I’m going to be honest, and why wouldn’t I be in my very own blog; I started out yesterday with the lofty notion of making it home. Yup, I thought 224 km was ambitious but doable, and had it been a June day with endless hours of sunlight, or had I had a west wind, it would have been. But alas it was otherwise. From the moment I started riding east, the wind made it clear it was not going to assist me in any way. Okay, fine, I would be a little slower, but if I could hold 20 km/hr, I calculated in my head, I could cover the distance in 12 hours and arrive by sunset.
When you are riding across the flat, open expanses of southernmost Ontario, there is little to distract your attention from the woeful fact that you are grinding along at 18 km/hr. There are few trees, fewer bodies of water, and so you churn along, trying to will yourself not to look at your computer to see if you have gone another km.
I rode through Petrolia and was briefly cheered by the lovely old homes on the main street, but seeing only Tim Hortons and a local bakery that was closed, I kept going.
I had a brief respite from the wind as I rode north and stopped in a little town, Watford, where I found a bakery and loaded up with a sandwich and a few treats. At this point, I still thought the distance was doable.
Riding into Strathroy at noon, I had 150 km to go, and onwards I pushed. From there things went downhill, as I somehow made a wrong turn, or missed a turn, I am still not sure how, though fatigue definitely entered into the equation, and ended up in Mount Brydges, 10 km further south of the route I should have been on. Okay, it was time to take stock and replan. There was no way I could cover another 150 km before sundown. Not that there was any sign of a sun to set.
I started searching for towns with hotel offerings, and set my sights on St. Marys, where the Westover Inn looked promising. I emailed a request to book, and then started heading there—it was another 50 km, but honestly it felt like 100 km.
When I next stopped to check my phone, they had texted to say they had rooms but would be closing at 4, so to call if I wanted a room. From the side of the road, with traffic rumbling by, I spoke to the woman on the front desk who explained she would charge me their lowest rate but put me in the cottage, as that was the easiest room to get my bike in. God bless you, I said, it has been a pretty crappy day. She laughed and said, it seems kind of windy out there. Too right.
Once I had the room booked, I could finally let go of my initial ambitions and focus on the final few hours of the day, just as the sun started breaking through the dense clouds. It was amazing how the combination of a shift in my mindset and the sun’s arrival transformed the day.
The wind was determined to make those last km as hard as possible, but once in town I found the LCBO and Foodland, then made my way to the inn where they had left a key for me with all of the instructions I needed.
I was greeted by a very friendly duck, who may or may not have been employed by the inn as an official ambassador; he was not willing to say, and there was no one around to ask. I opened the cottage door to find a lovely room with a portrait of a bicycle over the bed; it was clearly meant to be.
Dear reader, it’s now time to pack up and ride the final 90 km home, and what a word that is with all its lovely connotations.