Fast & Fabulous: Recent Events and Photos - Bicycling in Québec, Land of Togetherness 2007

To the best of my recollection, I arrived home on a Monday, and fell into a deep hibernation, punctuated by intense feeding frenzies. When I finally regained consciousness, my memories were jumbled with dreams, hallucinations and memories of other bike rides. I found some torn-up notes in a side pocket of one pannier. They looked like they might be notes from my trip. Piecing all these clues together, I have come up with some ideas about my bike ride to, and in, Québec. One note, from the day before I got home, says I had lost 12 pounds in the last 7 weeks. I probably gained half of it back in the week following my return.

So how did it happen that I rode 400 miles with 35 pounds of stuff on my bike to participate in a 400-mile supported ride in Québec with two thousand crazy Québecois, and then rode another 400 miles with load to get back home? I blame it all on Bawb Nelson, Fast and Fab’s beloved Mother Superior. OK, I’ll accept one percent of the blame myself. Looking back through the mists of time to the spring of 2007, I see a notice posted on the Fast and Fab website: “AUG. 3-10, SAGUENAY: Team Priscilla's big ride this summer is Le Grand Tour, in which 2000 cyclists take a 400-mi., six-day adventure ... through Québec ... Big negative: mosquitoes. Big positives: great food and the spectacular Saguenay fjord ...” Now it’s all coming back to me. “Aha!” I recall thinking. “If Bawb can do it, I can do it.”

At this stage in my life, I am blissfully unemployed. I quit my job a while ago, which has left me with the time to indulge in bicyclistical adventures. The only problem is that I’m living on my savings, and the less money I spend, the longer I can forestall a return to the workplace. My tendencies to economy have therefore developed into a state of severe cheapness. A quick calculation showed I could afford to be a member of the Priscilla delegation to Le Grand Tour. I could not, however, possibly waste money on an Amtrak ticket plus whatever grotesque bicycle surcharge they might impose.

The only solution was to ride my bike with all my gear up to the rendezvous point near Montréal. I’ve done a bit of touring and figured it was high time I did a little more. I reserved camping spots at state parks and RV parks. Yes, camping is cheaper than motels. It’s also more fun. Plus Le Grand Tour is a camping tour, so I had to take the tent and slpgbag anyway. To get in shape I rode in Cycling the Erie Canal (http://www.ptny.org/canaltour/index.shtml), a delightful entry-level ride from Buffalo to Albany. To get there, I rode with my gear from Dutchess County to Albany, where I got a bus to Buffalo. On the way back, I rode from Albany back to Dutchess County.

The day came when I couldn’t put it off any longer. I started my ride in Dutchess County because it’s the end of the Metro North line, which allows you to take a bike for free. My first two nights I stayed with friends, and they were all remodeling their recently-purchased homes. It was heartening to see that Eleanor and Trey had adopted many of the suggestions I gave them last year to help them transform their imitation Winchester Mystery House (http://www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/story.html) into a habitable dwelling. I was no help whatever in advising Lynn on the best colors to paint the various rooms of her Albany row house.

I made it fine from Red Hook, in Dutchess County, to Albany, although in four previous rides I have had massive dehydration attacks, crashed my bike and thrown off the front derailleur, had a flat caused by a defective tire and huddled under a bush for half an hour, hoping that no lightning strikes would hit me. Leaving Albany was more difficult – this was the first time I’d be riding by myself into the unknown and not just to a friend’s house. I had planned on four days’ riding, plus an insurance day. I did make it to the suburbs of Montréal, but let me pick up here from a mass email I sent from somewhere on the Grand Tour:

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Howdy gang! I’m on the Grand Tour in Québec. I had to wait in line with a few thousand spandexed Québecois to grab a computer, but now that I’ve got it I ain’t givin’ it up! Here are the adventures so far.

– Lots of ups and downs. Literally.

– I’ve survived lethal amounts of gorgeous scenery.

– Vermont is the state of choices and contests. Do you ride on the highway and risk death, or on the Bikeway, which increases the distance from point A to point B by a factor of 3.14159...? Who is more likely to do you in, the trucks or the mosquitoes?

– Arrived on the scene of what might have been a fatal crash between a black car, a white car and a truck carrying portapotties. This was much more upsetting than being blown into a ditch by a truck an hour later. Stay off VT Rte 22A at all costs!

– the wind’s invisible hand of the wind slapped me upside the head a time or two

– the Whitehall Marina and RV park is a lovely, laid-back- funky camping place. A bit of Québec right in N.Y. state. The River’s Edge campground, Vergennes, VT, is sterile and soulless but has great showers. North Hero State Park is beautiful, tranquil, and full of killer mosquitoes.

I crossed the border at Rouses Pt. NY in 93° heat. The first things I bought were a Coca Cola and a little Québec flag to fly from my bike. Don’t need to worry about calories on this journey... Camped at Camping Joie de Vivre (http://www.campingjoiedevivre.com), 20 km SE of Montréal. Charming, friendly, mostly trailers that families really use as their summer homes. I hope to stay at more like it on my way back.

It was a quick ride from Camping Joie de Vivre to St. Lambert, just across the river from Montréal, where we were scheduled to board the bus to take us to Saguenay. I met up with Team Priscilla, now boiled down to a hard core of three – Bawb, Gerry and me. This was to be almost the only time I saw them during the ride. They both ride a bit faster than I do. Surely I am not the only FastNFabber who has been on a ride with Bawb where he said “the cue sheet is wrong, just follow me” and then disappeared at the speed of light.

The bus took us from St. Lambert through Québec City (Friday afternoon rush hour with thunderstorms) up over the Laurentides to the starting point at Alma. The Laurentides are covered with birch and aspen, which I can tell apart, and spruce and fir, which nobody can tell apart. Hydro Québec power transmission sculpture: two absolutely straight parallel lines towering above grass swaths 50 yards across, 1/4 mile apart, marching up and down mountain after mountain of Christmas tree farms to provide the entire Northeast Quadrant with adequate electricity to let it watch “American Idol.” In August, the landscape south of Alma looks like California’s Salinas Valley in February.

Fun on the mass ride in Québec, or the Tour des Hockeyrinks. This is the Erie Canal ride on steroids. Steroids and your choice of ten different wines at dinner. 2,000 spandex queens camp in tents on soccer fields cheek by jowl. Snoring and farting together in our adjacent cocoons we become a family. Together we rise to wait in line for the portapotties, for showers, for water, for breakfast, for air. (Actually this is pretty cool. A guy with a compressor and nozzle squirts air into everyone’s tires one after the other, 120/presta of course.) Together we wait in line for our café americano, drag our possessions to the truck, apply our crème de butt, zero out our vélocomputers and pass the starting gate. A 50-mile-long peloton splayed across the north woods. You can see it on Google Earth. I’m the one in the blue helmet. Together we stop to pee in the bushes as a result of the americano, we fix our 2,000 flats at the side of the road, we stop at the Hydro Québec rest stop for lunch*, pay a visit to the mechanic who, right there at lunch, finally fixes our frozen down-tube derailleur barrel adjuster that has been plaguing us for four months by swapping a Campy part for Shimano, race past outrageous scenery to the finish line. Together we pitch camp, wait in line for all our services, have a beer, dine in today's hockey rink.

(* Lentilles du puy, riz sauvage, maïs sucré et orge perlé garni de terrin de champignons sauvages, dùne mousseline de saumon frais, chapeauté de fromage à la crème à la truite fumée parfumée aux herbes... oef à la coque ... artichauts ... etc. etc.)

Space does not allow the evening menu to be listed. Fortunately for us, every school in Canada has a hockey rink begging to be utilized off-season. Together we, and the surrounding provinces, listen to the entertainment – of various qualities and languages, but all at the same volume. Together we stagger to our multicolor ripstop nylon honeycomb cells, thinking "at least I don’t have to wait in line to snore and fart. I can't wait to get up tomorrow and do it all over again!"

We started along the Saguenay River and fjord. The rising municipality of Saguenay has gobbled up dozens of towns like a 21st-century Los Angeles of the north, a Wal-Mart in the wilderness. For our first three days we were in various Saguenay municipalities. We cycled along Lac St. Jean, the home of an ice metropolis in the winter. We ate lunch at a ski centre – some people ate sitting in chair lifts. Hills, mountains, rivers, lakes, farms, valleys, canyons, fjords. Magnifique! At one point we all had to dismount and walk our bikes across the narrow catwalk on top of a dam. So narrow we had to go single file. At the other end of the walk there was a cyclist going in the other direction, waiting for us to go by. How long does it take 2,000 cyclists to push their bikes over a dam?

The canyon of the Rivière de Sainte Marguerite is like a shallower Yosemite Valley with more trees on the canyon walls. It almost didn’t rain at all as we sped along. We had a rest day in the town of Sacré Coeur, where we could bike, kayak, adjust our derailluers, swim, or watch our laundry dry. Next day we ferried across the Saguenay at Tadoussac and raced up the St. Laurent, trying to get to camp before the rain started.

Great things about bicycling in the rain:

– You can only get so wet. There’s no such thing as 101% humidity. It’s just like riding your bike and taking a shower at the same time.

– No need to take a shower when the ride is over. Ditto with washing your clothes. Ditto with cleaning your bicycle.

– Cools you down. Nobody ever died of hyperthermia in the rain.

– Hydration issues? Just open your mouth.

– Washes off road kill; makes roadside snacks easier to prepare.

Gerry from Fast and Fab chose the hotel option and had a roommate. He got in one eve at 10 and found his roommate, Martin, had been picked up by Joanne, a female cyclist. Gerry said, “So what did you guys do?" She answered, "We went to dinner. And I had two orgasms." Monday’s ride rated three orgasms: 40 miles of hills, 30 miles of rain and 10 miles of hills AND rain.

You may have heard – it rained all day Wednesday. Those of you who followed previous cycloventures may have read about my plan to use a condom to protect my odometer from hour after hour of rain. The results are in – it works! But when I woke up in the morning, tiny little cycling computers were crawling all over my bike. Condom must’ve had a hole in it.

Access to the cafeteria is strictly controlled. If you were serving 2,000 of this kinda meal, you'd want to control access to it too. The wristband is all. Wearing a wristband makes me crazy and also gives me a rash. So I put mine on my ankle. At every breakfast, lunch, and dinner, someone marks a special spot on your wristband for access verification. I have a lot of fun getting the attendants to mark my ankleband. Sure hope my ankle doesn’t swell up.

Why do they build the road to go straight up the hill when it’s just going to go down the other side? Why jump in the shower right after you came in out of the rain?

Every morning at breakfast, we get a copy of today’s newsletter, Le Déchaîné. (the unchained? the derailed? the deranged?) Apparently it’s a reference to a Parisian humor magazine full of base canards. Bits about today’s ride and activities, interesting things that happened yesterday, of course today’s dinner menu. Up in the corner there’s a little box. It says "Météo: Pluie." Anybody out there who speaks French please let me know what that means ASAP.

That’s it for now. I’ll try to write more as events demand. Today you can reach me at: Silver North Face Canyonlands tent, seventh to the right next to the huge Canary Yellow Eureka tent off the mud track that veers right from the Main Path between the FestiDouche truck and the group of 5 portapotties, Sacré-Coeur-Sur-Le-Fjord-Du-Saguenay-With-A-Soda-On-The-Side, QC, Canada.

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and the next email...

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I think I left you all the day it rained. I mean the day it REALLY rained. It almost measured up to the '06 Erie deluge in Syracuse where we had three inches of standing water at our camp on the top of the hill. Fortunately we had an hour's respite this time, during which I was able to pitch my tent. But many hundreds of cyclists made themselves at home in the école du jour – classrooms were crammed with indoor campsites. Every corridor was hung with lines and lines of drying spandex. Even the bistro tent was indoors – this was a blessing to those of us sleeping outdoors. The producers of Le Grand Tour de Québec deemed it necessary to have evening musical entertainment, which seemed to grow in volume and lateness as the week progressed. This evening those of us lucky enough to camp outside were treated to a quiet night's sleep. Plus a beautiful sunset as the last of the storm blew by.

One aspect of the tour truly worth the wait was the mechanical service. Tour propaganda decreed "make certain your bicycle is in tip-top shape." Bad advice. Where else can you get repairs done on your bike for the price of parts only, while you actually TALK to the mechanic and learn by watching? I was lucky enough to draw Denise, Montréal's gift to the bicycle world, when a certain frozen-front-derailleur-down-tube-barrel-adjuster situation had to be dealt with. Did I mention that she diagnosed AND FIXED a problem that had been unaddressed by innumerable mechanics in any number of nations and continents over a period of time far too tedious to describe? All this during the lunch rest stop as I was munching on my mousse de bison aux pommes et raisins. I also learned the most effective technique for cutting to the front of the bicycle-repair line: bring Denise a beer.

The day after the rain we went off the main routes we had been frequenting and wandered along little country roads in the Charlevoix, a gorgeous area on the north side of the St. Lawrence northeast of Québec City. We had to go up about 100 short but very steep climbs. In this regard, my attitude remains "ain't to proud to push." This was the most beautiful day of the tour, pushing or no pushing. I won't whine too much about the lines and the late-night revelry of our last night together.

Our final day was the ride to Québec City. The tour propagandapak described it as "a series of celebratory climbs and descents." And what were we celebrating? The invention of the piton, perhaps. A long long long slow grade up and up and up for the first 20 kilometers. The last day of the ride and finally my brain clicked into metric. The climb went on and on but it wasn't too steep. Just shift into that lowest gear and keep pedaling. And pedaling. And pedaling. There was one stretch where it kept looking like we were almost at the top – for mile after mile we were almost there. As a cycling companion described it to me in French: "Interminable!"

After about five false summits, we hit 740 meters – 2427.8215 feet. It was rawther chilly up there. Then we had the payoff. 10-15 kilometers of downhill. No need to pedal or brake. It was only on this last day that I saw much of Bawb. Gerry had chosen the three-day option and was probably in a sauna in Toronto at this point. Coming down the long descent, Bawb suddenly appeared on my left. With his camera. I was going 34 mph, definitely the fastest my speedometer had ever indicated. So he must've been going at least 35. He turned around, said "Smile!" and clicked the shutter. I tried to smile, but the attached image will reveal that I was more concerned with how I'd survive if he wiped out.

We didn't have any wipeouts, and made it into Québec City. I had to spend half an hour turning my bags inside out and mounting the panniers. I pushed the loaded bike up the streets of the Old City to the hostel where I shared a room with Bawb. He ran out to catch a train to Montréal quite early in the morning, leaving me to hang with my pals KenNDale. Most days after a ride, I'd run into Ken and Dale, of KenNDale bicycles, in the beer line at the bistro tent. Fortunately, this was one of the shorter lines. Ken won my favor when I discovered he had bar-end shifters. This is not the forum for me to rant about shifters and derailleurs. One day we were talking about bike frames (I'm happy with my 531 tubing, thank you very much) and other parts and I was sounding off about indexed shifters. Ken looked me in the eye and said "That's what you are! A retro-grouch!" Guilty as charged.

My original plan had been to ride from Québec City all the way back to the outermost suburbs of New York City. Today I was walking to the market below the City and saw the train station. I remembered Bawb took his bike to Montréal on the train. He took his rented bike back to Montréal because he couldn't bring his own high quality bicycle from New York because Amtrak doesn't accept bicycles. I could go on but I won't. Perhaps some other time.

Suddenly it occurred to me – maybe I can take my bike on the train! I checked with the clerk (number of people in line: zero) and she told me I could ride to St. Lambert, the very town where I boarded the bus and joined the tour. I bought my ticket. Then I had major self-doubt. I've chickened out. The idea was to ride all the way back from Québec, and I couldn't handle it. It took me about half an hour and a phone call or two to get over it. You don’t think I’m a wimp, do you?

The hostel has internet access. You prepay and get a logon and password. I think I’ve figured out how to hack the system. All those years working in IT and finally a payoff. Let me send this off now – I’ll be back in Vermont soon where I can’t even get cell reception – forget about internet.

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Monday morning I walked the bike down the hill to the train station. The solicitousness with which the staff helped me with my bike was extraordinary. The staff of VIA Rail Canada was NOT going to let me have a problem with my bike on their train. The conductor spend a good deal of time telling me about her bike club in Montréal and the bike trips she takes to her country home in the Eastern Townships.

My stop was quite close to where I had cycled two weeks previously. I put the panniers on and headed out. Right on Rue Victoria. Left on Rue Regent. When I turned right on Rue Mance, the street I had taken on my way up, I felt like I had clicked into the slot and I could just glide on home. No more getting lost. No more worrying about getting there on time. Back through the Boulevard Grand Allée, Chemin Grand Allée, Chemin Salaberry, Avenue des Pins, Rue des Trembles, to Camping Joie de Vivre. Melanie, who had been so welcoming to me when I stayed there two weeks previously, was at the desk and as friendly as ever. I might have shed a tear or two of relief, knowing I could make it back home since I had made it up there. Naïvely, I assumed the Vermont Department of Highways and the Lake Champlain Bikeways [sic] had thrown their worst at me.

I pitched my tent in the same spot I had used before. There were quite a few more campers in the tent zone this time. It was the week of the world-famous St.-Jean-Sur-Richelieu hot-air balloon festival. Lucky for me there was a campsite for me. Unlucky for me there was a breeze and no balloons to see. The friendly families camped out were as appreciative of my travels as the cyclists on the tour about my trip from the lower Hudson Valley to Alma, Québec and back. Really, you should try it.

It then took me four days to get to Albany. One night I stayed in a lean-to at the Champlain Adult Campground, mere yards from the lake and quite close to the Grand Isle ferry. I woke up in the morning to serious winds and whitecaps on the lake. Fortunately for me it only rained to the north. My greatest deviation from the route up was in west-central Vermont. On the way up I took the advice of staff at the Vermont Welcome Center and rode the life-threatening Route 22A. So on the way back I figured I'd ride the official Champlain Bikeway. Once again the joke was on me. Paved roads disappeared into loose gravel or sandy tracks. At one point I went by a rutted out road that looked like it still contained the tracks of covered wagons. I recommend anyone contemplating riding the Champlain Bikeway to ride it on a heavy-duty mountain bike. Even better, stay on New York Bike Route 9.

One morning I stopped into a bar and grill in Fort Ann, N.Y. It was a big room with a bar and pool table on one side and a lunch counter on the other. There was only one person there – the waitress-fry cook sitting at the counter chowing down her breakfast. "How ya doin?" I asked. "What does it look like? I'm havin’ my breakfast! Never fails – I siddown to eat and someone walks in. You're my first customer except this guy I just sold a bottle of booze to..." She bemoaned that her doctor had forbidden her to drink any alcohol. She then made a delicious English muffin for me, and was quite interested in my trip. I was headed to Albany that evening, and she started in on how there used to be farmland down there and now it's all built up. Just to drive home her point, the county-music station was playing a song that kept repeating "Country isn't country anymore." She wished me a safe trip three times, and I thanked her three times.

And so I made it south, to visit Lynn still remodeling her row house in Albany and Trey and Eleanor still remodeling their country manse in Red Hook, Duchess County. I got a ride from Red Hook and arrived to find that my neighbor, the awesome Shyr-Yi, had taken better care of my plants than I do.

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During the first week of my trip I heard no news at all. For my second week, only the bridge collapse in Minneapolis. Plus one immortal quote from “Exclaim!”, a Canadian rockzine, quoting a member of a band in Charlottetown, PEI: “I like things that are universal, or have a mass appeal but are still, you know, fucking awesome.” Wouldn't it be great to have more vacations from the news?

I probably haven't raved enough about the riding conditions on the Québec tour. About half of it was on roads with almost no motor vehicle traffic. Road conditions weren't bad, and the scenery was unbelievable. The roads with traffic had wide shoulders, and unlike in the States, motor vehicles give bikes the right of way. One feature of roads in Québec is often they have fissures every 20 yards or so. After a while you get used to them – you can pull up on the bars just slightly and miss most of the bump. Also maximum air in your tires helps. But the road quality is always just as good all the way out the edge of the shoulder. Sometimes there's the brownie effect – cracks in the asphalt in a pattern like crumbling fudge brownies get.

In Québec the cracks mainly run across the road. This feature is very common in the states, but the fissures run parallel to the road, inviting bike tires to get caught in them. Also in the states, especially in New York, there is consistent degradation in the quality of the paving the farther from the center of the road you go. You never know when the shoulder will turn into rocks, dirt, gravel, whatever. I saw the cause of this in Vermont, where I came upon a crew putting new asphalt down on the road. The new road was a little wider than the old one, and the new asphalt at the edge had been placed directly on top of the grass. It'll probably turn to crumbling fudge before the leaves start to turn. Drivers in Vermont are also good about the right of way. New York, as we know, is the "fuck you" state.

Now I'm recuperating and planning my next move. Would I do this trip again? I don't think so. Riding long distances with a load by myself is just too stressful. Anybody looking for a riding partner? Would I do another Velo Québec tour? There sure was great riding, great views, great food and great wine. But oh those long lines. And the late night noise. But I do have to go back to Québec again soon, because there are so many things I didn't do. I didn't try poutine, a tasty local delicacy. I didn't ride the Québec City funiculaire. And I didn't ride the 200 miles from Québec City to the U.S. border.

I wonder when I'll get on my bike again.