Day 98 Salaberry de Valleyfield to St Bruno

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The last day on the road started early with Andrew groaning in pain. His Dad, wanting a good night’s sleep, called an ambulance. After a couple of hours, Marge and Andrew returned from the hospital with the news that he had an infection and needed some antibiotics and TLC. We called Dave who immediately volunteered to come and pick him up. We packed up and breakfasted at Resto du Pont, Marge loved the real maple syrup, and went back to the motel to wait for Dave. He arrived just before 9am, and in brilliant sunshine and with a strong tail wind we headed for St Timothe and Beauharnois. The ride over the dam, and under the tunnel was thrilling and a must do for cyclists in the Montreal region.

St Remi arrived and a pizza lunch,(got to keep those fires stoked) and once more into rural Quebec at its finest and most fragrant. We were passing close to one field being fertilized with manure and rural Quebec got to be almost too fragrant.

The miles went by very quickly due to the sterling efforts of Tim and Dot pulling us and the wind pushing us and with about 20kms to go we met up with Andre, an old friend, as the first of the reception committee.

Later, we met up with Helmut and others and photos and equipment were arranged prior to the last push into town.

It is here that I have so say that in all the crossing we had not pushed the tandem, it had been ridden all the way, but this had worn the middle chainring and in the last few kilometers, this wear was making the chain skip when very high loads were applied. I knew that going over the railway bridge would be just such an occasion, with that in mind, I tested the bottom ratio, and it worked perfectly.

So, down what we affectionately call the world’s worst road, to the aforementioned bridge. Due to something beyond comprehension, I did not change to the small ring and on the steepest part of the bridge we came to a grinding halt.

Cameras clicked. We coasted back down, put it bottom and cleaned the bridge to keep our “no push” record intact. A few minutes later, it was all over, to the cheers and congratulations of friends and neighbors. There was a long pause for photos, and time for a beer.

The blogs in the days following will give our progress on going through 3 months mail.Lol

Average 23kph

Height climbed 220m up, 180m down

Today’s distance 113km

Total Distance 7588km

That’s about all the news that's fit to blog, except to say the biggest Thank yous” to Dave and Sandra for looking after our house and pool and general mental health, Annie, for the many “Hugs,” Andrew for looking after grass, tomatoes and a thousand other little things, Tim and Dot for leading us in along the Lakefront Trail, sharing grass cutting duty, and a hundred other good things, to Alwyn for his weather reports, to the Winnipeg Crew who treated us so royally, especially Neil who kept his cool after I’d screwed up his computer . Also, “Thanks to all our friends and neighbors who did things for us that we will never know about, and took time out of their day to come and meet us. Last, but not least all the people we met on our journey who with their encouragement, advice and concrete aid made our trip so wonderful.

Night, night.