Day 53 - Chatham to London, 121 km

The hospitality and good will we cyclists have experienced in Canada amaze us! Groups of people along the road regularly cheer us on with encouraging posters. Snack stops happen many times too. Last night's dinner consisted of a nice pot luck, all brought in by the CRC Churches in the vicinity. Arrived in camp almost earliest yesterday from the ferry, doing low flying drafting Bill Wybinga. I got a real nice shady spot for our tent close to a nice parking spot for Kobie's car, so the tent was drier in the morning, standing beneath a tree. The gear shifter on my bike was replaced with an old manual shift system, which was the best they could do for me in Chatham or London, as high end replacement parts need to be ordered in. I'll have to ride it like this till after the tour, and have my home bike shop fix it for me. Clumsy and slow for sure, but it shifts the gears. The other effect is that my "Flight Deck" bike computer is out of action because the right cable is removed, and all I can see on it is the speed, not distance or anything else. Imagine riding a time trial without knowing how far you have progressed in what time....but, I'll just have to wing it in today's time trial without the details...no other choice!

I adjusted the handle bars downward for more aerodynamics and left just before 7am, a while after Kobie, who has to beat the early birds to the point where he stopped marking the road yesterday. When I inflated the tires, I was surprized to see how deflated the rear tire is. No time to change tubes now since we had to be at a point 45km away by 9am for the start of the time
trial. Arriving there, the tire was again around 40Psi in stead of 120PSi. So I hoped it would hold till the end of the time trial, which it did while slowly deflating, but caused so much drag in the last 10km, combined with the strong head wind, that I performed much worse than I had hoped. But, it is about taking part in a spirit of sportsmanship, not about being the best. The interesting factor is that most of us, more than 20, finished within a time span of 15 minutes. Best time was 1 hour 3 minutes by Reuben Vyn, Eritia did 1 hour 10min, Bill Wybenga did 1 hour 11min and I did 1 hour 14min, amongst many others. The big equalizer here was the strong head wind. None of us could ever use our fastest gears and it all boiled down to strength and cadence.

The cyclists were treated to a scrumptious lunch at Hope CRC in Mt Bridges...Meat on the bun and lovely salads. There I could replace my tires' inner tube and found out that an old cut in the tire caused the tube to wear through a tiniest hole. A kind church member went to buy me a small roll of Duct tape to patch the tire on the inside so it won't eat the tube through again. The ride into London was lovely as we first went by awesome properties, and then along the beautiful bike path that runs along the river. At the end of it we had another stop with pop and watermelon, amongst flower beds bursting with colour. Then we rode through the older part of the city, with much poverty related issues for sure, like street children, street people, house fights, drinking, drugs, etc. which keep the emergency services and the police busy even at night.

At the Christian High school we were treated to an unsurpassed welcome, with ice cream as much as we wanted, pop, chocolate milk and baked goods galore! Later we enjoyed a barbecue of hamburger and brats with corn on the cob and scrumptious salads. After peloton there were more desserts....so much the 250 plus of us could not finish it, all sponsored by local people or businesses, even the meat! Thank you Londoners for a fabulous welcome!!!

The visit to the velodrome was a total blast!! Thirteen of us went, and were trained from scratch as it is so different to ride a fixed gear bike with no brakes. Step by step we were taught until we could go around on different heights at speeds up to 45km/h which feels fast in such a small indoor track. Going around the steep 50 degree corners is awesome as long as you keep pedaling hard. It resembles the feel of an old wooden roller coaster, as it seems the bike is coming up at one going around the sharp turn. The secret is to drop one's shoulder into the bend to keep the bike in line, otherwise it wants to climb up the wall. Totally awesome!! We rode for about 90 minutes on top of the time trial the morning, so we were really tired afterwards. There are only 3 such indoor bike tracks in N America. I wish I lived near one, as I would just love taking it up as a sport, as one can do it year round and it is thrilling!