As foretold by the forecast, the morning started with light showers. I water-proofed my bags, put on my hoodie, and started late in order to avoid the stronger rain which was supposed to be over by 8:00am.
I left my hotel at 8:30, and was surprised at how strong I felt. My muscles were not sore, though my wrists and neck were a bit stiff from the previous day. I thought that the bad weather would be discouraging, but I was quickly reminded how great it is to ride in cooler and cloudy weather as opposed to scorching hot summer days. I'm now actually more worried about the hot days than I am about the cold days. As the day got warmer, I grew weaker.
One of the things I'm noticing is that I don't really know my own body. I've gone on long canoe trips before, and usually I am sore after the first day, but manage to overcome it the next day by drowning it out with more straining. This time, I wasn't sore the first day, and only started feeling my legs this evening. Usually, I wake up unmotivated, and it takes a few hours for the sunlight to come out at get me excited about the day. This time, I woke up wanting to move, and the gloomier and cloudier it was, the happier I was. The one thing that is the same is that I'm not hungry. It's strange how little I eat, without having a desire to eat more. I bet it's because I'm drinking lots of water and not using my brain. Speaking of water and my head, that's another thing: I drank lots of water, and this evening my head does not show signs of an incoming headache like last night.
I rearranged my bags, and had one with plenty of room left as a just-in-case. After biking for a while, and when the sun started peeking through the clouds, I took off my sweater, stuffed it in the emptier pack, and put on plenty of sunscreen. It turned out that the only reason my packs felt so full was because my sweater does not compress well, and takes up a lot of space. This is the most thought anyone reading this has given to how I stuff my sweater in my backpack.
The final thought I have about the ride itself is that there's a weird bump I feel every time my wheel turns. This is an obvious indicator of some asymmetry or something on the wheel, but I can't find it. Oh well, if it gets more serious, I'll probably figure out what it is and find a way to fix it.
Today I biked from Hamilton to Niagara Falls, which ended up being
83km with all the not-getting-lost that I did:
