Personal

Day 62, I appreciated a day of rest and took a few strolls around the pleasant little community of Ironbridge. The original Iron Bridge spanned the Mississagi River (above), which runs through town. At the motel, the water and power were out from 6:00 in the morning till 3:00 in the afternoon, but it wasn’t anything unbearable.

Day 63. Ironbridge to Espanola. 89 mi. 3852 miles TTD. 2900 ft elevation. The weather was hot and humid, but there was a wonderful tailwind.

This was meeting goals two and three for the day. I engaged, and I’m telling you about it in hopes that you might help him out. Claude was walking on the side of the road in the opposite direction. I stopped to visit with him. I found out he has epilepsy, and he’s determined to walk 14,000 km to raise awareness about epilepsy. He’s from Montreal and figures he’ll stop for the winter, but he’s still determined to walk the full 14,000 km. By the way, English is his second language. As I continue eastward through Ontario, I’m running into more and more French-speaking people.

After an hour or two of riding this morning, I got a phone call and pulled over to visit with my friends Jon and Anne. They are trying to figure out a time to meet me on the road, but logistics are complicated. Hopefully, they can work it out because, as I thought back over the last 2 months, I realized that the times I’ve had the opportunity to see family and friends, as well as make new friends, have been highlights of the trip. I do get lonely, but it’s usually when I have to sit in a motel. The riding part has become routine, and I’ve learned to utilize the time with music, audiobooks, and navigation, or maybe I should say, finding my way out of navigational errors.

You might be interested in the personal realities of riding day after day. Keep in mind I’m a doctor, and so sometimes I share things about medical issues and body functions inappropriately.

A common question is: “How is my butt?” When people find out that I’m sitting on a piece of leather stretched across a metal frame with no padding, they can’t believe that I’m still riding. The Brooks saddle is famous in part because it works. As you sit on it for a few hundred miles, it molds to your butt. Fortunately, and unfortunately, I lost a fair amount of weight before coming on the trip, and so I didn’t have the padding I used to have. That made some of the early riding a little painful, especially through British Columbia, where I took a beating— or my butt took a beating— on a lot of rocky trails.

Speaking of British Columbia, if you don’t have a life and have been following along since the beginning, you know I drank some untreated water a couple of times high up in the mountains. I don’t know if that caused an issue or not, but I do know that I’ve been, shall we say, more than regular and sometimes somewhat explosive. Thankfully, it’s not many times a day, but occasionally it’s a bit urgent. Today, I crossed a no-trespassing gate to get off the road and left a little present for the owners. Hopefully, it will wash away with the next rain.

Fortunately, the sun has been more of a problem than any other type of weather for me. My grandchildren thought my white feet were hilarious. However, the lady at a convenience store today commented on how dark my legs were. I don’t think she was hitting on me, but her comment initiated a nice conversation. The only time I’ve been sunburned was when I pulled up my shorts one day and exposed more of my thigh than usual. Otherwise, I’ve gratefully avoided sunburn.

Finally, I believe the repetitive nature of holding the handlebars can be problematic. Early on, I had some numbness in the distribution of my ulnar nerve: i.e., pinky and ring fingers. I wasn’t sure if it was from the fall I took in Alberta or just holding the handlebars for 6 to 10 hours a day. Thankfully, that’s improved and is almost completely gone.

Overall, I’ve been very blessed to stay well on such a long and exposed journey. Hopefully, that will continue, and I can finish out the ride.