Saturday August 22, 2015

An early start after a great breakfast at Gregg’s restaurant in Tobermory. Gregg’s is the only restaurant open at 7:00 a.m. in Tobermory and every table was full. The breakfast was good and kept us going until Wiarton.

As we left Tobermory we spotted this ghost bike. Ghost Bikes usually do not have names on them. This one did and after a google search Meredith McPhee was 32 years old and killed by an “alleged” drunk driver. The charges on the alleged drunk driver were dropped due to poor police procedure. Although he was found to have over the legal limit of alcohol in his blood, the police did not follow the proper road-side procedures. Meredith was cycling at night wearing a reflective vest, but no lights on the bike.

Cyclists have to be visible and ride defensively. Ralf and I pride ourselves on always wearing bright clothing and even when it is raining we put our lights on.

The ride was long, but the weather was good and the wind although not a tail-wind was not a full-on head-wind.

The paved shoulder we had been enjoying on Highway 6 disappeared about 15 kms outside of Wiarton. This stretch of the highway is straight and good pavement, but the motorists were idiots.   On five separate occasions motorists ignored the double yellow centre lines and overtook the cars in front of them not taking any notice of the two cyclists heading towards them. We had to head for the gravel shoulder each time.  Whenever, Ralf saw a line of cars he was watching for the idiot drivers who would overtake, he seems to have a sixth sense for those drivers. Probably because he had to deal with this kind of thing all the time when he was a truck driver.

The scary part of these incidents is the fact that the shoulder can be rough or soft, and as we are loaded and often travelling at 20 kph, hitting the rough shoulder can give us quite the wobble on the bikes. We also add in the “tar snakes” these are sections of the road that have broken up and the municipality “repairs” these lines with tar. On hot days the tar gets very soft and tires can get caught in them, again giving us a wobble. Cars do not notice these and although we always try to stay in a straight line, tar snakes can attack us.

We opted to drop down to a quieter road which would take us through Lions Head.

This is a pretty village, with a lovely harbor.

A lady offered to take our photo behind the photo frame.  It is nice when we get a photo together.

There was a farmer’s market open and we pushed our bikes through the area. We became quite the attraction and were asked numerous times where we were going and how far we had come. We were going to have a fruit-filled crepe, but there was quite the line up. By the time we had answered all the questions we decided to pop into a little café and had a home-baked raspberry muffin and a chocolate milk, lovely.

We stopped briefly in Wiarton for lunch, and took photos of Wiarton Willie. Wiarton Willie predicts whether we will have a long winter or an early spring by whether he can see his shadow or not!

The road had some interesting houses and we were able to stop and take photos.

We arrived in Owen Sound hot and tired. As we were heading to our warmshowers house, he came along side us on his bike. He had seen us passing the bank and caught up with us.

Don was very nice but his house was a mess. I know some of you out there are thinking well Jacky and Ralf are clean freaks. Maybe this photo will show you how bad this place was.

How do you politely refuse to stay in a place like this? Don washed the sheets before we made up the bed and yes we did stay the night. However, we cooked our own food and washed the plates before using them!