When I met up with Sean in the morning, we both agreed that we could totally make it to Montreal in one day. It was only what, 180km? No problem. Cue so many minor setbacks and the longest day of the trip.
The night before I had been told about a biking trail that will take us to Quebec. It's an old train route where the rails had been torn up, leaving nice crushed gravel. Sounds good- no traffic! Turns out Sean had been told about it as well, so we prepare to go give it a shot. Right as were ready to leave, Tom and Patti's neighbour Bob graciously offers to ride us out to the start of the trail. We obviously accept and head off on a scenic ride along the waterfront, passing the governor generals house as well as the PMs (pretty sure I saw his cat). We were about an hour in when we realized that we were still a ways from beginning our already lengthy journey. After another fourty minutes of riding and one brief scare from Bob ("I'm not really recognizing any of this!", we made it to the trail. No regrets though, the route Bob took us on was a highlight of the days ride.
Once we were on the trail we ripped along at a pretty good clip. The trail was well maintained and made for easy riding... For the first 60km. The last 30km were absolute murder. The gravel became loose and sandy, and I was slipping all over the place. After and hour and a half of slow riding and non-stop cursing, we bailed on to a side road and connected back to the main route, and once again the riding was good. Crossing in to Quebec it felt like a weight lifted from my shoulders: I was finally out of Ontario. The road shoulders widened, the signs were all better, people spoke French at rest stops- it was great.
We made it all the way to the edge of Montreal before we ran in to the next challenge: navigating in cities is mad hard. the sun had set and we were no in the clutches of a city we had no understanding of. It was literally 2+ hours of biking 5-10mins, followed by an equal amount of time being spent analyzing how many wrong turns we just made and how to adjust the route. After a seeming endless number of wrong turns, and with the help of one of Montreal security guard who seemed to know what was up, we bombed down a massive hill and pulled in up front.
Departure: 930am; arrival: 11pm
Total time in the saddle: 9h45m
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