Day 41 – Repentigny, Quebec (Tuesday, June 16, 2015)
It started to rain just as I was getting up in the morning – the timing couldn’t have been worse. Luckily it didn’t catch me with the tent partly down. I waited until it had subsided a bit (which wasted time) and managed to pack everything, save the tent without getting wet, ate a chocolate bar, and got going.
It rained in varying degrees for the first part of the trip. Sometime lightly like a falling mist and sometimes quite hard. I had breakfast just west of Cornwall in a deluge with rivers of water running down the road.
The last time I went through Montreal with Katie I booked a B+B in the downtown core. Driving through traffic, being stuck with buses and cars on both sides was an ordeal I was not keen to repeat. Because of this I spent a bit of extra time making sure to follow the famous scenic bicycle routes.
I ended up following the Lachine Canal route which was easy to find coming from the west. This was one of the best routes in the tour so far. It is reassuring to see that it was well used with bicyclists, runners and pedestrians. I imagine that there was significant investment in creating the trail system through Montreal. The high use forced you to be alert. Commuters on bikes were leaving and entering the main trail from other trails which were not always as clear to visitors.
As I was passing through the heart of the city the rain poured down again. Many commuters took refuge under bridges but the majority simply got wet. The rain doesn’t effect me too much but it does poise some technical challenges:
- Dynamo Issue: Normally I turn my lights in the rain for additional visibility. Unfortunately only my lights or my gps can effectively powered by my dynometer at the same time. I end up disconnecting my gps or turn off my lights out of frustration.
- GPS Touch Screen Issue: When it is raining very hard drips of water confuse the gps making it almost impossible to keep the map visible rendering the gps useless.
As you may imagine these issues, in the pouring rain, in the heart of Montreal, with frequent trail forks make the going slower than I had anticipated.
In a deluge I rode past my planned stop at the Montreal Hostel which happened to be quite close to the Lachine Canal trail. Perhaps another time it would have made a good place to spend the night.
My idea was to follow the route for the next day and stop at a Motel or Gite along the way but the delays caused by the rain and the now dwindling daylight introduced urgency. As I stopped to look up the closest accommodation in East Montreal I was approached by a friendly man name Andrey who pointed a Motel Capri in Repentigny on the outskirts of Montreal. It was well past 9:30pm when found the place to stay for the night.
It was the first day when I had to use my lights because of the dark.
