and when to nod gravely. Ray was full of humour but he didn’t give a fuck whether or not I noticed. I liked him a lot.

He’d come to Tobermorey to meet his brother who lived a ways south of town, but it wasn’t at all clear whether he was staying here or not. When I asked him about that he said something along the lines of “well, I’m not selling the bike.” Before he left he gave me a set of brochures and business cards from the campground he’d found and liked; told me which towns had decent bike shops (also told me that, if I got a chance I should stop at Petrie’s Cycle in Thunder Bay and thank Mr. Petrie for doing the good turn of fixing Ray’s rear wheel for cheap – he says it’d “cracked up somewhere in Manitoba”. I did manage to pass on his thanks).

His advice about the road ahead: “when you get north of Lake Superior there are some mountains. It’s not that bad. There are a couple big slopes coming up just south of Espanola too. You’ll get there tomorrow, and if you can do that Superior will be ok.”

the Chi-Cheemaun Ferry disgorging some motorcycles

The Chi-Cheemaun Ferry is huge. Apparently it can carry 150 cars in one trip. The lower part of the hull is a huge hollow tube, like an airplane hanger, and most of the cars go on both the bottom level while some sit above them on a level of magically-suspended scaffolding. Unfortunately my camera soon ran out of batteries so I couldn’t take any photos of the trip across to Manitoulin. I explored the ship, finding my way around all the decks until it started to rain. Then I found there was a bar and hung out there drinking and playing euchre with a bunch of motorcycle-riding folks I’d met while waiting for the ferry after Ray’d left.

my bike leaning against the wall of the Tourist Office at the north end of Manitoulin Island (notice the pouring rain)

The sun had come back out by the time we reached Manitoulin and stayed with me for the first twenty kilometers of the seventy kilometers to the other side of the island. But then it got ugly. I got well soaked and ended up taking shelter in a Tourism Office near the north end of Manitoulin for a couple hours (…some of you got my pathetic Facebook update from there…). But the rain didn’t look like quitting and I wanted to get as near to Espanola as possible, so around 5:00PM I decided to put my rain jacket on and push on.

Between the north end of Manitoulin and the mainland there’s a series of smaller islands connected by bridges. The bridge to Great Cloche Island is a very strange bridge, designed by either an idiot with no budget or a sadist with unlimited resources, that rotates 180 degrees to allow ships to pass through. It has only one narrow lane so traffic from either direction has to line up and take turns. Not a fun experience on a bike in the pouring rain. But that bridge is the border to the real North. On the other side one immediately notices the change in the air – the sharp dark smell of coniferous forest.

About a kilometer further, riding along a long strip of road running through swampy bush, I saw a little group of people huddling in the rain on the edge of the road. As I reached them I saw it was three native kids, maybe eighteen or twenty-year olds, two guys and a girl. As I was going by, one of the boys called out “Hey! Do you have any cigarettes?”

I realized that I did have exactly four cigarettes left and they were getting soaked in the rain, so the four of us who’ve been suffering in the rain might as well have them now. I skidded to a stop and gave them each a smoke. We hung out for a while by the road, chatting about my trip and the pow wow they’d been to on Manitoulin the day before and drank from a water bottle full of melon-flavoured vodka. They were trying to hitch a ride north to Birch Island and they must’ve got one soon after I left them because a minivan went screaming by with the guy who originally asked me for cigarettes hanging half out of the window and yelling “Have a great trip!!”

The rain finally stopped when I made it past the little chain of islands (including Birch Island) onto the mainland north of Lake Huron. The road here got pretty rough, with lots of steep ascents and drops. But it was beautiful and, as Ray had said, taking these hills made me feel better about the prospect of going through the mountains north of Superior.

It was here that I met a bear:

this isn't the bear I met, it's just a random picture of a bear.

And I met this bear at a very bad moment: I was coming down one the steep hills when, just about 30 meters ahead of me, it suddenly came out of the thick bush on the side of the road – right in front of me and I was going too fast to stop. In a very short moment I did a mental analysis of the situation and decided that the best course of action was to yell my head off while accelerating as fast as I can and trying to swerve past the bear. I figured yelling at it was better than startling it as I went by and that accelerating towards it would make it think I was attacking it and not something it wanted to chase. Also I had some sort of (in hindsight) absurd idea that, should the bear lunge at me, I’d do better to crash into it at full speed.

When I yelled the bear got up on its back legs and turned toward me. It had a strange glazed-over look in its eyes that gave me hope: it was exactly the same look my dog Gus gets when he’s startled by a plastic bag blowing across the sidewalk and doesn’t know whether he’s supposed to fight or run.

So I went by the bear. It was almost in the middle of the road and I stayed as far away as I could, but if I stretched out my arm and it stretched out its paw, we could’ve shaken hands. But it didn’t try to get me. It just pivoted its head to follow me with its stupid, glazed-over eyes. Then I was passed it and I just flew for fifteen minutes, going over two more big hills like Alberto Contador before I dared to look back.

Night 3: Camping near Espanola