One of the things I wanted to do on this trip was see some friends again that I haven’t seen in a while. Going to school in Waterloo I met people from a lot of different places but quite a few are from or have stayed in Ontario. Plus Ontario is becoming more of a popular place for people back home in Nova Scotia to move to now as well. Most people I knew from university, I haven’t seen in a couple years as that’s when I left Waterloo. While I enjoyed my time in Quebec, part of what had been driving me forward lately was knowing that I was very soon going to get to see and spend time with people I know again.
Right away Ontario provided me with the chance to reconnect, as my friend Jasper had gotten me at the end of my time in Quebec after my front tire blew up. We drove back to his place in Ottawa where I would spend the next couple days and reconnected after not seeing each other for a couple years. When we got to his place I got to do my laundry for the first time since I left my sisters in Moncton, which was over 3 weeks ago now. I also got to meet Jaspers girlfriend, Alex, for the first time.
Jasper had won free tickets to a comedy show the night I made it to Ottawa (another reason I gave in to getting a drive for the last stretch to Ottawa). The show was even east coast themed with the comedians all coming from the Atlantics, so it was almost like it was supposed to be made for me. I got to meet some of Jasper and Alex’s friends there as well who were all quite nice. I’d never been to a comedy show before, so this was a new experience for me and trying to say yes and experience new things is something I’m also trying to get better at on this trip. The show was really good and definitely something I would do again in the future.
The next day Jasper and Alex worked so I went and found a bike shop and got a few things including a new tire and a way to hopefully deal with tire problems in the future (at least temporarily I hope). I replaced my front tire and tube and got my bike back in good shape for the next stretch. After Jasper got done working we walked through part of Ottawa and later met up with Alex not too far from where she worked. We went to a Mexican restaurant that they liked to frequent and they said they liked to take other people to regularly. I got a burrito there which was really good and probably the best I’ve had (I haven’t had many burritos before though admittedly).
The next day I planned on going to see my cousin and his wife (Jacob and Alicia). I said goodbye to Alex before she left for work and talked with Jasper for a bit before leaving late in the morning. It was nice getting to see a friend again in Jasper as he was the first friend and non-family member I’d seen on the trip so far. While I had been so looking forward to stopping and seeing people I knew, I found myself this morning having an urge to get back on the road and start exploring again, but I had full intention of seeing my cousin for the first time in a lo my time. Before going to Jacob’s though I wanted to see Parliament Hill and luckily they lived very close to it. I rode along the river by parliament and got to see the main government buildings which were under construction and had protests in front of them when I passed by. It’s cool I can say that I saw them but really Parliament Hill felt quite underwhelming.
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| Parliament Hill Main Building |
After strolling past Parliament Hill I rode a few streets down to Jacob’s, where I got to see Jacob for the Pfirst time since his wedding which was probably a couple years before the pandamic, so it had been a long time since I had seen him. We went up to his apartment where we had a lot of catching up to do and I got to meet his 5 cats. After a while we went for a little walk to meet Alicia and on the way we strolled through Ottawa’s walking street where they sometimes hold festivals, like how ribfest was going on now. I had never gotten to properly talk with Alicia before, so getting to spend time around her and properly meeting her was something I was happy to be able to do now. When we got back to their apartment I found out Jacob was making chili for supper. The only problem was that it had mushrooms in it… and I’m kinda allergic to mushrooms. Jacob didn’t know so we changed plans and ended up taking advantage of the fact that ribfest was going on. At ribfest they gave out pretty big portions so we got a single big meal and shared it. While I’m sure Jacob’s chili would’ve been good, I can’t say I’m sad we got food from ribfest instead, boy was it ever good.
That feeling I had to wanna get back on the road didn’t leave me, so I ended up leaving the next morning but I was happy to get to spend some time with Jacob and Alicia after it had been so long since I last saw them. It started raining basically as soon as I left and I got quite wet early on but luckily it had mostly stopped by noon and by the end of the day I was dry. The best way to dry off, or even drying stuff in general, really is just to ride and either where the wet stuff or just strap it to the outside of my bags. Leaving Ottawa I grabbed the Trans-Canada Trail on a route that was an attempt at about the straightest line I could do from Ottawa to Toronto, although there really aren’t any roads that do that. The trail was pretty good and was about the same as the rail trail I was used to riding at home. I didn’t go overly far for the day and got off the trail at Carleton Place where I stopped for the night. I’m not really sure why, but I’m finding when I leave cities and/or after taking a break day, I tend to not ride quite as far as usual. While in Carleton Place, I met Brian, the head of the cycling club there. I’m fairly certain Brian has been the most excited person to meet me so far, as he wanted to tell everyone in the club about me and quite frankly I think probably would’ve told anyone he saw in the moment all about me. When I stopped for the night and unloaded my bike, I noticed that my one front rack was bent. Earlier in the day when I was trying to get my bike off a bike parking rack, it didn’t wanna come and when I yanked it away there was quite a sound that came when I did (I couldn’t find that anything happened in the moment). Luckily it wasn’t really damaged and I was able to straighten it without any other problems.
I continued on the trail the next day. While it mostly stayed like it was the day before, it was starting to get rougher and less enjoyable to ride at times. Along the way I took a nice break in Perth which was a nice little town if you went into it away from the highway, especially in the little library garden along the brook that runs through the town. Not too much happened throughout the day as I was primarily by myself riding the quiet trail. I did get to stop for the night in the scenic little village of Sharbot Lake and got to camp nearby to the lake.
After I left Ottawa I had started to get sick, which when you consider how I’ve been mostly outside all the time, getting wet quite frequently and that the weather still didn’t want to warm up, is almost a miracle it took this long to get sick (I do like to brag up my immune system for a reason). While the cold I was getting wasn’t bothering me much yet, it did make it so I didn’t get much sleep for my night in Sharbot Lake. Being tired, not feeling overly good and combining that with the fact that it was raining again in the morning, lead me to just hide in my tent all morning until it stopped and wasn’t quite as cold out. The day didn’t get much better from there as the trail stopped becoming enjoyable due to it becoming so bumpy and full of big loose rocks plus big puddles covering the trail at points from swamps/marshes spilling over the trail. It continued like this for about the first 40km to Kaladar where I stopped and tried working on my Achilles which was really starting to hurt again. I considered stopping for the day and just conceding that today wasn’t my day but I decided to continue on. From there things did get better. The trail reverted back to the nice rail trail similar to when I left Ottawa and while my Achilles did hurt the rest of the day it did calm down some. While not too much exciting was happening the past few days riding along the trail which I had all to myself outside of the occasional ATV that would come roaring through, I was getting to see lots of wildlife. I had gotten see turtles, snakes (including one slithering through water which I hadn’t seen before), rabbits, beavers, some big birds that people hunt and I don’t know the name of and even some llamas on a sheep farm that the trail passed by. The improved trail let me make some good progress to end the day and I ended the day in another nice little town being Tweed this time.
Before I could load up my bike the next morning, I noticed that front tire was pretty deflated. I didn’t see any problems with it so I pumped it back up and took off for the day. Only about 30 minutes after leaving I noticed that it was pretty deflated again. I gave it a better inspection and the new tube I had just got in Ottawa was leaking from the valve. I would later ask a bike shop about this and they told me that unfortunately it seemed like I had just gotten a dud of a tube which sucks. I swapped the tube out for another and didn’t encounter any problems for the rest of the day.
I only had a little bit of trail left to do leaving Tweed until I would go back to travelling roads until Toronto, but before I finished with the trail, I encountered Ralph. Ralph was a man in a wheelchair with only one leg, so I was quite surprised when he stopped me and told me that he had cycled across Canada only 10 years prior (with 2 legs at that point however). He was a nice man who told me about his trip and how he had gotten stuff out of the trip that was pretty similar to what I’m hoping to get from mine. I finished up with the trail which went back to sucking again so I was quite happy to switch back to riding paved roads, even if they were hilly it was still much better to ride.
When I made it to Campbellford, I encountered a group of 5 cyclists who were doing a week long tour along the waterways of the area. I stopped to eat in the park there that has the world’s biggest toonie. Also while in the park I had what I consider to be the funniest moment of the trip so far. At this point I was in the runny/stuffy nose part of my cold. Being outside all the time I’ve gotten in the habit of doing stuff like blowing my nose or other potentially ‘unseemly stuff’ whenever I feel like it. So while in the park I blew my nose and with it being stuffy, it really didn’t come out very cleanly. When I did this there was a girl, probably around my age, who was walking in my direction but still not all that close to me. As she approached the picnic table I was at, she ran by me and the area I was at as fast she she could and then continued walking like normal after getting by me. She thought I was so revolting that she had to get past me as fast as she could and I found that absolutely hilarious that I started laughing out loud quite loudly to the point that I’m fairly certain she had to hear me laughing at her. Now while I’m sure some of you find no humour in this, I think it’s hilarious that someone found me that revolting.
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| Large Toonie of Campbellton |
After Campbellford I continued taking very steep hilly side roads until Hastings where I stopped for the night. I wasn’t a fan of how the side roads were very steep hill after very steep hill while on gravel, so I decided the next day to go back along the main road where while hilly, wasn’t full of the steep hills. I was in the runny eyes phase of the cold now and faced headwinds all day (which really I’ve been facing everyday since leaving Montreal as I’m going purely west now) and the day was pretty boring but I was still able to find that I was able to bring myself to enjoy and appreciate the day being able to go along by bike like this. At least the riding was on really good roads, which I have to give Ontario credit for. Ontarios rural roads that are paved are almost all in amazing condition. It’s only really when you get into a town or city where there’s more traffic, that the roads aren’t as good and full of cracks and bumps. I made it to Tyrone to end the day and the roads were starting to get a square/gridlock shape as I was getting to the edge of Toronto now. I did hear a pack of coyotes in the middle of the night that didn’t sound too far away and kept me antsy for the rest of the night but nothing came of that other than some unwarranted anxiety.
When I awoke in the morning, I found the Sun was an orange/red colour. Being on the road I don’t really see the news (which generally is quite nice), so i didn’t know for sure, but was guessing that it must mean there were wildfires somewhere probably causing it. As I entered the GTA, I asked about the Sun and if there were wildfires causing it, to which I found out that unfortunately I was right, as the prairies were on fire and the smoke was being carried all the way to the Toronto area. While the sky was hazy for the day, it wasn’t to the point that it was hampering me from biking, so I continued on.
Riding through the GTA wasn’t particularly fun. There isn’t much designed for bikers there and it’s clear the drivers aren’t used to and/or don’t care about bikers much. Things did improve as I approached the lakeshore and downtown, as there started to be designated bike lanes, which were full of people who were delivering food on their e-bikes. When I did make it to Lake Ontario, this was another milestone moment. While I had made it far enough west to be in line with the Great Lakes at this point, this was the first of what I expected to be a lot of time I’d spend travelling along them. While I was happy making it to a beach along Lake Ontario, it was somewhat disappointing though as the view was nothing but hardtop the smoke and the shore was full of dead fish, I’m assuming from all the pollution in the lake.
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| My First Encounter of Lake Ontario |
Now the reason I’m riding to Toronto instead of just staying north of it is because this is another place where I have some friends. When I made it downtown, I went to Brendan and Mikayla’s, longtime friends from back home, where I would spend the next few days. I spent most of the evening getting caught up with them as I hadn’t seen them in nearly a year, since their wedding. I had arrived at their place in the middle of the week, so they both had to work still. While they worked the day after I arrived, I spent a lot of my day walking around the parts of downtown Toronto I hadn’t seen before, including the lakeshore where I still couldn’t look out over as the sky was still full of smoke. In the evening after Mikayla finished work, we went out to play spike ball with some of her coworkers. I’d only played spike ball a couple times before in gym class over 10 years ago now, so I wasn’t very good but I had a lot of fun playing and Mikayla carried us to a couple wins. I spent most of the next day alone in their apartment working on the blog and getting to bake banana muffins and krinkle cookies, which I was happy to do. Brendan got the barbecue going when he got back from work and I enjoyed the last full day I was going to spend with the both of them. I really enjoyed my time getting to be with Brendan and Mikayla and said my goodbyes in the morning before moving on.
Like Ottawa, I didn’t just have one place I was stopping to see people I knew. Next was Amour who I knew from university/co-op. He also lives downtown so I didn’t have far to go. At Amour’s place at met his fiance, Sabine, for the first time. They were also both working when I got to their place, so I tried not to bother them too much until they got done. Afterwards we got to properly catch up and I got to properly meet Sabine. Not only did I meet Sabine though, for supper we went to Amour’s family, who conveniently live right down the hall. His family was very nice and welcoming to me and quite interested in my trip, especially since Amour was going to join along for a couple days.
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| CN Tower over the Rogers Centre |
The next morning I went out to meet up with the last of my friends that I knew was in Toronto at the time in Yoni, who I also knew from university. We went out for brunch before he showed me around the restaurant that he was the head chef at now. While he wasn’t going to join along Amour when we left Toronto, he decided he’d tag along when we started to leave Toronto in a couple days. After seeing Yoni, me and Amour went for a walk and got some stuff along the way. I decided to get a new tire and replace my back one as it was becoming quite worn out. If I would’ve had to guess which tire was going to blow up first, I would’ve guessed it would’ve been my back one instead of the front as it was far more worn. And quite frankly I don’t think it was too far from the point of having something similar happen like the front did. We also got a chain for Amour as he was planning on using his sister’s bike which hadn’t been touched in quite a while and wasn’t in the best shape. While out we got Chinese food in Chinatown which was really good. In the evening I swapped my back tire for the new and put on Amour’s new chain so we could test it the next day.
Me and Amour went out to play tennis in the morning like we had down many times before when living in the same area. After we also got him a back rack so he could carry some stuff while going with me and also just in general as he wanted to use the bike after this too. Amour was having a lot of trouble shifting and couldn’t get into some of his gears, so I’d take a look at working at that later. Before that though I got to meet a couple of Amour and Sabine’s friends in Harlan and Amanda who they had over for supper. Luckily it turns out that Harlan used to be a bike mechanic as I found that I couldn’t get Amour’s bike shifting like he would need (I’m still very amateurish at bike work). Well turns out I was never gonna get that to shift right as Harlan found that Amour's cables were shot. As we were planning on leaving in the morning and there was no way to get cables before then, Harlan made it so Amour could shift his back derailleur, but had his front one stuck in the middle gear, which would be good enough for the couple days we were planning. And with that, we were ready to take off from Toronto the next day and I’d get to share the experience of travelling by bike with someone for the first time.
I got to see so many friends that I hadn’t for quite a while and I’ll see more yet both in Ontario and along the way. I’ve spent most of my time alone both on the trip and in general the last couple years so getting to spend so much time with others was something I’m really happy to be able to do. I also have to thank everyone for everything they did for me, whether it be letting me stay at their place, making/buying a meal for me or anything else they did, I’m greatly appreciative of everything anyone did. Maybe more than anything for me, it was nice more than anything to not feel as lonely here for at least a little while.
Distance Biked: 493.7km
Total Distance Biked: 2572.7km