Montreal

Montreal ended up being my longest stop by far. After the seemingly never ending day of riding to get to Zoe and Carlo's, we got our much on then promptly passed right out. Upon waking, it was time to refuel: onwards to all-you-can-eat sushi with Carlo. Definitely set a personal best for food consumed, ended up having to call it quits when everyone else had been done for such a long time that it was becoming awkward. So satisfying.

Montreal was essentially just a big wonderful haze of good beer, great food, wandering aimlessly, and meeting interesting people. I really enjoyed being in a "real" city again, and having it be bilingual as well was a total bonus. Got to practice my French a little bit before setting off in to monolingual Quebec. Zoe's place was air conditioned, which was a total highlight as Montreal was by far the hottest stop so far. My god it was hot. Quality mid-day time was spent indoors drinking beer and watching Olympic coverage. So happy I was able to catch a fair chunk of the action, missing the Olympics was one of my few reservations before setting out.

General highlights: air conditioning, meeting new folks, fooood ranging from smoked meat to burgers to Turkish to sushi and beyond, a wide variety of fine beers, bike upgrades (2x handlebar tape- take that hand numbness!), going climbing with Kai, people watching, bike ogling, Olympics, and of course getting to spend time with my wonderful hosts.

It was very hard to leave, and I ended up ultimately staying a day past my projected departure date. Sean stayed with us as well, but split off on the last day to head south-east to Maine. Final aside: losing weight like crazy despite eating everything I can get my hands on. Was down 12lbs in Ottawa D:

Pictured: a fire(!), delicious smoked meat sammich from Schwartz (sp?), view from the deck, wrapping the handlebars (took several attempts)