Greetings everyone. It has been three years since we last took a trip on our tandem, and pestered you with one of these blogs. That was back in May of 2019 when we rode around Northern and Central Italy. There have been lots of unfortunate intervening events that have given us good reason to pause, but three years is a long time and time waits for nobody. We've decided that the time is right to take a chance and climb on the bike. We're double vaccinated, double boosted, and happy to do whatever local communities request to insure good health. We know that there are some risks: a new variant, new shutdowns. Whatever. And borrowing an analogy from a dear friend, we're at a George Bush "Mission Accomplished"
type of moment -- remember that the Iraq war lasted what, 10 years after Mr. Bush declared
"Mission Accomplished." So, too, with COVID, I think. But we are thrilled to give it a shot...
We had planned to do a multi-month ride this year, exploring Europe to visit friends and ride through places we haven't seen, but decided that a trip to Nova Scotia would be a good alternative while things are still unsettled. We have not been to the Eastern part of Canada and from everything we've read, it will be great.
We decided to get a new bike. A nice Co-Motion with a steel frame. It rides super nice.
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| The new ride |
By our reckoning, we had put around 25,000 miles on the old Cannondale (Das Bike) and it was showing every one of them. What a bike though! It served us well. Here's a list of some of our previously rides and the blogs when we did blogs...
- Vienna to Amsterdam
- Copenhagen to Prague
- Jasper, Alberta to Jackson, Wyoming
- Around Vancouver Island
- Zurich to Barcelona
- Munich to Venice, then Paris, and Around Iceland
- Toulouse to Lisbon
- Milan and around Italy
This year's route starts when we fly into Halifax on May 10. From the airport we load the bike and all our stuff onto a bus and travel north to Whycocomah (properly, We'koqma'q) on Cape Breton Island. We'll take a day to put the bike together and then head onto the Cabot Trail to ride a clockwise circumnavigation of the island. In years past we usually tried to ride from 60 to 80 miles per day. It has been three years since we did any long, multi-day rides, so this year we are being a bit less ambitious and are aiming at 40 to 60 miles per day. Some days more, some less. In all, we are planning to ride around 1200 miles.
I will try to do a post every day, and each day's post will include a map showing the day's travels. Play around with the map if you're inclined. You can select sections of the vertical profile (at the bottom of the map) to drill into that section and see what Lorie pushed us up, or which I navigated down. Have fun with it, as we will with posting photos when we can.
Here is a map that show a large overview of the basic route. This just shows the general direction we plan to go -- the daily maps will show where we actually went. We are fully expecting rain and wind, and probably a bit cold. But we've ridden in rain and wind and cold before and hope that we will also find some nice springtime weather along the route. And some lobster and scallops!
Cape Breton
Prince Edward Island and Mainland
We hope that you can join us along the way, if only from your couch with your computer! Cheers!
