Day 33 – Marathon of Hope (Thunder Bay, ON – Nipigon, ON)

Per today’s cue sheet the ride was a relatively short one (67 miles) to start us out on a series of climbing days across the North Shore of Lake Superior. We started off at the student cafeteria at Lakehead University for their morning “$5 All You Can Eat” breakfast buffet – our guess was that their pricing is not based on serving hungry cyclists.

(Updated Aug 1 with corrections...)
Our first detour/sightseeing for the day was to visit the Terry Fox Memorial. Terry was a 21 year old Canadian who in 1980, after losing his right leg to cancer three years earlier, decided to raise cancer awareness by running across Canada. After 143 straight days of running the equivalent of almost a marathon each day, he had to end his endeavor just east of Thunder Bay as his cancer returned, and he succumbed to the disease in 1981. At the time, he captured the attention of all of Canada, and through his efforts has raised over $500 million to research and fight cancer. I suspect that he was an inspiration to Lance Armstrong for his cancer fighting efforts.

The ride was along Route 11/17, the Trans-Canada Highway, and the main artery across this part of Ontario. It is a 2-lane undivided highway, unlike the US Interstates. The shoulders are narrow and the truck traffic is heavy so we had to be on our toes all day. They are pretty serious about keeping the speeding down though…

About 50 miles into the ride, we took a 10 mile (round trip) sightseeing side trip to see “Canada’s longest Suspension Bridge and “zip” line. After 3 miles on a paved road and 2 miles on a gravel road, we got to the site. Let’s say we were taken for a ride… To walk the 20 minute circuit going over the suspension bridge would have cost us $20.00, and an additional $60.00 if we wanted a ride on the ½ mile long zip line. We felt that on our detour to the site we saw at least $20.00 worth of scenery so we passed on the added expenses.

One of the neat things about riding across the country is coming across other folks who are doing it – today we passed 4 people from Quebec who started in Montreal, rode to Newfoundland, flew to Vancouver and are now on their way back to Montreal – let’s hear it for having a truck to schlep all your gear!!!

The last 30 miles of today’s ride were into a headwind, and once we got about 6 or 7 miles from the end, they were in the process of resurfacing the road. This can be quite a pleasant experience for cyclists – riding on freshly paved surfaces, but we were about a week or so too early. The road top had been ground off leaving a bumpy surface on which to lay fresh asphalt, and the ride was quite harsh on the seat/hands/feet!

The only saving grace was that every kilometer or so there was a “Terry Fox Highway of Courage” sign which reminded us that things were not so bad. Had Terry been here he would have just sucked it in, gritted his teeth and kept on running, so we rode on keeping our whining to ourselves.

It looks like the surface continues for tomorrow’s ride.

We are in a private campground, and that means we have internet (WiFi) access – I guess that is their means of differentiating themselves from the Provincial Campgrounds – that, and a lack of voracious mosquitoes.
Another hard day tomorrow – today, with the sightseeing detours we covered over 80 miles.

So far I have logged 2,568 miles since arriving in Vancouver, and we have yet to reach the 1/2 way point in the ride.