The rain's a comin'
A nice comfortable ride through rainy, overcast conditions. This would have been a great day to camp, but the extreme heat over the past few days had me cautious and I prebooked a motel for today and tomorrow. I'll have poorly planned days coming up, so I'm not worried about experiencing some adventure in the near future.
Leaving Clinton
The Maitland River
I also passed over the 1000km threshold today, which is always a significant milestone for me. The first few days of riding long distances always comes with pain and injury that make me second guess my life choices. At 1000km my body will either accept the situation or refuse to work anymore. I'm happy to say it's still working.
Feeling nostalgic, I looked at my progress at this stage in my past tours and discovered some interesting comparisons.
On my first tour going cross- Canada, I was at 880km with 2 days off after 10 days. I knew that whole tour was going to be close to 8000km so I wasn't thinking, (or caring) about daily progress. I also had no timeline to stick to (I had a year off), and I honestly had no expectation of finishing the whole tour at all.
On my second tour going down the Pacific Coast Highway, I covered 1222km after 10 days, with no days off. This is almost an unfair comparison because I can't imagine a more incredibly beautiful ride for any cyclist to be able to do. As long as you're cool with riding on the edge of a cliff in two lane traffic with little or no protection from a fall to your death - you'll love it! Which I did.
The issue I'm having with this tour is that the concept is too abstract. It takes too long to explain exactly what I'm doing because people seem to have a vague understanding of what the Great Lakes coastline actually entails. The first question I usually get asked is where am I coming from? The problem is that even after 1000km, I've rarely ever been more than a couple hundred km from Toronto, usually less. As the crow flies, I'm covering the least amount of distance in the most amount of time possible.
It's hard to feel the progress in my own mind so each day is still a bit of a struggle. I'm hoping that when I see the completed route, combined with the shoreline sections I covered on my first tour, it will hit home for me.
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