Halifax - 7350km in 81/2 weeks.

Niel managed to fix his bike and we were back on the road by 10am. We took highway 9 – our so called shortcut  to the Canadian border. Oh my god talk about a hard road, it was non – stop up and downs that were so steep I actually had to walk some of them, and I haven’t had to do that in the whole trip. It was also a humid 30 degrees and there were virtually no shops to buy food and drink. After 113km and no accommodation or hopes for dinner anywhere we decided to stop at a rest area that had a portaloo, a river near by and an area to hide the tent from the road. The only thing that spoilt it was the masses of mozzies and midgies. After a meal of a filled roll left over from lunch and a big bikkie, we slept like a log.

A swollen eye from midgie bites.

 

I woke up with one eye swollen almost shut from a midgie bite, and we carried on -  on highway 9 to the border. We had some American money to get rid of first, so after a meal of Maccas we still had $11 left,  we could always eat chocolate. The customs people were very nice at the border and couldn’t believe how fast we had crossed the country from Vancouver. They also couldn’t believe we had ridden highway 9 – it is well known as being very hard.

The Atlantic at last.

 

We took the motorway after that, as bikes are allowed on the motorway in Canada. And finally managed to get  our first glimpse of the Atlantic, when I felt absolutely awful, I was so tired I couldn’t move, or even open my eyes for 10mins. I thought that I had ‘hit the wall’ big time. But later realised that I had food poisoning.  I dragged my body to the campground and felt a bit better in the morning.
 

We have now made it to the end of our journey. We are in Halifax, and have even ridden out to the airport to confirm our tickets. We almost had our bikes taken from us there, we left them locked together and security guards tried to take them away as they were a bomb threat. Can you believe that! 2 loaded touring bikes – a bomb threat. If they hadn’t been locked together they would have been gone. They had tried to shift them and they were so heavy , they had only managed to shift them a meter. After losing my bike last year to a thief in Vietnam, that would have been my worst nightmare, after all we have been through in this trip.

Yeah we made it to the end.

 

I can now call myself a trans-continental cyclist – awesome. I am very proud of myself. At 53 years old I put a lot of younger people to shame. 7350km in 8 and a half weeks. Anyone can do it you just need to be cycling fit and a determination never to give up, and always just go that little bit further or faster than you need to. It becomes easy after a while.