In my epilogue of the Boston bike ride, I mentioned that it might be possible to do Toronto to Boston in five nights instead of ten. I was considering at the time to write a sketch plan of how it could be done, but figured that I would just be putting the horse before the carriage. I figured that since 150km took me a full day of efficiently exploiting every minute of sunlight, a 200km day is out of reach.

Yesterday I surprised myself, and I am now confident that I have only just scratched the tip of the ice berg when it comes to whacky crazy endurance runs. Yesterday was extremely optimized. I was in transit from 6:00 until around 21:30, and was on the bike for 11:30 (mind you, Google says that the ride should have taken 12:18, so I beat Google!). That's an absurd amount of optimization. For every hour on the bike, I only spent 15 minutes off of it. Most of this time off was actually spent navigating the horrendous construction around Montreal.

So what went wrong? Why couldn't I finish the day in 12 hours? Well, for starters, suburban Montreal is a horrible maze, and I got lost a lot. This probably added half an hour of looking at maps and wandering around construction zones. Secondly, I bike slower in the city, so that added another half an hour (seriously, it took like 30 minutes to do 3km at the very end). I also had to wait for ferries, which added a total of about 20 minutes or so. Oh yeah, and the wait at the border was another 20 minutes, plus another 10 minutes or so of fiddling with the SIM card. Finally, I ate at a restaurant just outside of Montreal because I couldn't find any faster food, and my stomach needed some attention.

So what went well? Oh my... So many things. My bike got no flats, my tires were perfectly inflated, the weather was simply perfect, the land was mostly flat or downhill, I was well-rested, I found services quickly, and frankly, I knew what I was doing.

But here's the strangest bit: I still had energy at the end. If you put me on a highway, with daylight, and maybe a refill of water, I would have been able to churn out another 50km or so. Why am I saying all of this? Because I want to put a bounty. It's a strange bounty. I'll give $20 CAD to anyone who gives an honest effort to try to beat my record of 230km in a day. You don't have to beat it, but you have to seriously try. If you need a bike or gear, I can lend it to you. The current world record is held by some Austrian ultra-cyclist who did 896km in 24 hours, so my 230km can definitely be beaten, and I'm sure that someone reading this will do it. But here's the catch. To claim the bounty, you'll need to write a blog post (like the ones I write) about the ride, and take at least five pictures from the day. That's it.

The next bike trip I'm going to try to do is Toronto to Kingston in one day. Anyone wanna join?

A big aspect of the bike ride that I did not get a chance to enjoy was the camping aspect. I brought a tent, but no stove, no pots, no cutlery, so making food on the go wasn't practical. I bought fruit when I could, but this definitely was not "bike camping" or "bike touring." Oh well, leaving some for next time.

Anyway, here's a map of the last push:

I started my day in hilly Vermont at 6:00am. It was a little chilly, but very beautiful. The hills had a kind of magical mist around them that I wasn't fully able to capture in this picture:

I could not have asked for better weather and more lovely bikign conditions. Cloudy, but dry. But oh man, check out those hills.

Somehow I was calmer, knowing that the big climbs were behind me. The road snaked through the rolling hills, and what looked like menacing hills from far away were slowly circumnavigated by the winding road. It was a bit like walking through a museum exhibit, where you can see the monumental artifacts of the Vermont countryside from all angles as you pass by without touching them.

The road followed the creases between the mountains, with the occasional uphill to hop from valley to valley. This meant that I was often biking right beside a river. Since I could not use the interstate highways, this often meant that I biked through residential rural areas. I biked along dirt roads, fields, dense forests, all of which were dense with small trails carved out by the locals. In some cases, larger infrastructure projects manifested. Like this bridge that I stumbled across right after the path turned from dirt road to a well-paved street.

At some point, the hills just stop, and the land becomes flat. This picture is at the top of the last hill of my day.

I crossed the interstate, and looked back at the hills I already miss

After more downhill, I found myself in rural Burlington. Burlington is a super cool city. Another short friend that I might never see again. This town had a famous univeristy though. I don't count this hill as a climb, it's nothing compared to what was earlier!

Do you think they have enough election signs here?

I ate a very quick lunch, and continued downhill until I got to the lake. It was then that I realized how long it has been since I've seen a large body of water! The breeze was so refreshing!

There used to be a railroad through Burlington, whose rails were set on a man-made causeway through a large chunk of the lake. The really cool thing is that the causeway is curved, so you can see the end of it from the beginning.

Montreal!

To let ships throught the causeway, there used to be a swiveling bridge here that would turn 90 degrees to open up the water. It was removed along with the railway, and is now replaced by a short ferry

Here's my bike on the ferry

On the water, there's a good view of the gap that the bridge used to span

Canada!

Lake Champlain is on the border between Vermont and New York, and I crossed it via ferry.

With me were a few cars, and a large group of about 24 other cyclists doing something called the "three-ferry-ride", which is a ride around Lake Champlain which goes on three different ferries. I guess there's another one I didn't have to use. Anyway, we took off!

The water was an unwelcome break. Every time I rested, my muscles and knees would hurt a lot coming back on the bike, and it would take about 15 minutes for my body to get back into the rhythm and to shut up about the pain. I spent my time on the ferry chugging as much trail mix as I could, so that I didn't have to stop for food.

Sometimes trees are big, and I can appreciate that.

I finally made it to the border!

After the crossing, I took a break to change my phone SIM card, made some calls, and kept biking in rural Quebec

Google suggested some really strange route, which I followed blindly. Suddenly, amongst the corn fields, grain silos, and barns, appearing out of nowhere, a well-paved, well-signed, dedicated bike path appeared. No, I wasn't hallucinating.

I call this picture: "water or pesticide?"

This stretch of road seriously confused me. Why are there signs stuck in the middle of the asphalt? Why the low speed limit in the middle of nowhere? Why the single lane?

After a quick meal in some restaurant/bar/cafe/hotel, I finally saw a familiar skyline

Crossing the Saint-Laurent river by bike is no easy feat. Most bridges are large highways where bikes are banned. However, there is a bike path going along a causeway on the south side of the river. To get to it, I needed to cross a river-offshoot on the coolest bridge ever (sorry for the sideways pictures, I'm here to write, not learn HTML)

After biking along the causeway for what seemed like forever, I finally made it onto the bridge that carried me to Ile des Soeurs, an island really close to the island of Montreal. The bridge was awesome, and crossing it, I finally understood what a real river looks like. Behold, the Saint-Laurent!

This is where the trip got worse. I was stuck endlessly in between Google's unupdated suggestions, construction, human traffic, and stupid streetlights inside the city. I boke slowly in streets I knew well, and finally arrived at my destination, where you can see me struggle to stand properly.

A big thanks to Christine, who let me stay over at her place, gave me iced tea, and listened to me complain about Google maps for the short hour before I fell asleep. Back to index