Markland Beach Cottages, Dingwall
21 September 2024
The events in this post took place on August 23, 2024.
We finally have a sunny day!
We're on a tight schedule. After the ride, we have to change into street clothes, wolf down lunch, and cram back into the vans for a 40-minute drive back to Baddeck.
I'm ready early. My giant suitcase is somewhat lighter now that I've eaten all of the protein bars I brought with me. I wander around taking pictures.
The moon is out.
There's a lone flower, clover I think, poking up behind a rock next to the picnic table.
Our ride today is short, only 26 miles. It starts where we left off yesterday, in Ingonish, at the Keltic Lodge, so the guides pack us into the vans with our luggage and take us there. It's a sprawling place at the top of a narrow, hilly road. This is where we would have spent last night if there wasn't some sort of construction going on.
We have another mountain to climb. It's a gradual ascent over five miles. After that, we're told, it'll be much flatter. I haven't looked at the elevation profile. I don't care.
Glen is on one of the spare bikes the tour group has brought along.
We ride along the coast until it's time to ascend Smokey Mountain. The road surface here is like New Jersey's greatest hits, with traffic. I'm not bothered by it because it feels like another day commuting to work on my bike. Other folks are more annoyed.
The climb starts with a double-digit grade, then levels off to about 4 percent for a while. I'm with Heddy and Elaine. We're going at a comfortable pace. Elaine says, "I could do this all day." Would that the rest of the trip had been like this.
It takes us a while to plod up the hill. As we approach what looks like the top, I have to veer off the front to stand on my pedals to stretch my back. "I'm good for 40 minutes of this," I explain. There's a little more left than we thought.
A van is there to feed us at the summit. We mill about, take pictures, and pose with our swag socks.
I don't see my shoes in this picture.
(photo by Thomas Reddington)
The guide Jane tells us that there's a general store at the bottom of the mountain where we can take a bathroom break if we need one.
The descent is glorious.
It's more than a few miles past the bottom of the mountain before we reach the Wreck Cove General Store. I make a quick pass through it, picking up a couple of moose keychains. Heddy is waiting for me outside. I use the porta-potty quickly and we set out again.
Ahead of us, clouds are coming in. We have about eight miles to go. "It better not rain," I grumble.
The terrain is roller after roller after roller.
Heddy says, "Flat, my ass."
Seven miles from the end we feel the first raindrops. As we pass the guide Tom, I call out, "Dude. Rain? Really?" As if it's his fault we can't get a dry day out here.
Okay, now the rain is picking up. Rollers and rain. If I had any fucks left to give, I'd be handing some out right about now.
We're wet as we pull into the Clucking Hen in Englishtown. In the back there are two bathrooms and a line to get in. I have a bag of street clothes, sneakers, a towel, wipes, and a comb.
I'm trying to clean up and change as fast as I possibly can. I think I'm taking forever in here. I rush out, stuffing my wet clothes into the bag as I open the door.
Our group is gathered outside, on a covered deck, where our pre-ordered lunches await. There are strange-looking, blown glass objects hanging from the eaves. They look at first glance to be run-of-the-mill giant ornaments, like the ones I make, only much thicker. But instead of hooks, these have cinched-down, button-shaped tops from which string is tied. Hmph. Looks like more work than a hook, beause the buttons have to be smoothed down while the glass is hot, but whatever. They're sort of ugly and not ugly, in an artsy kind of way. Maybe they're lobster floats? I won't be making any of these in two weeks.
Before we leave, I return to the bathroom and see my towel on the floor by the door.
When I'd asked about last-day timing months ago, the owner of the tour company told me we'd be back in Baddek by 1:00. It's already past that now and we're not even in the van. Our guides had said we'd be back by 2:00. It's closer to 2:30 when the vans crunch up the steep gravel driveway at the Telegraph Inn.
While Glen and Martin hitch our bikes to the rack on the back of Glenn's Jeep, I run over to the High Wheel Cafe across the street to get sandwiches for all of us. This will save us time on our way back to Yarmouth. I order the only three I see on the chalkboard. While I'm waiting, I grab a pack of iced shortbreads. Heddy and Ginger have come in to place orders too. The owner of the cafe recognizes me. I'm a bit surprised, given that I was in here for all of maybe fifteen minutes on the first day. I guess my frazzled look and the uneaten breakfast I left behind was enough.
When I get back to the car, it's almost raining again. Glen is on the phone with the bike shop in Halifax that the guide Tom had contacted about Glen's brake pads. Our plan had been to stop in Halifax on our way to Yarmouth to pick up the pads, but now that it's getting on towards 3:00, and Halifax is four hours away, there's no way we'd get there before the shop closes at 6:00.
Glen is asking if they can leave the pads outside the store; he'll pay over the phone now. The clerk puts him on hold.
"Didn't Tom arrange all this ahead of time?" I ask.
Glen says, "We thought so. They said they'd set them aside. Now he's going to look to see if he even has the right part."
The clerk returns.
"Oh. Okay. Can you ship them?"
On hold again.
I pull up the address of Exile House, where I'll be staying by myself in Bar Harbor.
"Good. Ship them to --"
I read him the address. We get as far as "Bar Harbor, Maine."
"You don't ship internationally? Okay. Thank you anyway."
"There's a big bike shop in Bar Harbor," I tell him. "We can go there tomorrow."
We hit the road well after 3:00.
I see an eagle on a telephone pole as we approach the Trans-Canada Highway. I text Jeff and Heddy about it. No response. They're probably halfway to Halifax by now.
I get an email from the CAT ferry. They're expecting a lot of traffic tomorrow. They want us in line between 7:00 and 8:30. If we miss the cutoff, we miss the boat. "We'd better get there early." There's some grumbling when I suggest 7:00. We decide that we'll be fine if we leave the hotel at 7:15. The terminal is only a few minutes away.
The drive seems to take far less time than it did on our way up here. We make one stop for gas and one wrong turn (we're good at that, apparently).
We get onto the subject of Martin's photography career at the Trenton Times. I ask some questions, and for the next 45 minutes, Glen and I are transfixed as Martin goes into great detail about a day in the life of a newspaper photographer, from taking a picture on deadline, to developing it, to what happens to the photo once it reaches layout. If I thought I had a stressful job, compared to what these folks had to go through back in the days of film photography, my career is a cakewalk.
The sun goes down.
We eat our sandwiches.
At 10:40, we arrive at our hotel. A week ago, we had to haul everything up an outdoor staircase to our room on the second floor. Tonight, we have adjacent rooms on the first floor. I take the bikes and my giant suitcase. Glen suggests that we start loading up at 6:45. We'll have breakfast here then hit the road.
By the time I've showered away the morning's bike sweat and rain grit, set out tomorrow's clothes, called Jack, and repacked my suitcase, it's almost midnight.
I set my alarm for 6:00 a.m.
We'll be in Bar Harbor tomorrow. We'll be in Bar Harbor tomorrow. We'll be in Bar Harbor tomorrow.
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