Round the World; getting ready to ride.
It’s about 3:30 in the morning. I’m drinking strong black coffee and eating fried eggs on a bagel. It’s dark outside. Nobody is moving, not even one of my riding partners for the day, Peter. In about 90minutes, Peter, his friend Wayne(who I’ve never met), local rider Luc and I, will set out to ride our bicycles around the world. Yup, we are going to circumnavigate the island of Prince Edward County. About 285kms/175miles.
What began as an idle thought one cold, wet, spring day here at the Bloomfield Bicycle Company, is now an impending reality. Over many miles of pavement, gravel roads and rail trail, we’ll ride a route I’ve mapped out that works its way around the outermost edge of this idyllic corner of Ontario. The only deviations from that route are two spots where we’ll avoid dangerous highways, which I’m okay with. Highway 49 and 62.
This summer, I’ve ridden all over Prince Edward County, aka The County, aka PEC. I’ve lead four BBC Club century rides(100miles) with a couple of extras thrown in for good measure. I’ve explored all the dirt road and a bunch of atv trails. There have even been a couple of times where I knocked out 500+kms in a week.
The last time I rode a distance this long in one day would have been in 2014 in Colorado, training for my second VaporTrail 125. There were a few monster rides in Squamish in 2017. Again in Colorado in 2018, I completed the underground mtb race, The Salida Big Freakin Loop, in about 14hrs. But this year, my longest ride was the Noble Pursuit; 8.5hrs and 193kms. But that was a race, this is different.
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Sometimes I get asked why I do this. Sometimes, like now, I ask myself the same question. Why? Why smash myself against the roads and the bike and the pain and the suffering?
Because it’s who I am. Because I need to do this to feel alive, to remind myself that life is suffering and only the mentally tough survive to live another day.
That, and, well, cuz someone’s gotta do it, may as well be me.
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