I am sitting in our room at the Velotel, staying warm. Murray is walking to a supermarket to buy tomorrow’s breakfast.
Knowing we have 60 km to ride today, and the forecast is wind and rain, we are on our bikes by 8:30 am. It’s weird, a 60 km ride at home seemed to go on forever, but when riding in a new place, the 60 kms go by much quicker. I guess it is because there are new things to look at – the alpaca farm, trains, houses, fields of sunflowers, the canal, the river and boats. Also, the wind is at our backs for most of the ride!
We get stopped by the rain and shelter by some trees out of the wind. It pours, then abates and then pours again. We finally decide to put on our rain pants and just go for it and by the time we get them on, the sun comes out! We ride with our rain gear on just in case. By the time we get to the hotel, I am chilly, sweaty and uncomfortable and we can’t get into our room yet, so we have to sit. Once we get into our room, I am the first into the shower, and am not going out again into the chilly wet weather! Thus here I sit, toasty warm while Murray is outside.
I play mind games with myself as we ride. My bike computer says we have about 20 kms left. In my head I think, oh okay, that is the distance from South Cooking Lake to the Ardrossan Rec Centre. I know how far that is. Or, we have seven km to go. Oh, my mind says, we are on RR 221 at Wye Road. The distance is quantifiable and understandable in my brain.