Day 55 “Ago”, “Now”, and “Not Yet!” (Quebec, QC Rest Day)

By now you are familiar with the usual Rest Day’s activities – copious consumption of food, laundry, bike tweaking, and some sightseeing – so I thought I’d enlighten you on our perspectives of time after 55 days on the road.

With a change of venue each night, and riding different routes each day, unless you refer to pictures (or probably my blog) it is very difficult to remember when, or where a specific event happened. For example, I know that I trued a rider’s wheel after her water bottle fell into it, but with all the new adventures each day, cannot specify where, or when this happened.

Apparently this is a common feeling amongst the riders – we know what happened today, and if we try hard, yesterday or the day before, but other than that the best we can do is that it happened “ago” as in “some time ago”. One fun exercise is to ask our fellow riders to name the last 10 campsites/cities we stayed in, in order – few if any can get beyond the last 5 without major effort.

As such our perspectives of time have changed greatly since leaving Vancouver. We are not exactly sure of the day or date, we just know for example that today is “Quebec - Rest Day”. If pressed we could go through a mental exercise to figure it out, or check one of the few watches that people are wearing, but for the moment, it just doesn’t matter. Our time references are, as today’s title says: “Ago”, “Now”, and “Not Yet!”

I am beginning to wonder how long it will take us to readjust once we are back at home.

Vieux Quebec

We finished off “now” with a nice stroll through Quebec, walking up and down the cobblestone streets, and a wonderful dinner on the terrace of a small bistro in Quebec City!

Dinner on the terrace

Tomorrow, (or “not yet”) we cross over to the south shore of the Saint Lawrence River and head up the Gaspe Peninsula.