Day 87- The St. John River and Fredericton

Day 87 Tuesday, August 3, 2010 Distance 78.97 km. Time 4 hr. 15 min. Total so far 6081.83 km. It was very quiet in Lakeside campground this morning. Much to my chagrin, I discovered that Silver had a flat tire on the front. She must have been all deflated after our bad day yesterday. Ha Ha. I repaired it all by myself and put it back on. Last night, a young bicycler came in late and Dave talked to him briefly. He flew to Vancouver and has gone across Canada and is heading to St. John’s, NFL. He lives in Nova Scotia. He was still asleep in his little one man tent so I didn’t get to meet him. We took Hwy 112 for a while and then Hwy 2 and crossed the Jemseg River and went to Hwy. 102 which runs along the very wide, beautiful St. John River. It rained for about half an hour so we donned our gear and got wet but rode in the drizzly rain. We rode through Gagetown, where we would have visited Adam who is in the military but Dave didn't do the contact work through Emily and it was early in the day. We had seen many military vehicles going away from there on the main road. About 10 km. outside Fredericton, we stopped at the 3 hr. mark by a closed building to have our lunch. Soon after that, my lunch got all shaken up inside me, as we had to go about 2 km. over pavement that had been stripped and was all notchy. I had to slow right down. I thought the bicycle would almost fall apart. It really hurt my neck and arms. On the outskirts of Fredericton we found a cheap motel. How come a lot of them are run by folks from India. Cheap for us is in the 50-60 dollar range before taxes. We asked how far it was to the nearest grocery store by bike and they said 10 min. We unpacked but took our rain gear as it was still overcast and headed toward the Princess Margaret Bridge which is closed for construction right now. Well, it took 25 min. to get to Sobey’s and we’re pretty good bicycle riders. Dave did the shopping and I watched the bicycles and when he was done, he tried to find a less busy route back to the motel. No rest for me as I was way behind with blogs. I did manage to do a few before bedtime. The weather report says rain, rain and more rain.