Day One : London to Simcoe - Dropping by to visit a friend

Sunday July 27, 2003, 112 km (69 miles) - Total so far: 112 km (69 miles)

Today was a bit of a late start. Actually since I was supposed to start yesterday I would have to agree that this tour is starting off a bit late. Yesterday's delay was caused by me breaking a tooth the day before. I decided to get that fixed and then to wait a day for any pain issues prior to getting started. Although no pain issues appeared I think my decision to delay was a good one.

I woke up with the bike fully loaded except for water in the water bottles. While taking care of that I noticied that there was a pretty heavy rain storm happening outside. Worse there were some rain predictions for the rest of the week.

This picture shows the curious horses I referred to in the text. Very nice horses!
Click to enlarge.

Oh well. After taking a longer then normal shower and eating a slow breakfast I noticied that the rain stopped so the bike and I left the apartment and took the elevator ride down to the ground level.

In the two minutes that it took to do that the rain returned but this time at shower level intensity. This is the type of rain burst where you could strip down and with a bar of soap have a pretty descent intensity shower! I believe that I went through this same cloud about 4 times and it chased me for awhile throughout the day even when I did clear it.

Riding in the rain wearing Shimano Clipless sandals is awesome. The water refreshes your feet and then your feet quickly get air dried. Very nice!

I waited for the next pause. After about 15 minutes it arrived and I left.

I am starting at the northern end of the city of London. The destination today is the town of Simcoe Ontario. I chose this path because one of my best friend's lives in Simcoe and offered me a place to sleep and a chance to visit. I guessed that the distance was just over 100 km. Bob would also likely be willing to hold some stuff for me if I decided to ditch anything after the first day's ride. Bob wanted to meet me on my approach to Simcoe so that he could ride with me at least part way into town. This neccessitated taking a cell phone so that I could call him as I approached. Originally I had planned on not taking the phone.

The load was incredibly stable feeling on the bike, much nicer then my Port Burwell tour when I only had rear saddlebags. Although you could feel the extra weight the bike handled it well and steering wasn't a problem.

Leaving the city I rode on a number of city streets until I reached the eastern fork bike path. I took that path out of the city and along a number of farm lanes. Riding the farm lanes is quite fun. These are agricultural roads that are paved and tend to be quite wide. Traffic is often low. In one case I actually rode for more then 45 minutes prior to having a car pass me. These types of roads are excellent since you really get a chance to look around and see the countryside!

Sometimes though you can be moving along until you come to an intersection. With all the comments about the flat route around the lake you can imagine how much I enjoyed the intersection I came to that had two medium climbs in either of the two directions I planned on taking.

My first picture of the trip came as I approached a pasture on Talbot Road roughly 70 km into my trip to Simcoe. Throughout my journey I had noticied, as on previous trips, that horses, cows, lamas and other herd animals would as a group stare at me as I went by. In this picture there are two horses watching. After stopping both horses ran towards me. I took the picture but as I finished putting the camera away I noticied that both horses had approached the fence that I was standing by. The brown horse had her head stuck out from behind the white horse. The white horse was definately interested in meeting me. I left the two horses alone other then to say hi to them as I left.

On this day I started doing the motorcycle wave whenever a motorcycle approached from a different direction. It was interesting to discover that most of these motorcyclists would actually return the wave.

As I approached Simcoe I managed to find two roads that existed according to the map but in actual life they now looked significantly different then whenever the map was originally created (I was using a Ontario cycling map at this point).

The first road issue was minor and quickly overcome. The second one however encouraged me to go exploring for about 20 minutes in a south-westerly direction rather then the easterly direction I was looking for.

One good point about this is that I ended up going down a very fast downhill at one point. I hit 52 km/hr as my top speed for the day on this downhill!

I called Bob to let him know my location and he started riding out to meet me. I managed to get all the way to the traffic light about 5 minutes from his home before he managed to meet up with me. Part of the reason for this was this huge burst of speed to 29 km/hr that I experienced on my final approach to Simcoe.

It was fun to ride with Bob for that short distance. I found that I could pull away from him even after this distance. On a downhill I was gliding faster then he was pedaling which was interesting.

Another interesting thing about this area is that there are a lot of town's called (name)'s corners. It would be an exageration to say that every corner had a name but sometimes it felt that way. I think there were over 10 named corners in the brief section of map I looked at near Simcoe.

Today I started doing my stretching exercises whenever my shoulders were sore. I found that the brief break allowed me to get going again without pain.

After reaching Simcoe I went land kiting with Bob for awhile. I managed to do my laundry giving me two days of clean riding clothes before the next laundry day.

On reflection at the end of the day I believed that I made two major mistakes this day. I didn't really drink enough water even through I was carrying plenty and I made the mistake of not stopping for lunch. Both are mistakes I intend to not repeat in the coming days!

Total distance today: 111.5 km in approx 4.5 hours.

This distance replaces my previous daily best of 93 km!

According to the Heart monitor I burned 4203 calories on this run.

I did experience some mild butt pain. I attribute this to the need to break in the saddle. Even with the mild pain it's still more comfortable then my old "Trek Comfort seat" after 50+ km.

Tell A Friend about this page!