Day 85. July 18. Wednesday. St. Gideon to Saguenay, Quebec

I missed a really good riding day according to the gang.  I was the co-pilot today and once we got to ‘camp’, our hotel was in the middle of a big town and I didn’t want to fight the traffic.  So the driver and I went to a laundromat and did our laundry and then came back and laid around.  Maggie went swimming and soaked in the hot tub while I soaked up a few rays.

Before we left camp, Dave came back to retrieve laundry one of the ridets left behind.   Then this afternoon when all but three riders got in, they called to say they were lost and Dave hopped on his bike to go find them.  Such a cool guy.

Maggie and I also went on an information retrieving expedition this afternoon and I say that because the dumb GPS had no clue where we wanted to go.  At one point, according to the GPS, we weren’t even on a road.  We found the center in spite of that stupid device.

So tomorrow is supposed to be a very expert type road riding with 19% grade hills ( I can’t even imagine) with come and go shoulders, lots of curves and heavy traffic.  2/3 of us are going to be ferried by van past the hairy parts and some will go all the way to the next camp. I plan to ride once past the huge hills.  Not even sure I could ride 19% but I don’t want to stress my bad knee so will be woosy.  Please don’t think poorly of me.  I still have three months of riding to do and don’t want to jeopardize that by wrecking my knee.

This is the group before take off this morning.

Last nite we stayed in a hostel that was built back in 1929 as a bakery.  The pipes you see were installed when the building was remodeled into a hostel.  Apparently the hot water heater was upstairs and all these pipes had to be installed to get hot water downstairs.  They were all over the ceiling and actually looked pretty cool.  Also, the big oven has been enclosed in a wall.  That’s a bummer.  It probably would have been a great conversation piece.  It was supposedly unsafe to use.

The bathrooms and showers had a wood sliding door on tracks and last nite, the door to my stall was acting funny.  I couldn’t get it to latch and when I was ready to come out, the door would not budge.  It was off the track at the top and outside the track at the bottom.  I yelled for Bill and Michael across the hall to,come rescue me.  Embarrassing.