Day 1: Would you care for a bath?
Thursday, July 23, 2009 at 11:47PM The first leg of our trip was quite short; Toronto to Gananoque. Easy 275km, right? Well, the first 100 or so km were in fact easy. The remaining distance was spent riding in either an outright downpour or just hard rain. It came in waves and every few minutes we'd have to slow down to about 80km/h or so; just enough that transport trucks could pass us spraying us some more!
Needless to say, we got to try out our rain gear on this leg of the trip. The verdict is that the gear certainly works and it made things more bearable; but we got soaked regardless. After a *cough* excellent dinner at McDonald's (hey, walking distance from the hotel and we went to eat at nearly 11pm...) we're spending the rest of the evening... blow drying our gear.
Cess
Day one was a trial by water. Yes, we were totally soaked. I shudder to think how much worse it would have been if we didn't have rain gear ... eww eww eww!! When we finally hit some rain, we pulled over and put on our rain gear and put the storm covers over our bags.
So what did we learn today? The Scala communicators held up despite the crazy downpour. The storm covers for our luggage really do work ... unless they are installed incorrectly and then start collecting water inside of them. Our waterproof gloves were soggy messes. The Frog Togg rain jacket and pants were pretty easy to get into. We were doing pretty good until it was raining so hard that the rain started running down our necks. By the time we arrived in Gananoque, our shirts were soaked from the neck down to the waist. You can imagine how torturous it was to feel the wetness creeping down, ever so slowly. And lastly our boots eventually became little wave pools, sloshing around with every movement of the boot (yes, shifting made the water move out of the toe of the boot towards the heel).
Miraculously, it was dry in Gananoque when we arrived. But then I got bitten by two mosquitoes as soon as we pulled into the HoJo's parking lot and I finally took off my helmet. Yup, I swelled up immediately. Blood sucking mosquitoes! I got nailed in the forehead and my right ear. =( Good thing I brought allergy medication.
Back to quality time with the hair dryer and then off to bed!
Nova Scotia 2009 in travels
Reader Comments (1)
It sounds like you guys had quite the journey! I think this is a great idea to keep us posted and up-to-date on your trip, thank you so much. I can't wait to hear about all the fun experiences! Good luck with the rest of the rising!