T1 Day 53 (Liz)

7/29/23

Port Ryerse to Welland, Ontario


This morning we woke up in our lovely cabin to more rain. It’s pretty hard to leave someone’s home when you have to bike in the rain, so we didn’t!


Our hosts, Jamie and Heather, were worried about us biking out in the rain and offered to let us wait it out with them. As we waited for the rain to stop, Jamie drove us to Soley’s to pick up groceries. We left with some lunch supplies, Canadian candy bars, and pediatric oral hydration packets (the closest thing we could find to Liquid IV). 


Back at their house, Jamie and Heather pulled out an atlas so we could look at our route. It’s crazy to see how far we’ve come and in that moment I felt pretty proud of us. Heather also made us some delicious Finnish pancakes. 


It was about noon when the rain lightened up and we decided to leave. Before we left though, I took Jamie up on his offer to hold Lenny the red tailed hawk. Jamie, Heather, and their sons are all big falconers and so they have birds they hunt with. (I’d been thinking about Lenny all morning honestly, he is such a cool bird.) 


Then we set off. It was 12:30 and we had 77 miles to go. It rained again which was rough and there were strong northern winds. Eventually, we made it to lakeshore drive where we biked along the shoreline of Lake Erie. The weather cleared up and we had miles of beautiful biking along the lake and the quaint vacation homes. Sadly, after about 40 miles, we had to leave Erie and head inland (a decision we had made to cut off some miles). 


At this point, we were worried about time. We had 35 miles left and 3hrs to sunset so we kicked it up a gear. As we were entering Welland, we ended up on a highway tunnel that we definitely shouldn’t have been on. I do not like tunnels. So we biked fast! (We felt a little crazy going on that road, but we didn’t know any better!) 


Soon after, we pulled up to our warm showers for the night. Jeff and Sandi knew the drill and it was great. They opened up the garage as we biked up, started our laundry immediately, let us shower, and said there’s food when we’re ready. 


As we ate dinner, Jeff and Sandi asked about saddle pain (they’re cyclists themselves) and they gave new and helpful suggestions! They even sent us off in the morning with a gel saddle cover and a bottle of polysporin. It was wonderful to sleep in a bed for the second night in a row and I slept well in preparation for a big day tomorrow.

Comments

  1. JimAugust 2, 2023 at 5:26 AM

    I'm excited to see if you cross over at Niagara Falls or over at Buffalo tomorrow. Oh, and so lucky to have held that hawk, one of my bucket list items.

    ReplyDelete

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