Week 14 Update

Last week was the longest and toughest seven days of my coast to coast to coast bicycle journey across Canada as you have probably read and to be honest, I wish that it stays so and that I only have better days ahead.

Week 14 was pretty relaxed compared to the previous one.

On Monday, I left Clarenville to cycle to St Peter’s, my second last ride to St John’s.

What a foggy morning!
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But none of that was going to stop me from taking my obligatory pre-ride self-portrait

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Oh and it was very windy.

But other than that, it was just an uneventful ride with some interesting sights along the way.

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An almost real life moose…

A town with the most interesting name…

And then suddenly the fog disappeared leading way to a beautiful sunny but very windy afternoon.

In my whole life I have never been in a situation where within a few short minutes, the temperatures went from one extreme to another.

Look at the screenshot below taken from my GPS unit!

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It felt like a curtain was opened. In seven minutes the weather went from foggy to sunny and the temperature reacted accordingly. I had to stop and get undressed because I went from freezing less than a hour prior to close to a heat stroke!

I am glad I have access to GPS data because no one believed me until I produced these results!

The scenery now looked like this

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I kept on riding until I got to my destination

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I don’t know what was it about this little town but I liked it a lot even if I was there for less than 12 hours.

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In the morning, I woke up with a smile on my face.

Why? Well, I had one last ride before St John’s my ultimate Newfoundland destination.

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No matter of crazy steep hills could bring my joy down.

I think at this stage I was only interested in what the signs indicated.

Remember when in my previous post, I wrote how almost discouraged I was when I saw that my ride across Newfoundland or Channel-Port Aux Basques to St John’s to be precise would be a 890 km adventure?

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Well, 14 days later, I was on my last stretch and enjoyed watching the countdown along the Trans Canada Highway.

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And here I was at the city limits. I had arrived but not exactly…

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Another half an hour or so and I finally got to St John’s, Newfoundland

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Oh happy day!!

I had a lot of time to kill so I cycled around the city to check it out a little bit.

The highlight was going to the Terry Fox remembrance site.

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I wish I could say that beside that little visit I saw much of St John’s.

The truth is that I was totally tired and broke from my 14-day adventure that I was not in the mood for anything. I was almost morally defeated and just stayed indoors for three days until the day I left.

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My only souvenir from St John’s was the chocolate from Newfoundland Chocolate Company, a local pride, that my host offered me and I ate it in the same so that did not last long.

Yes, I know that I end this in anti-climatic manner but it’s just the way I felt. I wanted to get off the island and carry on my journey in a more hospitable province.

I have to admit that Newfoundland was a difficult journey because my phone did not work here which is something I never even thought of and the fact that I went there before the travelling season started so everything was closed.

The weather did not help too but even if it almost killed me, I should have respected it more.

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So a few days later, I got back on the ferry and I left Newfoundland with a promise to come back one day under better circumstances to visit my new friends and rediscover the province in a more friendly season.

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In the morning I disembarked from the ferry back into Nova Scotia and to Cape Breton where my journey from Eastern to Western Canada was about to begin, part II of The Big Journey.

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