Vive la Velorution!

Yesterday evening as the sun began to fall lower in the sky, Toby and I pedaled over Blueberry Hill into Sault Ste Marie. Word from passing cyclists had spread to our ears of the glories and wonders of the Soo, so I eagerly anticipated our arrival. Pleased to say that I was definitely not let down :) We arrived just as some sort of music festival kicked off downtown; Queens Street was closed off to traffic, live music and beer gardens spilling out onto the streets. We ran into another cyclist, Nick from Quebec, who we had been leapfrogging for the past couple weeks, who directed us to Velorution Bike Shop where we could pitch our tents for free and take a shower. So we kicked it back up the hill to Velorution, where we found a grove of trees with an assortment of tents and bikes hidden amongst them, as well as a picnic table with a couple of other cyclists cooking ups some grub on their whisperlight, a wildly beautiful bathroom/shower, and a BMX course. Within a few minutes, we ran into a few familiar faces, cyclists who we had been running into over and over again over the last two weeks. Ate, showered, tents up, we headed back downtown to meet up with Nick and listen to some music. Imagine taking your first shower in 7 days after spending five-seven hours on the bike everyday and you might understand how glorious I was feeling when I rolled back into town.

It was easy to find Nick, he told us to look for "the drunk french man at the bar", but no, he wasn't that drunk, just merry. We chilled out on the patio, enjoying cold beer and catching up on the last few day while absorbing the festive atmosphere of the place. Once the street music stopped, we headed inside the bar and Toby took advantage of the fruit platter (what was fruit platter doing at a bar anyways?) to load up his handlebar bag with bananas and nectarines. True cycling hobo at his finest.

We started pedaling back to the bike shop around 1:30am. Toby decided this was a good time to practice his French, and proceeded to spout out all the phrases he knew as we climbed the mammoth hill back to our tents. "If there's one thing that I know, it's that 'hot dog' in French is 'l'hot dog'. Je voudrais une lot dog, silver plate!" Nick groaned, tried to correct him, Toby insisted he was right, I questioned why Toby would want a 'lot dog' if he was a vegetarian, Nick asked what a vegetarian was, I laughed hysterically as Toby shouted out "Tabernak!" and Nick cringed and warned him not to say that once he got to Quebec, I laughed harder as their discussion on French pronunciation continued and Toby went on to further brutalize the French language with his enthusiastic attempts to learn the local lingo. This was followed by our (attempt) to subtly find our tents in the dark without wandering into trees, other tents, or BMX ramps. My first night out in a city in a long while, this was definitely one to be remembered.

This morning Kevin (who I cycled with in Saskatchewan for a few days) arrived at the bike shop after riding the southern route through Michigan. The three of us plan on formingg a biking triad and cycling through the Manitoulin Islands and into Toronto together. We ate a late breakfast at a diner in town, filling the time between coffee refills by talking about our journeys. I ate three pieces of french toast, three pieces of sausage, and drank like, five cups of coffee. We left the diner (pockets full of peanut butter and jam packets), and it was pouring rain. We plowed through it, smiling as our tires made massive splashes in the puddles, glad that the water was warm as it soaked through out t-shirts :)

So now 5 or 6 of us are hanging out at the shop, hiding from the rain and eating apple fritters that Toby picked up (bag of 20 for 6 bucks) from the bakery. Hopefully the rain will cease so we can have a big ol' bonfire and make up some s'more tonight, before hitting the road again tomorrow morning.