Tatamagouche, Nova Scotia

 

The wind persisted from the north for a second day dropping the temperature an additional ten degrees.  It was forty-five degrees at day’s end when I retreated to my tent and just thirty-one the next morning.  For the first time I had ice in the water bottles I left on my bike and the residue of water on my tent poles froze the segments together, requiring a lot of tugging and twisting to disconnect them.  My derailleurs too had frozen in place.  It was cold enough for horses to be garbed.

I too donned garb I had heretofore not needed: heavier socks, heavier gloves, pants rather than tights, an extra layer on my torso, a wool cap and a neckerchief around my neck to pull up over my nose. That and my exertion warded off the cold until the sun rose above the trees and brought some warmth, finally nudging the temperature above freezing nearly an hour since I began riding.

My heavier gloves weren’t quite enough.  I had to wrap plastic bags around them to ward off the wind chill. At least the road was dry, so the only ice was on puddles alongside the road. As the day wore on the wind switched from the south and the west giving me a bit of a tailwind and raising the temperature back to where it had been for much of the travels into the fifties. It was still fifty-one when I ended my riding and didn’t drop much during the night with it a relatively balmy forty-eight when I resumed riding in the morning.

For several days now the towns have been few and far between.  I have yet to be in a library since I crossed into Canada five days ago.  I haven’t come across WI-FI more than once a day and usually thanks to Tim Hortons.  My rest stops have been on the steps of isolated churches or besides abandoned homes or against fence posts or gates.  I had one ten-minute break perched on a guardrail putting considerable effort into unscrewing four rusted screws with a wrench and a Leatherman tool trying to detach a heavy metal plate from a license plate.  It was worth the effort to add a New Brunswick plate to my collection.  It was the second I had come upon, so I have an extra to contribute to Dwight’s barn wall.

When I rode the Ring Road around Iceland twenty years ago I’d ask locals if they ate puetrefied shark, an Icelandic delicacy that has a strong stench but it most pleasing to the tastebuds.  My question here for locals is also food-related—how far it is to the next Tim Hortons?  It can be fifty miles or more.  One lady told me that it was a mystery to her that there wasn’t one in Tatamagouche, forty miles away, as it was the home town of Ron Joyce, one of the founders of Tim Hortons, along with the hockey player who it is named for and who played hockey in the NHL for twenty-four years and is on the list of the one hundred greatest players in league history.  He opened his first restaurant in Hamilton in 1964 and just like McDonald's grew into a massive chain of thousands.  There is no need to put up billboards advertising one is ahead, as all the bright red cups bearing the chain’s name along the road indicate one is near.  It is about the only litter I’ve seen along the road side, as if it is sanctioned advertising.  

There isn’t much traffic, so not only do motorists need not worry about being seen littering, they aren’t always mindful of the speed limit, or else they mistake the speed limit signs of eighty and ninety of being for miles per hour rather than kilometers.  No where else, other than Finland, where maniacal Russians like to test the limits of their cars on the long, flat, smooth roads along the border have I encountered such extreme speeding.  At least it’s not meant to terrorize me, as they make full use of the opposite lane.  And it’s never more than once or twice a day, even though each imparts a strong impression.

I’ve been riding along the northern coast of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia with the province of Prince Edward Island just offshore reachable by a bridge.  The road hasn’t hugged the coast, so I have to be content with distant glimpses of this huge Atlantic bay.  I’m so far down the road by the time I get to Sydney I’ll be closer to Greenland than to Chicago.  Signs along the road advertise lobster for sale.  Commercial signs don’t have to be bilingual.  Almost all those advertising businesses are strictly in English.  The road sign for icy roads avoids having to be in English as well as French.

I’m now within two hundred miles of Sydney at the eastern end of Nova Scotia.  It will have been over a five hundred mile ride from Maine and the last Carnegie Library.  It may seem like a long bike ride to a library, but it pales compared to the four thousand miles I rode from Uruguay across Brazil to the Carnegie in Georgetown of British Guiana.  That was a most worthwhile ride, just as this is, though there I was contending with heat while here it is cold.  Thankfully it’s still October, so winter and real cold is quite distant.

With no Carnegies for days I have had to be mostly content with my podcast listening for “Wow” moments when something surprising is mentioned such as Buster Olney on his Baseball Tonight podcast  going on a grand slam rant revealing Pete Rose and Derek Jeter only hit one each in their long careers, while the pitcher Madison Baumgarner had two in his very limited at bat appearances, or Amy Goodman on Democracy Now revealing that Ken Burns attended a Koch brothers gathering and had his picture taken with Clarence Thomas, or the Irish cyclist Dan Martin, who had a most illustrious career,  telling Bobby Julich and Jens Voigt on their podcast that he always tried to model himself after his teammate Christian Vande Velde.  Bradley Wiggins also paid Christian the ultimate of compliments saying he was his most favored team leader.