Day 35 – July 14 – The “Peter” leg

FROM: Bears Den Motel, Deep River
TO: Westmeath
LEG DEDICATED TO: Peter Reiche has promised (TAKE NOTE PETER!) to escort us in from Deep River to Westmeath, and he’s a pretty powerful cyclist so we should make this short distance in a couple of hours. With Rose and Peter in the front taking on the wind, and us in the back in our florescent yellow vests, we’ll probably trigger some sort of alarm at CFB Petawawa. “Unidentified glowing object flies by the base at the speed of light” reports in the Pembroke Observer. Peter is a good friend from high school, and a very generous and caring person as all who know him would say. We will appreciate his strong legs on our journey but more importantly we appreciate his big heart in our lives.

EXPECTATIONS: This is a short day over familiar territory – used to bike back and forth between Pembroke and Petawawa when we were younger, and have also done the Pembroke to Westmeath route a few times on the bikes. If we were to follow the highway directly we wouldn’t have any hills at all, but we will hopefully be invited to our parents for lunch in Pembroke so we’d have a little climb to get to their house. Mom and Joe, are you reading this? Four (Peter, Rose and the twins) for lunch ok? We’ll sit out in back yard because we might be stinky . A few salmon sandwiches would be lovely, with some rhubarb pie to wash them down! I don’t remember Pembroke being a rainy place in the middle of July but apparently it rains more often than not on July 14 (POP is 75 %). It is hardly ever really cloudy on that date though (13 % chance of an overcast day) and the winds are usually gentle at 6 km/hr. We can look forward to a high of 25 ° C and a low of 14 ° C, though some years it goes up to 33 ° C. Hope it stays warm and sunny for a few days so we can enjoy a two-day rest period and maybe a fund-raiser event. We’ll post more about that as we find out what we can expect.

ELEVATION: start 141 m, highest 178 m, ascent 125 m, descent 120 m
DISTANCE: planned 75 km, actual ________, lost > 5 km detour _______
SPEED: average _______ , top (downhill) ______ top (flats) ________
WEATHER: rain _______, temperature low ______ temperature high _____
headwind _______, tailwind ________ other _____________
FLAT TIRE: Lori ______ Nancy ______ other mechanical ______________

Peter met us for breakfast, and the four if us (Lori, Franchisca, Peter and me) rode off toward Pembroke. We made excellent time, motivated as we were by the thought of shortly seeing our mother.
We had to stop at Gearheads in Petawawa for some adjustments to Franchisca’s bike and to my bike. The guys there were very good to us – took our bikes in right away. That is something we really appreciated.
We made it to mom’s place for lunch – Franchisca stayed on the road and by now should be at her parents’ farm – and had a nice visit with family. Mom made Hello Dollies, which are even better than rhubarb pie, and we had all different kinds of sandwiches which her cousin Theresa helped make.
We also visited our bike wash sponsor Yantha Cycle, where we made plans for Saturday. And then we went down to Westmeath where Ian (the Kiwi we met in Cochrane) was waiting.
Great to be home.
Today (Friday) we visited our cousin Cheryl who fed us and watered us. Allan and Dave (the Special Olympics guys) came down too, and she fed and watered them as well. And we were all interviewed by Bobby Grills, writer for the Cobden Sun. He was pleased to have so many cyclists crossing the country.
Saturday, the bike wash day, Debb and Sydney will drive up from Ottawa to give us a hand. And we will be going to Boston Pizza after the bike wash rather than for lunch. Hope that’s ok with the nice folks there since we didn’t have a way up to Pembroke that didn’t involve bicycles.