Day 89- A cottage, two flat tires and no swim

Day 89 Thursday, August 5, 2010 Distance 99.25 km. Time 5 hr. 13 min. Total so far 6270.45 km. Dave woke me up this morning at 6 am. out of a nice dream. It was still warm and humid and hadn’t rained during the night. We headed from Meductic out to Hwy. 102 again. We must have passed 3 motels shortly after so if it had rained yesterday, we would have found accommodation in short order. On the river side of Hwy. 102, the houses are very big, rich looking ones and land with river frontage is for sale even though it slopes down drastically. On the other side of the road, there are a few houses and farms and quite a few are for sale. In about an hour, we arrived in Woodstock. The first part is Indian reservation and the road really deteriorated through that section. The only grocery store was way up a giant hill so we decided to wait until the next town. We got water at Tim Horton's and chatted with a few locals. We crossed the St. John River again to go over to Hwy. 105 and followed it along the river. The houses and farms this far down were poorer looking. These roads are way nicer to bicycle than Hwy. 2 because there is hardly any traffic. We arrived in Hartland, where the world’s longest covered bridge is located. There was an information center and the parking lot had 3 tour buses there. Dave went in and bought a NB. flag and I took photos of the bridge. There, at a picnic table, we met Ania and Kasia from Windsor, ON. They have bicycled from Victoria, BC and will go to Halifax. With them since Saskatchewan was James from Toronto. He started in Vancouver and will go to St. John’s NFL. They have had as many as 6 in their group because many cyclists join other ones for company. They have had good weather except in BC. They stopped in Sault Ste. Marie at Velorution and talked with Andre and camped by the store. I hope Velorution staff are still following our blog. We went to the grocery store and had a banana and chocolate milk and pressed on. It was very muggy and hot. In the morning, I captured a couple mailboxes and some shots of the river on the camera. After 3 hr. of riding, we passed the National headquarters of the McCain Company and then we reached Florenceville Bristol (many of these towns are amalgamated so they have joined names) Florenceville was named after Florence Nightingale. Between the smell of French fries past McCain’s and the 2 ladies at the next picnic table eating subs, I thought it was going to be hard to eat my peanut butter and cheese sandwich but to my surprise, Dave came out of the grocery store with a yogurt drink, orange juice, a salad, and cajun chicken and buns and butter tarts. It was a little feast. Yummy! It was getting hotter and humid. The road deteriorated and got very bumpy with patches of pavement here and there all over. I wanted a break so we stopped briefly to take a photo of a power dam but it was too hot to stop. At least when we are riding on the level or downhill, we make a little breeze. The sky was looking like a thunder storm could come at any time ( strange how frequently that happens). We saw a sign that said “campground 1km." Hooray, we’ll make it and setup before the rain. But when we got there, it was closed up so good that we couldn’t even get past the chains if we wanted to. The canopies and picnic tables would have been perfect. How discouraging. We found out later that it has been taken over by motorcyclists and it’s only open for them once in a while. At the next store, the man said we had 10 km. more for the next campsites so we chugged on. We came to the Robert E. Baird Memorial Park and the Buyan Restaurant and Lounge all in the same place. It was just outside the town limits of Perth- Andover. The owner was really nice. We came in all hot and sweaty. It was over 90 degrees in the shade and the sky looked like rain. I asked if he had some kind of canopy for us to go under to keep everything dry and he led us to a little building, all screened in, with a table and chairs, a couch and a rocking chair and a fold away bed and on the ceiling there was a fan. It’s where he rests during the day. He looked and talked just like Vinney, the wine tester, that we know back home. I took his picture with him sitting on his throne as he called it. Children were swimming in the pool and it sure looked inviting. First, since the rain didn’t happen, we set up and dried the tent and bicycle covers. We brought the bicycles into the little cottage and just as I was getting ready to head to the pool, I noticed that Silver’s front tire was flat. Now how many of you get flats when your bike is done for the day? It rook me a good while to change it and I only used the pool to check where the hole in the tube was. I cleaned the inside of the tire really good from both directions and put the bicycle back together. By that time, it was time to make supper. Great! After supper, I was about to lay my foam on the floor to make my bed when- you guessed it- I looked at Silver and the tire was flat again. Over she went again. I even had Dave check the tube in the pool and we could find no leak but I put on another one anyway. Now all 6 tubes that I own all have one patch from tiny little pin holes.Well, we finally got to bed on the floor but I didn’t sleep well because the light outside the bathroom was shining in my face all night and every time I had to go to the bathroom, I had to feel that front tire.