Day 12: Old Montreal, Poutine and Croissant.

My surfer hosts all work during the day time really early since most of them are barristas. Luckily I had some good suggestions when I woke up in the morning. My host Cameron wrote down some really good croissant places in town and I checked them out as the first order of the day.

The dreary weather didn't dampen my mood as I was in Montreal the city of youth and culture and bikes! I hopped on my bike and went to the suggested croissant place and had the best croissant in my whole life. It was so good I totally forgot to take pictures lols!

I also checked out old Montreal and the historical museum. They had interactive displays inside what used to be the governor's house. After all the historical knowledge being thrown at me I was starting to feel hungry so I checked out a famous poutine place and found out what was the big deal about this dish made of cheese, fries and gravy. Needless to say, (which is why I am saying it) it was worth the hype. I picked up some croissants for my hosts as a thank you on the way back.

Bike meter at a subway station. It shows how many people has passed through. City of bikes! Love it!

Old Montreal.

Famous poutines.

My bed and the view of the living room.

China town.

End of update.

Day 10 & 11: Wild Camping, Detours and Montreal!

After departing from Ottawa, I continued on the Prescott Russell trail to go to Montreal.

I chose this trail over the lake shore path because of the shorted distance. I found out my mistake soon enough - it was made of gravel and took 30% more effort to gain the same distance. Thus after about an hour of this hell I gave up and decided to go back to the main lakeshore road. Mistake number two as it was some 10km north and unsafe to bike on with the traffic and small shoulder lanes. So for the second time in the same day I trekked again back to the gravel trail - after wasting some 20km of distance.

I stopped for the night just outside of Van leek hill and wild camped on a patch of land beside the road. It was just in time too as the rain started to come down hard right after I set up camp and night was beginning to set.

In the morning I continued my journey and thankfully found a better path after passing Van leek. I was able to bike the rest of the way to Montreal on similarly nice roads. Eventually I passed by Hudson and took the ferry across to Oka on the otherside and crossed officially into Montreal around 

6pm.

I arrived at my couch surfer Cameron' place. Cameron's roommates Caitlyn and Diego made me at home. At night we had a big BBQ and I stuffed my face full before finally retiring for the night.

ferry across the St. Lawrence river into beautiful Oka.

Flooded trail, detoured around for an extra 15km - fun (not)!

Bridge into Montreal from Laval.

My bike infront of my host's place in Montreal.

End of update. 

Day 8/9: Cool decor and Geo caching in Ottawa

I arrived to Ottawa just after 4pm on the 17th. Immediately I headed for my friend Alixe and her boyfriend Joe's place. Alixe who did FLC with my in university together as my assistant peer mentor helped me get settled in to her lovely home. I was really taken aback by the decor, everything is so coordinated! There is a theme going on in each room and just so nice all around. It has a very holistic feel to home decoration to it and every piece of furniture and accessories really contribute to the whole place. Her living room has a woodland theme going with real tree branches jutting out from the ceiling and a huge mural of woodland scenes behind the TV. Meanwhile her bathroom looks like a scene from the OC, with its own beach persona. Anyways I took some picture and will try to do something similar when I move to Quebec city but probably a much crappier version haha.

Alixe also made some home made chillie for me which was nice since I was famished from the biking. I also took my first shower since 2 days ago - it was heavenly to say the least.

At night time we went to the local water hole for the Sens game against the Penguins. Unfortunately they lost similar to when I was in Kingston and watching the Toronto game. It seems the cities I travel to always lose :( I should really start going to states or something next time I do this trip and the Stanley Cup playoffs are on.

We finished the night off with a game of Settlers of Catan at Joe's friend Calvin's house.

On the 18th, we checked out the Ottawa downtown with its majestic parliament buildings. I also tried Geo caching with Joe while Alixe went to her life guard job. Geo caching is like a grown up version of a scavenger hunt but with advance future technology. You create an account and use your smart phone to zone in on locations posted by other users and you can find the treasures. We did about 4 in Alixe's area and found a couple of really neat little treasures. One is a ring and the other is a Travel Bug, which is a traceable chip. I will take the Travel Bug with me on my journey in Montreal and try to find another Geo caching site to put it in.

Watching the Sens game at the "Burbs" pub.

Cool woodland theme decor at my friend Alixe and Joe's place. Real tree branches on the ceiling!

High 5 for women's rights!

Eating a Beaver's tail (made of processed dough).

Buskers

Geocaching in the woods

Random squirrel that thought my shoes are its mom.

Travel bug that you can input online to see where the item has been in the world.

End of update.

Day 7: Scumbag wind, small town hospitality and B&B hustling

I headed out for Ottawa after having a hearty breakfast with Peng and Gillian. I headed along Perth road North. Right away I realized this was a bad decision; the three days that we biked previously had been along the lake shore and going east, as a result we had relatively flat terrain and tailwind on our backs to help push us along. Today, however, I pushed against the wind and have many hills to contend.

Around lunch time I battled into Westport, a small idylic fishing village nestled within the Thousand Islands territory. I grabbed fish and chips at the local restaurant. The owners and patrons heartily struck up conversations with me and gave me a lot of tips and advice for the next part of my journey. The owner was even so nice as to give me his card and said: "If you are in trouble out there just give me a call and I can come pick you up!" Talk about small town hospitality!

My plan originally was to leave early in Kingston (8:30am) and cover about 175km - this would put me inside Ottawa by night fall. My friend Alixe is in Ottawa with her boyfriend and I would have had a nice roof over my heads. But because of the wind and hills I only covered half that distance, so now I am in Perth. Fortunately I found a nice B&B place who let me T&B (tent and breakfast aka. pitch my tent and only pay for the breakfast.) Apparently it was the first request of such a nature the owners received and my host Linda was quite amused.

My friends Peng and Gillian. Thanks for breakfast Peng!

Leaving Westport.

All uphill from here. :( At least the weather and view was nice.

My tent in Perth.

Behind the Perth Manor.

Perth Manor front entrance. Very quaint.

End of Day 7 update.

Bike trip to Montreal - Day 1: Tire puncture, murder and hypothermia.

Carrying load. With sleeping bag and tent. Total weight about 30lb.

Taking the bus to meet Adam.

Our bikes together in MEC.

Adam buying the spare inner tube to fix his bike.

Gloomy first day.

Biked till the sun don't shine no more.

Our sleeping tent. Luckily we didn't get killed.

Today I set off on a bike trip to Montreal with my friend Adam. The journey will be similar to the one I made while in Korea. It will take about 6-7 days and we will be doing around 600km in total.

This time around I bought a nice road bike along with rear panniers to carry my gear. The last trip has taught me that planning goes a long way. We will be sleeping in a tent that I brought along the way as well as with couch surfers and hosts. Couchsurfing is an amazing website that lets you find locals to stay with or host others who are traveling to your city. The best part is that it is all free!

Right now I am on the bus to meet up with Adam at the most eastern part of Toronto. Then we will start our journey. Our plan is to do about 100km a day. Our first stop planned is Couberg, a tiny town right above lake Ontario. There we will set up camp and rest up. The other stops are: Belleville, Kingston, Smith Falls, Ottawa, and finally Montreal. In addition to Couberg, we also have to stay outside at Smith Falls and another stop in between Ottawa and Montreal. Kingston and Ottawa I have friends who will be able to let us crash at their houses and Belleville and Montreal we will meet up with some couchsurfer hosts.

The weather has dropped in temperature since the start of the week. It is about 11 degrees and light rain has descended Northern Toronto. Hopefully the rain will pass when we start.

2:21

We are finally on the subway after an eventful morning. Adam's back tired punctured as he was riding to meet me. So we had to stop by the bike shop and change his tires. After that we grabbed lunch downtown and are finally off officially on our trip. We were annoyed at first with the tire change and the freezing rain. But on the flip side it was good his tired popped here in Toronto where we can find the replacements readily. Plus because of this we learned how to changed tires and bought back up inner tubes should this occur again on the road.

Part 2

We have had some really colorful characters on this trip. Some self righteous university students in Toronto, missionaries in Port Hope and murder warnings from a Chinese restaurant owner in Oshawa.

The first night we set up tent in Darlington provincial park. This was after a warning from the Chinese restaurant owner in Oshawa. Originally we wanted to set up camp in a city park in Oshawa, but the owner said the area was full of drunks and someone actually got murdered from camping in that area. So we decided to push past our pre-planned destination and bike in the night. We found Darlington park and set up tent. Right away we met two guys who were drinking and walking into the park. Since the murder warning from the restaurant we were on edge, this new development didn't help.  After setting up an SUV drove toward us and stopped. It was about 100m away from us. We quickly cut off our lights fearing for our lives and our chance of sleeping in the tent undisturbed - this is because you are not suppose to camp in parks, park ranger will usually kick you out or give you a fine. But of the two scenarios we were definitely hoping for the latter since we don't like to die.........

Luckily for us when we came back to our tent it was still in one piece. But the two drunk guys we originally saw were walking on the trail again. So we asked them if they knew who the SUV belonged to.

"The park rangers, he kicked us out." They said.

Breathing a sigh of relief we climbed into our tent but lost sleep due to fear of being caught and thrown out of the park, and the freight train that passed by our tent every 30 minutes. We passed the night talking and had about 3 hours of sleep freezing our butts off - the temperature had dropped down to 5 degrees and my tent was not insulating nor was our sleeping bags.

In the morning we woke up early (6am)  to avoid being caught be the park ranger. It would seem our fears of being caught were unfounded, however, as the car gate blocked the ranger from patrolling in our area unless if he wanted to walk.

End of first update.