After breakfast Ken’s family and I drove into Levis which sits on the opposite bank of the St. Lawrence river facing the Chateau Frontenac. The town itself is quite nice and has a stunning view of downtown Quebec and the surrounding landscape. From there we took a ferry right to the docks below the city, check out these photos!

Since Ken and Angela had already toured around and I had never been I decided to do some tours on my own. I started with the the ruins of the Chateau St. Louis which fell victim to fire in 1834. However there were many versions of this building starting in 1648 built by governor Charles Huault de Montmagny. The surrounding fort was of course built by Champlain which was also reconstructed many times. The chateau ruins are under the wooden boardwalk in front of the Chateau Frontenac which costs $4 to go see.
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Monday August 6th

Map my ride route details here

I got up pretty early to do me business and start organizing. Around that time I heard a few rumblings upstairs and knew that Mylene would be up. While her boyfriend and her are getting ready for a work day I am riding my bicycles across the country. I was in slow motion a bit but eventually got the bike all packed up, water ready with electrolite tablets deployed and me dressed with bike shorts and butt cream. We took some pictures but not with my camera so I will have to get those later.


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Guess what. MapMyRide is working. They updated their database which is why I was unable to save . This is unbelievable really but I don’t want to get into it. What I can tell as far as good news is the live tracking feature is working meaning you literally watch my progress. When I start a tweet will go out with a link to the workout, please check it out and tell how well or poorly it is working.
150 kilometers ride details

I woke up with a little bit of a hangover thanks to Francois. I’ll get you back some day! I had a couple of bagels while trying not to disturb anyone’s sleep. It is basically a one room apartment where the bed is in kind of an alcove which is art of the living space. Eventually Francois and Maria got up and said their goodbyes. I will visit again I promise!


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Other than get up to go shopping I did nothing but catch up on blogs until about 4:30. It had to be done because the more I get behind the more likely I lose some of the readership. I also figured it will be easy to visit Montreal on another trip. I did venture out in hopes to get a hair cut but they all closed at 5pm so I went for a drink instead. I was expecting to be able to order wine from Quebec but there was no such luck. Alcohol is a little pricey too which I wasn’t expecting so I switched to beer. Around that time Francois messaged me that they were making dinner so I went back to their place for a nice fish dinner made by Maria. We had a few glasses of wine followed by a few beers and talked about our families and generally caught up on things. Before long I was laying on my mattress drinking a beer trying to continue the conversation but I was done for the night and fell alseep. Sorry no pictures!

Friday August 3rd

For first time in weeks I got up really early and because I had no food was on the road by 7:15 and had covered 30 kilometers by around 8:30 where I stopped for breakfast. I had an awesome omelette to start the day and was back on the road in no time. It is so much cooler in the morning and since I was on a less travelled road at any time it was especially quiet this time of day. It was also another day were I really didn’t pay attention to the time or the kilometers since I new my destination was around 110 kilometers, an easy day by my current standards and terrain which was flat, flat , flat!


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Thursday August 2nd 2012

Still no MapMyRide but about 120 kilometers.

Today was a really great riding day starting right off the bat where I rode to the Ottawa River bike trail instead taking the main roads. Not only is it quiet , peaceful and scenic it is also well marked and easy to follow into the city. Many sections are completely covered by lush green deciduous trees and shrubs make it more than a few degrees cooler than when exposed to the sun. The river is to your left and the shoreline opposite is Quebec! This was definitely a Gopro day so I will let the video do the talking but very briefly I rode behind the Parliament buildings up the Ridal Canal to parliament for some pictures and video.



Note: I tried to upload a special video and it it hasn’t worked yet.

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Wednesday August 1st.

Today was a rest day to see the city so there was no concern about the MapMyRide application failing miserably as it has had a tendency to do since leaving Toronto. Yes I am going to slag them until I get some actual support for the product.

I decided to ride into the city since I was able to leave my bike at city hall with Georgie and I thought I might bike around the city after seeing parliament. Hindsight is definitely 20/20 since the city has a decent bus system and I had all sorts of problems deciding what to do with certain time constraints but my guardian angel Natasha saved the day. More on that later but riding on an off day just feels strange because you are not in destination mode where you knock back a lot of kilometers but you are still on a bit of a time constraint and need to lock up your bike way more often. On that note part, 7 or 8 kilometers in the ride I decided to take the bus. I stayed on until I got to Mountain Equipment Coop where I had the bike guys look at my front and rear rims to determine in they were true. It turns out that it was the tire itself that was not seated properly but the procedure involved a little time to over inflate them and then hope it solved the problem. I decided it wasn’t worth the effort and there was a crack in the complete circumference of the rear (probably because I had folded it) that was at risk of bursting during this procedure. After a quick brake adjustment I was happy and left the store with more chamois cream – for the arse!

China town Ottawa!

When the next bus came it didn’t have a bike rack so I just rode the remaining 4 kilometers rather than wait for the next one. Pulling into Ottawa was fun and though a somewhat busy city I didn’t feel the urgency in the traffic like Toronto or Vancouver where it seems people are fighting for every in of pavement. The first major sight I came upon was the Surpreme court of Canada which is having renovations on the grounds in front of the building. From the road it looks all fenced off but once you go into to the parking lot you can ride right on up to the building. Unlike Washington DC there is one police car in front and no barricades of any kind protecting the building. Of course I know this is probably not the case when the court is in session and I am sure there is a tonne of security that you can not see. I didn’t look around because I wanted to get to City Hall before I started going in out of buildings since I didn’t bring my bike lock which was another hindsight thing. It is so frustratingly apparent sometimes when you have poor planning. Normally this would not bother me but today would have been so much easier if I just bused in. Okay enough about that!

Supreme court of Canada.

Tuesday July 31st 2012 – Happy birthday Sherry!

MapMyRide has totally tanked it and is no longer saving workouts. Before I left I bought a support package so I decided to use it. At the time I was pissed it wasn’t working and wrote the following:

First off your support links are not very obvious and I posed a question to community support instead. When you click on a link for “support” it should go there especially if you are logged in.

The last three workouts appeared to save but with zero stats and there was no way to recover the workout. These are actually my rides as I bike across Canada to raise money for water projects for Haiti. It helps explain where I rode and the difficulty involved. To re-create them would be difficult an should be unneccesary. I will advise my followers of your sub standard product. Another problem I encountered is when I am out range from a data signal I cannot save progress. There should be a way to at least save the last know gps locally so you can recover the workout. Instead I end up with 3 or 4 days recorded under one workout.

Not a very happy customer right now.

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Monday July 30th

I don’t have map my ride marked yet and it is too bad because it was a bit of an interesting route.

I woke up around 6 but slept in for a it before joining Carol and Craig for some breakfast. My cold is still lingering but I think that is more to do with the drinking so I need to escape Ontario! This morning was on cooler side of things although not much cloud and the sun was well on it’s way to a scorching mid day sun but it was still a few hours before that. Craig and Carol drove me out to Julian lake which I don’t consider cheating since I lengthened my route coming up here and it was really worth it. I can’t thank Craig and Carol enough for really taking care of me and making sure I had a relaxing time.

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Sunday July 29th

Today was definitely a sleep in day since the plan was t sit in the sun by the lake. For those following I apologize for being so behind. When I have a rest day with friends I usually don’t blog since I am spending time with them even if it is drinking beer on a hot day under the sizzling sun. From about 11 onward we were have team Canada coronos and jumping in the lake when Craig I got to hot. I only sustained one weaval attack and we caught some small fish off the dock but no big mouthed bass. It was funny actually I saw craig disappear into the boat house for what I figured was more bear but he had live bait. Always be prepared they say!

Craig scaling Blueberry Hill!