Week 5 Update

Last week was adventure-filled as I did not ride much waiting for the weather to clear.

There was so much snow that the only thing to do was just to embrace it instead of crying about it.

But first! I got some amazing press coverage in Edmundston’s weekly French newspaper.

That was pretty exciting! Click on the second image for a bigger image. Sorry the article is in French and I don’t have time to translate it unfortunately.

This week, I finally hit the road again and I was blessed with the best weather so far although to you it may seem intense

Yes, -37C (-34F) looks intense but there was zero wind, zero cloud in the sky and zero snow on the road which meant that I was able to ride fast and effortlessly and got to my destination an hour ahead of schedule.

It actually messed up my plans because had I known earlier that such favourable conditions were going to make the trip easy, I would have ridden farther!

By the way, when it’s this cold, I stay warm from the body heat that I am generating from the pedalling. So far, I have never ever gotten into a situation where it was too cold to ride and I can safely say that I won’t either since Spring is around the corner and temperatures are rising.

The ride was so beautiful as I mentioned earlier…

I even rode by McCain, the number one maker of frozen French fries in Canada.

I eventually got to my destination, an amazing water fall in Grand Falls, the aptly-named town.

But look at this…

As I rode into town, I wondered why I was suffocating. I was so hot that I could hardly breathe. A quick look at the local weather told me why…

-8C (17F)! What a weather difference in the space of three hours and 65 km (40 miles)! It felt like a Summer ride although when I started Winter cycling, I could barely survive those temperatures and now I almost ride naked in them!

During the ride, I encountered a pain that’s always there when I cycle. I asked the Internet what was that all about and it turns out that my seat is too high therefore my leg gets over extended hence the pain.

I lowered the saddle and will report on the results when I resume the riding.

To kill time, I watched House of Cards and watched all 13 episodes in a weekend since I don’t know when I will have access to fast Internet again to watch shows and movies on Netflix.

All that eating lots of chocolate of course!

I also learned how to use my new GPS unit that was sponsored by Andre Gingras, a gentleman from Montréal who owns ARG Sports, the exclusive distributor for Canada of highend European bicycle brands as well as a complete line of Italian bicycle gears and shoes. Him and his company have been very supportive and I appreciate the fact that he was able to expedite it to me which was amazing!

That’s it from a pretty uneventful week although behind the scenes there was a lot of work done as you will read next week so stay tuned!

As always, thank you for your support and thank you to all who are contributing financially because I will tell you this: crossing Canada by bicycle in Winter is an expensive expedition!