Morning comes early without drapes or curtains to cover the light. It was just after 5 AM when I became aware of people moving around outside. I thought it way to early to move, so I tried to go back to sleep. But by 6 AM, which happens to be my usual rising time, I figured there was no point in putting it off.
Having had some beans at dinner last night I was not to be immune to playing that saxophone, as I was getting dressed I let one rip and you'd think the earth had moved or something. All I could here around me were my neighbors asking each other "Was that you", "Nicely done", "Who was that!". I almost expected someone to hand me a trophy as I got out of the tent, but they just smiled and said "Morn'in!"
I wanted to go have a shower, pack my gear, have breakfast and then get going.
Well, forget about the shower, the line up was much too long.
OK I thought, let me go to the bathroom, and then pack up.
Well, forget about the bathroom, the condition of these bathrooms (Port-a-potties actually) would have made your average gas station look like a hospital operating room. I don’t know what happened over night but it reminded me of the old Confucius story WhoFlungPoo. I decided to hold everything until a Tim Horton’s came into sight.
Brushing my teeth was done at the end of the field we were in.
It seems many people had the same idea, “mgoob Monink” I said to my neighbor, “Mmmmooorng” she said back spitting out after she had spoken.
Throw the gear on the truck; it would be in Niagara Falls later that afternoon.
Off to breakfast, and again I’ll refrain from saying too much. I’ve cooked for large groups of people before, never 5000, but there has got to be a better way to get your food to the table while it’s hot.
Aside from that it was nutritious, which in the end is what its all about I guess.
Out of the gates at 7:32 AM and through the town of Ancaster (I think that’s where we were), it’s too bad they don’t hire someone to play the bagpipes as you leave. On the cancer walk the departure from camp was marked with the sound of the bagpipes as you pass by the starting gate, something about them just gets your blood pumping.
Much of the day was spent enjoying the countryside, it really gives you some perspective to trundle down a country road, on one side there is a farm, on the other a huge Mega house.
Who owns these huge estates? where do they work? Did they win the lottery? I mean these are beautiful places, lots of land and no one around for kilometers to bother you.
My mind wanders, I think I need to organize a wine tour by bicycle, it would be a great way to see the the wineries.
I hadn't noticed at first, when did it first start acting up? Once again my bike had a problem, but this time I wasn’t sure what it was. I thought at first it was the gear cables, as my bike kept on switching gears without warning, and often at an inappropriate time. Finally I came to an intersection with a Tech Team on the other side, off I went to get some help.
They asked what the problem was, I told them the symptoms. They took my bike and out it on the back of there van, just then my teammate came along and seeing the bike on the rack said “you can’t quite now. We are almost there.” The technician interjected and said, “ Your chain is seized up, if I try and pry it, I might break it. I can put some oil on it, it might make it, or it may break later?” It was a question in a statement, “lube it up” I said, as long as I can ride it.
I guess what must have happened overnight there was some dew settling on the bikes, I hadn’t oiled my chain for a while, (read that as many years), and the water rusted the chain together a one point in the linkage, whenever it would hit the gear it would slip off and drop down a gear on me.
It took a while, I remember thinking that the best I could hope for was that it didn’t break, but then without any notice, it went back to normal, nothing broken, just a smooth, well oiled chain.
To say we took the roundabout way into Niagara Falls is like saying Dried Cod is salty, there was definitely a more direct route, but we had to cover 200 Km’s, still, the scenery was nice and since we are not allowed to take any Ipods, or radio’s etc, it gave you a lot of time to think. I decided to turn things around a bit (not too surprising is it), and decided I wasn’t going to think about certain things. That’s right, I wasn’t going to think about what I needed to do at work on Monday, I wasn’t going to think about the work I needed to do on my Dad’s house, I wasn’t going to think about my menu for Christmas in July, I was just going to roll along, and take it as it comes and be thankful that I was able to wake up this morning. I wasn’t even going to think about my eyes, that by now had started to get worse. If you look at the picture of me taken this morning you can see my eyes are already swelling up and getting red. My sight is fine, but it is just damm uncomfortable.
Along the way you see many different people, most are courteous and say a quick ‘hi’ as they pass you, or give you a Smile & Wave, but along one of the back roads I spotted a couple that had been riding together, they were holding hands while riding, and didn’t seem to have a care in the world. Her name was Linda, and I never got his name, except that it was ‘this is my husband’, to which he acknowledged with a nod. I would later learn that Linda had an aversion to hills, just like my teammate of the same name. It turned out that she was a cancer survivor, and she was determined to finish on here own, her husband, while not officially registered for the ride was there to help her. And help her he did, always encouraging her to keep going, or take a rest, or just to walk the bike when she felt overwhelmed. Like I had mentioned before, it wasn’t a race and there is an unspoken admiration for those, especially those that are survivors, who want to finish under their own power. It brought back a wave of memories and while my eyes had been getting dry over the last few kilometers, they were now swelling with tears that would keep them moist for some time.
Encouragement is so vital, yet we often don’t think about it much, or make a checklist of things to encourage, but without it...
I often say I prefer to pull people then push them; you can berate someone and make them feel bad about what they’ve done, or you can encourage them and have them understand that failure is just a part of the learning process, and that you only fail when you stop trying.
I’m mostly a self motivated person, I can set my mind to do something and in general will get it done, I sometimes take a few tries to get something right, and even once in a while I will give up (fail), and decide that it is just not worth the effort, or that it is something I really cannot do, perhaps if I had encouragement I would not have failed.
But even on this ride for cancer, where my self-motivation was great, and I had the encouragement and support from family and those that are close to me, when you’re out there and you’ve got some 30 kilometers to go, and all the volunteer staff keep telling you is “you’re almost there” (yes I started hearing that at about the 160 Km mark, and would here it for the remainder of the day), there were times when I really felt I may not be able to make it. My muscles had adapted from yesterday, and were no longer sore, in fact I didn’t get one ‘Charley Horse’ at all on Sunday, but my butt, or more precisely at the risk of being a bit offensive, that area just south of your scrotum as it climbs up you bum (I’m sure there’s a name for it), was killing me. It had started yesterday and I didn’t think it could get worse, but it could, and I was at the point where every time I had a hill, even the slightest of hills, I would take the opportunity to stand up and let the pain subside a bit. Boy, how I wish I had gone out and bought those cycling shorts with the built in padding.
No matter, throughout the course of the afternoon my teammate and I would trade encouraging remarks, it seemed we instinctively knew when either of us needed that extra encouragement, it seemed to work...
Sometime around 4:15 PM we pulled across the finish line to a chorus of “Well Done!” “You made it!” and “Yeah!!!”
The sense of relief is over the top, and suddenly your body stops complaining (Oh, it would complain again later), and you feel great.
I call this the postpartum mood, as I can only guess it is close to the feeling a woman will have when they give birth, they never want to go through it again in a million years, but perhaps after a few weeks or months they begin to change their mind and say, “yes I could do it all over again”.
I’m not sure if I will do the ride again. My sense of giving something back to the community is very strong, but I wonder if this is the way. Since I only do this type of event every two years, I have lots of time to think about it.
Now, it was off to find a bus that would take me back into the city....
