the cross canada project

Well it has been 3 months since I’ve been back home from Halifax, and about 7 months since I originally left for Vancouver.

Halifax was a very interesting city and a great place to end the trip. The last night, I spent in Dartmouth with my friend Christina’s Mom. She was a cute little Spanish lady that cooked up this really good Chilean dish involving spicey meat with potatoes and such. In the morning, she dropped me off at the airport to head to Hamilton with a stop-off back in Montreal.

Once in Hamilton, my friend Sean came and picked me up. I stayed at his place for the night and then my cousin Stan and his girlfriend drive up from Windsor to come pick me. A few hours of driving on the 401 and I was back home.

I’ve never been away for that long before and it was quite strange returning home. After a few weeks, everything felt pretty much back to normal. I shaved the beard off, unpacked all my stuff and ordered a pair of 250GB harddrives to start dumping all of the video footage to. I also went and shot all of the extra footage I needed for the movie that I didn’t get before I left, including all the shots for the introduction to the movie. The original plan was to take a day and shoot all of the introduction in Stanley Park in Vancouver, but since I was 80% sure that the trip would fail anyways, I didn’t bother. I only ended up shooting one quick little thing of me riding up to the camera asking “well, can I do this?”.

Needless to say, I felt pretty silly going to some crappy local park with empty panniers strapped onto my bike and riding around trying to approximate the look and feel of the Stanley Park footage. That’s not to say that the footage looks bad or anything and seems to be working just fine.

As for the rest of the movie, I filled up the 13 tapes I brought with me with only about 20 minutes to spare! However in New Brunswick, I did buy an extra 3 tapes just incase. The footage is is taking up approximately 328 GB and I’ve reviewed all of it at least once. Editing it is turning out to be quite a challenge, but I’m happy to say that I have a fairly decent 20 minutes of movie already done. It starts out with a 10 minute segment, showing the preparation that I went through in the 9 months before I left.

I don’t know if I mentioned this before but some time out of Quebec, I ran out of money. Thankfully I had a credit card with me to get home and such. A lot of people helped me out and without them I wouldn’t have been able to do this. I spent every dollar I had, plus about 200 extra. Most definitely worth it though!

Being back home after something like this is really strange. When I was doing this trip, I felt like every day had a purpose. Now, everything seems like useless toil. I really miss not having to worry about things like food, shelter, weather, nature, bears. I had my first Asthma attack since I’ve been back. It was only mild, but it was caused by being in the same room as a smoker. During my trip, not once did I have any breathing problems. My dry skin is now back to being dry and flaky. During my trip, my skin was really smooth and such. It’s just strange how that all works, but it worked out exactly how I thought it would be.

I really miss being out there, in the middle of nowhere with legitimate concerns to be worried about. What am I going to do for shelter? which direction do I travel? what will the weather be like? What do I do if something breaks? What animals live here? Do I have enough food? Living outdoors completely agreed with my body, except for the strange rash that I had through Alberta (which still left scars on my arm). I’ve never breathed better, or been in better physical shape or felt more healthy. Even my brain seemed to be working better and I jotted down a lot of interesting ideas in my journal. I really, really think this is a lot closer to the way people are designed to be living.

Anyways, I’d just like to thank everyone that helped me out in any way during this trip.

Once the movie nears completion, I will be posting information about it here.

Peace

DONE! (the pedalling part of the project anyways)

I arrived here in Halifax on the 4th! It was a beautiful day, although the wind wasn’t cooperating that day, but that has been so typical of the trip that I was almost glad I had a headwind for the last day. I was camping that last night on the edge of a rest-stop basically in the middle of Nova SCotia along the Musquodoboit River. It was an interesting night, knowing it was my last night in the tent.

However, it was the second day on PEI, day 107 where I really realied it was ending. That day I changed into the yellow jersey that my mom shipped up to Gatineau for me to celebrate the end of my trip. For the past 3 months I was wearing an old cycling jersey given to me by one of the people I stayed with in Kamloops, BC. This yellow jersey was also given to me, by the guys at Joe’s Bike Shop back in Windsor. They gave it to me 10 years ago when I was volunteering there and getting into racing Cross Country. Since I was about 15 years old at the time, it was a size small and stopped fitting me a few years later. But I kept it in my closet and figured that I had lost so much weight on this trip that it would probably fit again. Sure enough, it fit great, except the collar was way too tight.

That day on PEI I spent a good hour on the side of a beautiful and completely empty road, 23. I setup the tripod and the digital still camera and took about 100 pictures of myself riding to possibly use as the DVD cover art. I had the camera on the 10 second timer and I would rde past it while it took 10 consecutive pictures. In almost all of PEI I was on a rail-trail (that is, converted railway track to be used by bicyclists/pedestrians) and it was beautiful! Taking the Confederation Bridge to the island was also interesting. It costs like $60 for a car to get across, but there is a free shuttle for pedestrians and bicyclists! They never give the times the shuttle leave, just that it may take 2 hours. Well, after completely missing the pickup area and almost going on the bridge with my bicycle by accident, I ended up at a tourist info booth at the base of the bridge who told me that the shuttle pickup/dropoff point is 3km back. So I rushed there just as the shuttle was leaving! When I say shuttle, I mean a guy in a pickup truck. He stopped and loaded all my stuff into the back and off we went.

The next day, getting off PEI was similar. This time I took a ferry to Nova Scotia. I misjudged where the ferry landing was, and ended up racing about 5km to get to the ferry just before it left. I always love riding my bike into the belly of these car ferries.

I probably spent 30 hours on PEI total, but I can’t get over how nice it was and how nice everyone was. I can say this about the whole trip actually, but the politeness of the Maritimes seems to be magnified. For example, when I was riding through Miramichi New Brunswick a few days earlier, I stopped off at Subway to treat myself to lunch. The guy waiting in line started asking me questions about my trip and when I went to pay for my footlong veggie combo, the guy working behind the counter refused my payment and paid for me. He also hit me up with a bunch of dollar-off VIP cards, which I actually used a few of along the way.

New Brunswick was great too, and the easiest to find places to stealth-camp in my opinion. You can’t go 100M along the roads without seeing it intersect with an ATV path. So I rode until I got tired, then just pulled off on one of these paths until I couldn’t hear the traffic much and then setup camp next to it. I think I’ve camped beside ATV/snowmobile paths maybe 10 times on this trip and only on the very last one did I actually see someone on an ATV using the path. He rode past and saw me cooking up some pasta.

I think on that same night I woke up with the feeling of something on my leg, so I unzipped the sleeping bag only to notice a big furry spider on me. Before this trip, I would have freaked. But this time, I calmly grabbed it and let it go outside of my tent.

I don’t know exactly how to feel about this trip being over. For now I am quite relieved, but once I actually get home to Windsor, it will take some time to sink in. I can’t even think about what I’ve done, the distances, etc. Maybe in a few weeks I will realize that I made my way from one ocean to the other with my own power.

But I am glad to be in Halifax, it is quite a nice city although it is fairly touristy. For several days before I arrived, I kept trying to call the person I’m stayig with but I kept getting no answer. Eventually I got some dude who had no clue what I was talking about. So when I got into Halifax, I went to Victors appartment and nobody was home. So I rode around Halifax for a while, tried calling again, etc. Nothing.

I wanted to find internet access to check my email, to see if he had emailed me about not being home. Some girls suggested I go to “the second cup”, so I went there only to find they only offer free wifi. So I went to Kinkos and had the employee girl outside watching my bicycle while I jumped on MSN and managed to catch his sister Christina online. she gave me the phone number again and then I realized I had the area code wrong. So I tried calling again, still with no answer. Just calling someone is a big production too, since I have to setup the video camera, the device to record the phone call, etc. So a lot of people on Spring Garden road looked pretty confused when I was using the payphones.

After not getting a hold of Victor, I found a Hostel and checked in for the night. I had no intentions of sleeping in the tent an extra night. Checking into a Hostel seems easy enough when you have a backpack full of stuff, but when you have a whole bicycle full of stuff, it is difficult. Thankfully a few of the people staying in the Hostel helped to carry all my bags and stuff into the basement to store for the nigh. Finally I got to takea shower, hang out with some people and then go to bed.

Woke up inthe morning, got ahold of Victor and rode 2KM to his place. Done! Later that day I went and checked out the free Joel Plaskett Emergency show, which was awesome. I met up with a few people from the Hostel there as well. After the show, I wandered around, tried to get into a big corprorate-y building with no luck, etc.

I have to keep this short because I’m going over to Christina/Victor’s Mothers house for Dinner in a few minutes! Tomorrow I will be flying to Hamilton and the next day my cousin Stan will be picking me up. So I will be back in Windsor on the 10th. I will write more then!

pointe-verte to halifax pictures

Warm and dry here in Pointe-Verte New Brunswick! I can smell the wood burning furnace behind me, I can see the rain coming down through the window. My belly is full of lobster, scallops, shrimp and rice!

The stay in Gatineau was great, especially visiting the Canadian War Museum. A gigantic building with an amazing exhibition going through Canadian history, with tons of artifacts everywhere. Huge airplanes hanging from the ceiling, tanks, guns, etc. The building itself is really interesting, and thankfully I was touring it with my Aunt and her boyfriend, who was the foreman for the construction company that built it. He showed me a lot of interesting details, including Morse Code in the windows and a Window placed to cast light on the gravestone of the Unknown Soldier exactly on the Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour.

The night before, I decided to take a bicycle trip into Ottawa to see the Parliament buildings. I took a bike path the whole way, which ended up being completely dark since it was in the middle of bush area. I had my little head-light with me, so I used that just enough to illuminate the center line of the path to follow. Of course, this meant that I crashed into a metal post dividing the two lanes where they intersected a road. I was going slowly and almost fell, this was the first bike collision of the whole trip! I missed the cut off to cross into Ottawa, since I couldn’t see, but thankfully I met a few computer programmers who were getting high underneath the bridge. They offered me a job with the gov’t, which I declined and then showed me how to get onto the bridge. After the bridge, I took another bicycle path about 10KM straight to the Peace Tower, just in time for a huge sound/light show!

I got some nice video footage for the movie and met a lighting designer who explained the tech aspects of the show to me, which was really quite impressive and included surround sound.

When I left Gatineau, I took the same bike trail, which was quite nice in the day. Lots of cyclists on it, and all of them with Panniers. These arent the cyclists in Windsor, who are out for excercise. These are people heading to work, bringing home groceries, etc. I had planned to take a ferry back into Ontario to get onto highway 17, which I expected to have less traffic. 3KM into it, I turned around and headed back into Quebec. In Quebec, the traffic is mild and the shoulder is huge. There are signs to let motorists know that cyclists exist. In ontario, there is no shoulder and the traffic is insane. It was also neat seeing so many people on scooters in Quebec! Young people, boyfriends and girlfriends, old people, all on little 49CC scooters zipping around everywhere. That night in Fasset, I slept inside an outdoor hockey rink in a local park.

The next day I pushed into Montreal without problems. I had a good Wind and the sun was out, so I had my little shortwave radio blaring, listening to CBC. Riding into Montreal was interesting, and I found Magali’s place without problems. Magali is another person who offered me a place to stay through couchsurfing.com, a cool apartment in a nice quiet little part of Montreal just minutes from downtown. That night, we took a little walk around the neighborhood. The next day we climbed Mont Royal and went to the old part of montreal for Ice cream. The whole Old Montreal area is just filled with tourists and all of the old shops just sell tourist junk, it’s all pretty funny actually. The next day, a friend sent me the upcoming Neil Young album, which I got to listen to. When I get home, I will have to pick it up… there was like 5 references various places in Canada I have visited along this trip. I really wanted to visit where Magali works, where they make simulators for aircraft companies. However, she told me that since 9Eleven they are no longer allowed to have visitors. As though a terrorist is going to hijack the simulator and fly it into a simulated building…

Leaving Montreal was crap. I never knew that there is Oil Refineries on the island until now. About 10KM worth of ugly industry with really crappy roads. It started raining early during the day, and didn’t stop until it started to get dark and I found a place to put up my tent near the water, hidden from view behind a huge cement wall in Berthierville.

The rain stopped in the morning for just long enough for me to hit the road. Once it started again, it brought some really bad winds. At this time, I met another cyclist who was bicycling from Toronto to New Brunswick! He had limited mobility in his leg, because it was severely injured during a plane crash. The plane with about 40 passengers aborted a landing and stalled and crashed to the ground and hit a tree. When he regained conciousness, he had 3 rows of seats piled ontop of him and could feel that his leg was wet with his hand. It was in the middle of Winter and took a long time for anyone to get there, and they had to make a road through the snow to clear out survivors. They brought everyone to a kick ass hospital in Halifax and thankfully everyone survived.

He was supposed to be stealth-camping like I had been doing, but had been staying in Hotels along the way. So I offered to find us a place to camp for the night. At the edge of some town, I found a little place on a hiking trail and started setting up. Then I found out that the dude didnt have a tent, but sleeps under a tarp. He was also afraid of getting West Nile, so decided to find a better place without mosquitoes. It was getting late and starting to rain, so I stayed put. Unfortunately I never met up with him again to exchange contact information though.

The next day was rain, but it went away after an hour and the sun came out. So I made a clothesline at a rest stop and hung all my stuff out to dry and relaxed in the sun for a few hours. I only made it about 80KM that day, but it was worth it to get the stuff dry. Camped in a field.

Great wind in the morning, blew me almost past Quebec City and I missed my turn off. Had to navigate around to find the bridge, but found it okay. A huge rusty old metal bridge going across the St. Laurence with a small little area for bicycles and pedestrians to cross. I stopped and took lots of pictures and realized how neat it is crossing a huge bridge on a bicycle. Cyclists or pedestrians aren’t allowed on the Ambassador bridge to the USA in Windsor, and if you tried to stop to take a picture, you’d probably end up in Guantanimo Bay for the rest of your life.

Rained at night, and I woke up again when the rain stopped. It started once I hit the road and the wind was really bad. It got really calm and I stopped off at a rest stop to eat some food. Shortly after, I heard thunder and saw lightning. So I panicked and set up the tent as it started raining. Everything got really wet and I ended up setting the tent up under a tree and about 20 feet from the St. Laurence. After an hour of being in the tent, the rain stopped and I got out to notice that the St. Laurence was now 2 feet from my tent! I had to move all my stuff to higher ground and just stayed in the rest area the whole night. It was really really windy, so windy it was hard getting to sleep. I felt like I was in a life boat at sea, with the tent blowing around and the rain coming down and the waves crashing nearby, etc.

I woke up to realize the wind had blown the tent completely dry and it was going in the right direction! So I hopped on my bike and had an amazing ride through Quebec. The scenery was just amazing.. flat land with huge rocks sticking out and tiny colourful houses ontop. I found a gravel bicycle path and pushed my bike up a steep hill to a rest area to setup tent. I pulled a muscle in my left calf pushing the bike up. Listened to “off the hook” on the shortwave radio, although the reception was really bad. Woke up in the middle of the night to pee and ended up taking a lot of pictures of a pretty intense sky.

Constant rain the next day, really really cold too. This was one of the days where I felt like giving up. I thought about staying in a hotel that night, but decided I should keep the money and use it for something better. So I pulled into a field and an old man approached me and offered me his garage to sleep in. So I set up the tent in Hal’s garage while he worked one some scaffolding and sang songs in french to himself. I recharged my batteries, hung everything up to dry and formulated my plan on how to continue the trip.

I realized that the weather isn’t going to cooperate with me and that the clothes I started the trip with in the summer aren’t what will get me to Halifax. So the next day I stopped in Rimouski and bought neoprene cycling shoe covers at a sports store, a crappy jacket at a liquidation store for $30 that has yellow stains all over it, and some winter gloves and a touque at Zellers. I also made a waterproof bag to store my sleeping bag in out of an empty fertilizer bag I got from Hal’s garage. That night was so cold that I had to wear the jacket and gloves and touque while in the sleeping bag.

It rained all night but stopped in the morning. The road was amazing all day.. from Amqui all the way into New Brunswick. 120KM of downhill road following a river as it makes it’s way to the ocean. Found a little town inside of New Brunswick and setup the tent behind the community center, which looked like it hadnt been used in a while.

The next day I pushed into Pointe-Verte, New Brunswick where I am now staying with my grandma’s sister’s son, Rejean. He showed me all around town today, and I met a bunch of distant relatives and even explored the old house my grandmother grew up in. What a sight.. this small little house that a whole large family grew up in.

There are a lot more things I want to mention, but I’m getting tired. I already wrote all of this (and more) once, and accidentally deleted it all.

On Wednesday, I will leave here and head for PEI. Hopefully I will be able to get a shuttle across the Confederation bridge with my bicycle. From there, I will head to the Musquodoboit Harbour to dip my bicycle tire into the Atlantic Ocean. Then I’ll head up to Halifax to catch a free Joel Plaskett show on the 4th, then hop on a bus for the next 36 hours back to Windsor!

gatineau to pointe-verte pictures

It feels so nice to be in another province, I`m so happy!

I`m currently at the public library in Gatineau (Formerly Alymer) Quebec. Just trying to get used to this French keyboard which has a few things in different places. The operating system is also all in french, but I`m such a nerd I know what each button does just by the location.

I think I will be here until Monday taking some deserved rest. There`s a few things I want to go see, including the new War Museum and of course the Parliament buildings and all that. Today my aunt Linda drove me to MEC to get a few things, including new brake pads. The old ones still had a few millimeters left before the wear-line, but I figured I`d replace them now. I also picked up a new canister of bear-spray, since I lost mine over a week ago by accident. I don`t think I need it, since I`m just in black bear territory now. But since I lost my first canister I`ve seen twice as many bears in the last week as the whole trip previously combined. That is to say, I`ve seen 2 more bears this week. Both of them pretty darn close up too, but perfectly occupied eating stuff on the side of the road or trail.

I am also now off highway 17, which I had been travelling on since Thunder Bay. Boy am I glad to be off that thing!

Leaving Sault Ste. Marie was nice, although I think I may have over-stayed my welcome with couch-surfer Feleisha and her family although they were such nice people that they`d never tell me if I did over-stay my welcome. The extra day I decided to rest and avoid some thunder storms I also became part of a big family dinner. I felt bad, but everyone was super nice and made me feel at home. The lasagne was also amazing… The roads out the next day weren`t too bad actually and I made it to Iron Bridge as I hoped. Just before town, I saw a church just off the highway so I decided to setup camp right between it and a big old tree. Churches always have really nice grass and there never seems to be anyone around…

The next day I met up with a cyclist from the good ol` U.S. of A. He explained to me how where he lives, they don`t have electricity and he`s never touched a computer before. He also explained how weird it is that we can`t carry hand guns here in Canada. Then he started telling me about explosives he`s learned to make through his local militia and how the Oklahoma bombing couldn`t have just been a single fertilizer bomb, etc. This was actually sort of interesting, since I`ve read a few things about that same point several years ago. But either way, I decided to split ways with him and find a camp site on the side of the road as he pulled off to stay at a camp ground.

I found a dirt road that came off the highway and then went on a path through the bush to a perfect cleared area and slept there. The next morning I met up with the American dude again, this time he told me about how he lured a squirrel to him using some peanuts and then killed it and ate it last night. At least, I think that`s what he was trying to tell me. Southern accents I find hard to understand sometimes…

The shoulder disappeared and truck traffic got pretty heavy. Almost always, the trucks are good about passing me.. they`ll go right into the other lane and go around me when they can and some will wait behind me until they can. This time, I heard a truck honk behind me so I looked back. Usually the trucks that honk are the `Wide Load` trucks and they give me plenty of time to get off the road to avoid being hit by the side of a house that they are pulling. But this was just a normal truck and there was no traffic in the opposite lane and the line was dotted. So I didn`t move and just waved him around. He went around and then cut back into my lane really suddenly and the trailer he was carrying swung way over and into the gravel shoulder kicking up lots of crap. I saw it all happening and had plenty of time to casually slow down and avoid it all, but it was really stupid and sort of pissed me off for the next hour or so.

The next day I pushed into Sudbury and it was actually a pretty easy ride since the wind was with me for the first time since Thunder Bay! I kid you not, I`ve gone like 20 days against the wind… Whenever I change directions, it changes. So I got into Sudbury early and explored some Industrial areas. This city is the only city I`ve been in that is outwardly uglier than Windsor.

Huge smokestacks, including the largest in the hemisphere spewing out sulphur. Piles of `Slag` everywhere, etc. Eventually I showed up at Zach`s house, who offered me the place to stay with his parents and him. They fed me really great and gave me a nice bedroom to stay in. Then Zach drove me around and showed me all the sites in Sudbury and explained the basic city history to me, and why there`s no old trees in the city and why all the exposed rock looks burned black. Like I said.. uglier than Windsor! I wanted to go to Science North but they charge $15 to get in, so I refused. We went to Value Village and then went to play some pinball at a pretty cool bar downtown that reminded me of The Embassy in London… a dive-y place that would be cool to see bands at. The best part was of course, that nobody was smoking in there since unlike Windsor, they`ve gone along and passed the bylaw.

The next day I did about 112 KM out of Sudbury with the wind with me some of the time, and against me some of the time. I was amazed at how fast it got dark, and got caught off guard. I usually don`t start looking for a place to camp until 7:30 but it was getting dark around 6:30. There was nowhere to put up a tent, and the only place I saw was a gravel road that just went 10 meters into the woods and ended at a telephone junction box. So I setup there, and spent a lot of time covering my tent with branches to camoflauge it since I was so close to the road and visible.

The next day I pushed to Mattawa. I had to go through North Bay, where highway 17 turned into a separated express way, which means no bicycles allowed. So there were `no bike`signs, but no alternative route that I could see. So I rode it.. went past the walmart, staples, home depot and all the other usual big box stores. The route got really hilly and pretty steep and I camped really far away from the highway off the side of an ATV/snowmobile trail. Bad mosquitoes though..

Leaving Mattawa sucked.. the hills got worse and worse. Only did around 80KM but that`s all I had to do, leaving around 100KM to get to Pembroke the next day. I followed some trails through the town of Mackey and found a really great spot right next to a big pond. At night I got scared a few times by what sounded like someone throwing a huge rock into the water. I figured it was a fish or something, but now I`m pretty sure it was a Beaver! There were also some rabbits that ran around near my tent at night.

The next day was going into Pembroke, which was quite interesting. I passed a sign that explained that `2km east of here was the first canadian nuclear reactor`. I thought it was silly that the plaque wasn`t near the actual site, so I studied the overhead picture of the plant on the sign and then headed east for 2 km and found an old road off the highway with a big gate, which was open! So I took it down towards the Ottawa River.. it was grown in, as though it hadn`t been used for years.. exactly what I wanted to see! Then after a while I saw a huge smoke stack through the trees! There it was, the NPD reactor! I felt like a spy almost.. snapping some quick pictures through the trees of this huge place surrounded by a barbed wire fence with radiation signs on it and security cameras everywhere. Then I noticed a truck in the parking lot, so I got out of there… the whole place was boarded up.

I kept going and went to a little town and chatted with a cyclist there who offered to buy me lunch. He was a former worker at the NDP plant, and I showed him my pictures and he was delighted I got to see the place! I explained to him how I thought it was weird that all the old nuclear development stuff was here, in the middle of nowhere with a huge military base nearby… as though they were really working on a bomb or something. Then he explained that`s exactly what they were doing, working on the early technologies to use towards a bomb. The reason all the stuff is way out here is that if an accident happened, casualties would be minimal, it`s close enough to Ottawa and there`s tons of water (for cooling) in `deep river`and of course there`s a huge military base nearby.

Later that day, I rode through the military base on the road. Lots of warning signs everywhere, etc. Signs on snowmobile paths that say that vehicles are subject to search, etc. I saw lots of cool military vehicles driving around as well, and they had old tanks and guns displayed at the entrance too!

The email I received from Jason giving me directions to his house included a warning about the people in the town not being friendl