I departed Redeemer with Josh Nyenhuis and Bob Terpstra this morning around 8 am. There were more church stops planned this day than any before and there were only 75 kms to cover before arriving at camp. I brought zero food along and left with not even a drop of water in my bottle. I just had a wallet with my ID (which would prove useful later on) a bit of cash (which would prove useful later on) and some vitamin I* (vitamin I is what we’re calling Ibuprofen around here as so many people are taking it. I would also prove useful later on).

We began with a ride along the top of the escarptment for about 30 kms. We were rolling along nicely enjoying the fact that we had less than 3 hours of cycling time to cover. George Vanderkuur caught our group and then started to push the pace just as we turned a bit and had a tailwind. Well that rolling along turned into a blazing pace as we were soon nudging the 60 kph mark on both the uphills and downhills. Tailwinds never last forever and we soon turned again and stopped for a freezie overlooking Hamilton and stopped for some cookies and water only 3 kms down the road at another farm.

I caught my best draft yet this summer behind an 18 foot high combine driving down the road at about 35 kph. It was moving at a nice cycling speed so it didn’t require any effort to latch on and it was so bit I could stay more than 20 feet back and still get sucked along. Unfortunately that only lasted for about 1.5 miles.

At this point we turned left and plummeted down over the edge of the mountain towards the lake. The sign told us we had a 12% grade ahead and with a little of Jon’s electrical tape, a leatherman and a little of my creativity we modified the sign to read 112% grade which seemed more appropriate. The first time down the hill was fun and I hit 79 kph sitting bolt upright and riding my brakes knowing that there was a stopsign at the bottom. After giving the hill a trial run Jon Vanderveen, David Teitsma and myself climbed back up (3 minutes 45 seconds compared to Bob’s “you can’t climb that hill in less than 10 minutes” estimate) and gave it a second run for the money. Without much effort at all and a lousy tuck that’s manageable with a separated shoulder I still handily blasted my record out of the water for fastest speed ever. 86.8 kilometers per hour! John hit 90.2 kph!

So the next bit of the schedule I might get a tad consfused so if the order of stops doesn’t match what you understand the geography of this bit of Ontario to be I apologize and you’re probably right. Eritia Smit is a professional pastry chef and works at a bakery that’s attached to a Dutch import store in Grimsby, both parts were worth a visit. They were serving free coffee and cake to cyclists and more than recouped their generosity by everyone stocking up on Dutch treats. It seemed as though everywhere we stopped later in the day people had a stroopwaffle in their hand from that shop or a poontsac filled with dubbelzout. Within 3 kms of that stop we rolled in to Shalom Evergreen home which is where many seniors with Dutch Herritage live from the southern bits of Ontario, they had coffee and more baking of course. Some wanted me to speak Dutch with them but I don’t have the skills so I had to pass that task off to Alex VanGeest. From there to our next stop at the Grimsby CRC was one of the most entertaining sections of the day, I laughed the whole way there, all 300 meters of it. Fresh peaches and ice cream awaited us and my little group of cyclists merged with about 4 others making a pack of about 18 riders who wanted to pay a visit to one of the wineries along the road. We set out from the church and were not more than a mile down the road when Julie Zwart called out “turn right” and we pulled up to the Peninsula Ridge winery. Tastings were $0.50 each and they even let us pay with our stacks of American cash. Jonathan Stoner, Julie and myself did a tour of the red wine list and tried to name the tastes, then read the description and each then finished our glasses seeing again if we could actually taste what the sommelier described. The answer however, was not really. Over the course of the whole tasting I only successfully managed to say “cherry coke” and “A535″ and “vanilla” which did match up with blackcherry, eukalyptus and vanilla. I’m 33% qualified I suppose in that sense but they get a whole heck of a lot more flavours than we could. The most interesting was green pepper which was completely correct but good luck getting any of us to identify it as such without being told. There’s alot of money to be spent on this little game if you’re interested in playing it. Still having an hour of riding (plus stops) ahead of us the wine tasting ended there and we were off.

About 5 miles down the road we had another stop serving actual lunch. A furthur 8 miles and we had more freezies at Pieter Pereboom’s parents’ house and maybe 2 miles after that had a blueberry stop at a CRC church in St Catherines. Now if you could imagine that we potentially didn’t have enough stops Hans Doef and I managed to take on another and I finally got around to replacing my helmet after the crash. You won’t spot me in photographs quite the same for the last week of the summer, I look a bit different and am hopefully alot safer.

So that crack on the helmet isn’t supposed to be there just in case you weren’t sure about that photo.

The ride out of London began with a rather painful crawl out of my tent. A little slip on the grass with my good hand and I jarred the bad shoulder before I had put the brace on the day… not all things go exactly according to plan. I had arranged to depart camp with Andrew Aukema of Chatham for the day and we set out together anticipating that we might latch on to another group at some point. It turned out that it was Nathan Beach and Hans Doef who we caught within an hour of camp. Andrew competed in Ironman Louisville last summer about this time and has really backed off training to recover for a few months and then just to take a break from competition. It’s obvious though that he’s got experience on the bike, he’s road smart just like George Vanderkurr and can climb rollers better than most others. While his muscles began to argue with him later in the day he’s tough as nails and when he suggested “hey guys I’m hurting” and we didn’t slow down for him he just bit the bullet and kept flying along. What a guy. Anyhow, we got along great and I’ll have to say our group of 4 was one of the best riding crews of the summer. Andrew was out of practise, Nathan was hurting from pushing really hard in the TT the day before and I was the cripple with a shoulder brace… and then Hans Doef, well he was just Hans Doef and fit right in.

The story of the day for the ride though was people people people. I counted 22 groups of people alongside the road waving and clapping from their lawn chairs as we went by in addition to the 4 “official” stops along the way. Churches from Ingersol, Woodstock, Brantford, and Brantford #2 all had baked goods and coffee and snacks and watermelon and gatorade and water and loads of other food. I never packed a lunch but brought along some leftover granola bars in my bike bag and never ate a single one.

The arrival at Redeemer was great. More food. They also gave us towels to shower with from their gym, what a luxury after using a travel towel for 8 weeks! after cleaning off I called up my cousin Carolyn who drove me out to Brampton where we visited my Pake at Holland Homes and met my Aunt Linda from Toronto. We then stopped by the cemetary where my Grandma had been buried 3 weeks prior. Of course it wasn’t so easy to find the place exactly on the first try but I suppose that’s appropriate. Grandma wouldn’t have done it on the first try either. It was quite settling for me to stand there and turn around and survey the surroundings. I’ve got a good mental image of the spot which seems to bring a bit of peace. The three of us then drove back to Hamilton and saw Carolyn’s house and then went with Brad for Indian for dinner. My request was “Indian or Asian, we don’t get that at camp” and the choice was fantastic. I was the only non-veggie so chowed through the butter chicken alone but the rest was a few bites of one and a few bites of another from the vegetarian options, each of which was nicer than the chicken. Good thing I did them in that order.

For the night I did get another bed to sleep in as I stayed with my Grandmothers friends from Caledonia, Mike and Anne. We watched a bit of the news at 11 together to hear about the Olympics and just as I was getting up to go to bed there was a snippet saying “stay tuned for news about some cyclists riding through Hamilton” so of course we stayed tuned and it was a good thing. I was on the TV for about 1.5 seconds blasting past the camera with Hans Doef as we rode into Redeemer.

I did get a load of photos online from the velodrome and then a couple shots of the TT from Stephanie Webb’s camera. I also mooched a photo of my road-rash from Eritia’s blog which is also in the gallery.

The time-trial was set to go this morning beginning at 9 am and was to occur starting at the 45 km mark of the ride today. That meant I needed to leave at 7 am for sure but that was absolutely no trouble as I was staying at Cynthia Aukema’s house with all of the perpetual early risers. I was on the road at a record time of 20 minutes before 7 and doodled my way along to the start point of the time trial an hour before my scheduled start time of 9:17 am. (I would be the 18th rider to leave)

I hopped off my bike and took a bit of a break for my bum and legs as more and more riders arrived. The funny one was Kyle Meyerink who was very nervous about the whole situation and wasn’t afraid to let anyone know that fact. He had never raced before but is very strong and everyone was putting big expectations on him to really get out there and perform well. I on the other hand was testing out my new clavicle brace and people were just happy to see me out there going to give it a shot. Low expectations are great sometimes.

How time trials work… at least on the C2C tour
• Riders set off at 1 minute intervals from the start line and head down the road as fast as they can for 40 kms at which point we have our times taken which have the offset removed and we see who was fastest.
• Normally a time trial is an out-and-back so that the wind has net-zero effect but people weren’t interested in that so we dealt with a cross-headwind for the whole 40 kms.
• Normally the race is done on a closed course but we had marshals out instead to give riders warning if they had to slow down at intersections but were ultimately at the mercy of traffic whether or not they had to stop.

Like I mentioned I had hopes of 66 minutes which wouldn’t be completely unreasonable in zero wind with my shoulder in such condition and no aero-bars which I couldn’t use also because of the shoulder. (aerobars are at a minimum a mile-per-hour advantage so 2 minutes or so) I set off and pulled off equal splits for the first 2 10 km markers of 16:45. My third 10 kms had the toughest wind and I ran into a bit of trouble concentrating 17:13 seconds. In my final 10.65 kms I really had to hammer on the brakes at an intersection which torqued my shoulder and left side of my back and I was pretty sore, I collected myself well and with my finishing push managed 16:44 split there, my fastest split considering the extra 650 meters.

The results of the race were rather expected. Reuben Vyn stole the show by a full minute finishing in the 63 minute range, Jon Vanderveen claimed second a minute behind and Nick Ellens who was riding Andrw Aukema’s TT bike claimed third 2 minutes back. Kyle Meyerink didn’t crash into the ditch and didn’t run out of steam halfway and didn’t save too much for the second half, executing the race very well and proudly finishing in slot #4. I rounded out the top 5 and was content with 1:07:42 considering the headwind it would probably have been very close to 66 minutes in no-wind conditions. Eritia humbly accepted the award for fastest female.

Riding through London’s Springbank park I decided to stop in at my mom’s house while growing up… it’s still there and I got a tour of the renovations by the current owner.

The hosts here organized a trip to the velodrome in London which is one of very few indoor cycling tracks in Canada and about 15 riders had a fanatastic time there.The track length is 128 meters compared with Edmonton’s 333.3 meter track so everything feels much faster and the adrenaline really gets flowing. We got a bit of a lesson from a few of the coaches there and did a few drills riding around the track on the apron (the flat section just inside the track): accelerating and deccelerating: turning up and down over the “cote” (the blue strip) on the straightaways and doing a bit of fallen rider avoidance.

The jump from riding the apron to riding the sprinting lane on the track is a pretty exciting step, you just have to go for it. With about 7 at a time we hopped up there and all basically at the same time hopped up there. It felt a bit like this was something I’d prefer trying alone on the track but I was sandwiched right in there between Kyle Meyerink and Eritia Smit. I had to get it right on my first try and really had to hope everyone else did as well. Of course as seasoned pros it didn’t end up being an issue and we were soon doing laps of the track!

After getting the first feel we each were given a chance to let it rip alone on the track and see how it felt to choose your own pace and select your own line. I felt like giving it a real shot at speed but found out rather quickly that while I of course have the legs to get that bike up there as far as kph is concerned I did not have the experience to keep it smoothly between the red and the black lines. I didn’t crash but I did get the joking threat of having a chair thrown at me if I didn’t slow down a bit. From there on out we rode as a group once more all in single file and by the end of that I did feel like I was beginning to collect the skills needed to keep a much straighter line. My problem had been assuming that at the end of the turn I would be spit out in a straight line and that is not at all the case. Getting out of the turn smoothly takes significantly more concentration than getting in.

Upon returning to camp I had my Aunt Anita waiting to find me… I had no idea she would be there so the detour to the velodrome perhaps wasn’t such a great timeline choice but she did seem to know many people who were here and we did get to chat for quite a bit before she headed back north to the farm.

We’ve had a few days in a row where SeatoSea has been on the front page of the local paper. While it feels good and gets everyone excited it also does mean that the message of the tour’s purpose is getting out there.

Wednesday’s ride was short to accommodate an international border crossing that no-one really knew the timeline for. It’s one of those things that can go very well or quite poorly and as a result it’s been a topic of prayer for quite some time. Well it took more than 6 ferry loads to get everyone across the river but beyond that bottleneck the border crossing was quick and all of the cyclists had been pre-approved to cross and just needed to be cross referenced with a list as we poured over the border.

The reception was great with more than 100 people waiting at the end of the wharf to greet us and then treat us to all sorts of baking, fruit, droppies, peppermints, cupcakes and Tim Hortons coffee and donuts. I passed on the donuts because we still had 60 kms to ride but people were pretty pleased to get their T-H fix. What a crazy addiction…

The rest of the ride was smooth even though we were dealing with a headwind. Jenna Zee, Kincso, Stephanie and myself rolled along together and mostly deafted off Jenna who had announced that morning that she felt like she finally was in good enough shape to begin a cross-continental bike ride.

The greeting in Chatham was great and it seemed like every CRC person in town was out there pitching in to help. I got a ride to go find a clavicle brace to replace the taping job that Melissa had been doing each morning. It’s basically a backwards bra and there have been jokes about my new lingerie catching a bit too much attention from the other boys. I can deal with it though because it makes things stay in the right spot and that’s what counts.

I then caught another ride with Peter Hogetoorp (spelling is 99% certainly wrong) to find a new battery for my cycling computer and on our travels we figured out that he pastored my Dad’s church in Peers Alberta growing up way back in the early 60’s.

Andrew Aukema treated me to his bed in Chatham so I didn’t have to deal with my little tent and could sleep all sprawled out. I soaked my legs in the hot-tub for a bit and also got a play by play of the Olympic triathlon which I never got to watch.

Tuesday went better than Monday even though I crawled out of my tent having significantly less sleep than I had hoped and was in quite a bit of pain. Breakfast was a parade of people asking how my shoulder was and all I wanted to do was curl up in a corner, eat food and try to get a bit more sleep. Frustrated by the outrageous number of conversations I had before 6:15 in the morning I just decided to take down my tent all by myself and get out on the road. I probably overdid it a bit trying to stuff my sleeping bag in the stuff sack and taking my tent down. I got my shoulder taped by a physiotherapist which hurt a ton and departed camp not really sure how long I’d last out there on the road.

With the morning behind me and permission to increase my dose of ibuprofen if I wasn’t taking the Hydrocordone I set out from camp. The whole ride was into the day long headwind and I rode with Eritia for 95% of the day joining a few other pace lines here and there. The day stayed cool and my armwarmers stayed on for the whole day. Things turned around maybe 20 minutes into the ride when we started to get to the rolling hills that had destroyed me and my lack of shifting ability the day before. I had asked Lawrence to index my gears which had been switched to friction shifting after the bent derailleur. He made the adjustment for me and that really did save my day. I was able to reach across the bike and shift with my good hand quickly and accurately. When I gained a bit of control over how my day was going to work I felt so much better. The next 140 kms were all good even though my shoulder gave me more trouble than yesterday. I enjoyed the day on the road and upon my arrival at camp escaped to the library so I don’t have to answer questions about my shoulder. I can sit here and type and just answer the barrage of questions “How did your day go?”, “How’s your shoulder?”, “Did you catch a SAG wagon?” by putting my index finger over my mouth.

What would I rather talk about? There is a 40km time trial planned for Thursday. I would of course like to go under 1 hour but considering the circumstances will be quite pleased if I’m able to be under 66 minutes. Paul Tichelaar of Edmonton finished out of the medals in the Men’s Triathlon in Beijing with a 33 minute run split he’s probably not so proud of. Simon Whitfield however did bring home the silver medal for Canada. We cross the border into Canada tomorrow so I guess I need to find my passport sometime tonight. It sounds around camp like people are more excited about going to Tim Hortons than they are about anything else in life. Some of us Canadians have had discussions about what habits of Americans don’t make a lot of sense. Well this one takes the cake, I have no need to go there tomorrow, nor the next day for that matter.

To sum up today’s ride in one word… Lousy. I headed out of camp not really knowing what to expect and did manage the whole 111 kms at an average speed of well more than 30 kph. Those 2 statements probably don’t fit together very well but that’s because it’s not my legs that are causing trouble it’s that shoulder. I got bandaged up a bit this morning but without the correct kind of tape it didn’t really do what it was supposed to as far as keeping my collarbone in the right place. The leaning on the handlebars isn’t much trouble at all but when I want to move that hand around on the handlebars. I have to support it with my shoulder and that’s not something I can do very well. That means every time I want to shift gears I have to reach across the bike and shift with my other hand. I also have zero ability to stand out of the seat and the bumps in the road don’t really make me smile either. I had to give up on my first riding group of Bob Terpstra, Sarah Terpstra and Stephanie Webb and joined Eritia Smit and Jess Fox for the rest of the ride as I couldn’t manage getting off my bike at one of the pit stops. The big tailwind today was nice and even though I was cruising along quickly I have to admit I did start debating the merits of getting a ride, When those thoughts get in your head the prognosis isn’t so good for a successful completion and I just decided I had to get out of there and get to camp as soon as I could. I made the big effort to get in a different gear and upped the pace by a full 10 kph and headed towards camp at more than 40 kph. Upon arrival in camp there were about 5 people drafting me. “We drafted the cripple here for the last hour” was the announcement made to a slew of riders as we climbed off of our bikes. I threw some ointment on the road rash which made it all start to ooze orange fluid as we waited for the gear trucks to show up. Eritia has the photo of that… and I stole it from her blog:

I’m quite sore, and riding with not much mobility but I did get the go ahead to take more Ibuprofen than the normal dose so things may be looking up. I’m giving up on my other drugs, the painkiller one, because it doesn’t seem to do anything for me. Plus it’s “habit forming” and I’m not super keen on putting that kind of stuff in my body unless I have to.

Saturday we woke up to a cool Michigan morning just a bit south of Grand Haven ready to ride the final stretch of our route into Grand Rapids. The day was to be a short 75kms with no elevation gain worth noting, a couple stops at CRC churches and the home of Tyler Buitenwerf. We were anticipating riding past 11 different CRC church buildings during the day. In addition to our contingent of 150 cyclists 130 others were joining us “officially” for the day and numerous others “unofficially”. Considering the fact that I met 3 of the bandit riders and- never figured out who was riding along as part of the “official” ride-along there could have been many more than 300 of us on the road. Leaving camp in the morning at around 8:05 we were of course taking up the tail end of the group and had approximately 300 people ahead of us to pass during the day. Riding with me were John Vanderveen, Brad Geerlinks, and Marc Vanotteren. This was a group of guys included all of the perpetual City-Line-Sprinters and we were excited to compete in what we’ve been calling the second biggest sprint race of the summer. The race into Grand Rapids, Jersey city being the other big one we were looking forward to. (The Canadian border sprint will happen on a Ferry and therefore doesn’t exactly count because we couldn’t race it).

The day started out with us riding along hovering just below 40kph keeping a running tally of how many people we had passed so we could gauge how many were on the road. We were all the way up to 126 riders within the first hour of riding and everyone had smiles from ear to ear. After rounding a bend we saw in the distance a town line sign for Lemont Michigan, a little race to scope out the strategies of the other guys we were riding with. It was a long gradual downhill followed by maybe 100 yards of flat to the finish. I was up front and could see John Vanderveen was perched just over my right shoulder. We were heading north and the sun was still low in the sky so I decided I’d try to lour him around me on the downhill hoping to make my move at the bottom of the hill. I looked left and watched his shadow and could see him move further to my right and come up alongside me. Exactly as I had hoped I felt confident I was positioned correctly as we neared the bottom of the hill. I quickly glanced down at my speedometer and noted we were traveling at 54 kph. I was going to need every gear I had if I was to get ready and stand to sprint this line against John who is geared faster than me. At this point my chain skipped and I lost tension in my chain and my pedals went for a whirl. If you’ve ever been walking up the stairs and expected there to be one more step before the top you’ve felt the same feeling. You try and place your foot somewhere and there’s nowhere for you to put it. My left foot made that attempt and landed nowhere, it came unclipped from my pedal and my bike veered sharply to the left. I wasn’t about to make any sharp corners as I was now moving faster than 54 kph so I continued in a straight line. I tucked in my arm and went for a slide down the road on my right shoulder and then on my back. I saw Marc ride by while sliding on down the road and began to scramble to my feet so I wouldn’t be hit by any one of the other riders coming behind me. Marc told me later I was on my feet before I had stopped moving. A quick couple steps and I was in the ditch and made my way to a patch of grass in the shade where I parked myself.

It was about here that the serious praying began and group at the side of the road in the ditch began to grow. John who had dislocated his shoulder numerous times before started to feel things and get the lay of the land. His initial reaction was that it was dislocated and asked if I could move it. I moved it up from by my side to above my head without much trouble and it just felt better there so that’s where I kept it. Soon enough Betsy, a nurse, rode up to the scene and did her version of the little diagnosis. Hers sounded like 50% dislocation and 50% broken collarbone and the prospect of the end of my tour loomed large. The other guys were all rather sobered by the situation and did what they could to help out and throw in a few words of encouragement. My new camera which had taken a grand total of one photograph was absolutely destroyed so Brad snapped a few photos of the wreckage on my behalf. Art Smit pulled up in one of our 10 passenger vans and my bike made its way in between the seats. Soon enough we were headed for the hospital Art driving and Betsy along as my hospital tour guide.

The hospital visit included a few Xrays which seemed to be “Let’s put this arm in the 4 most painful positions I can think of and then take photographs of it” and some rather suspenseful moments waiting to hear what the news would be regarding my prognosis. Betsy was great to have along and even though we never really did discuss the fact that my tour might very well be done her comments did help to bring peace to what was far from a peaceful situation. When the doctor eventually arrived back with the news the results were good, or great, or fantastic. I had no breaks in my shoulder and by his physical exam my shoulder was no longer dislocated and the X-ray did confirm that fact. He commented that I had done a number to my AC joint and he was going to call it a shoulder contusion. Later on a physiotherapist checked it out at camp and said that the AC joint was most likely separated. For all the non anatomy majors out there that is the bit of your body that holds your collar bone “down” and I would have to agree that mine is more likely described as “up”.

So basically from the time my foot came unclipped everything went in the best possible direction it could have. There is no question that I had God looking out for me. The road was smooth and I slid a long ways rather than grinding to a halt. I also was fortunate to have been able to tuck myself in before sliding and did so in a more elegant way resulting in less road rash than any other sprawl on the pavement would have. My head never smacked into the ground but my helmet does suggest it would like to be replaced so I will do so as to not suffer any consequences at a later date. I had people with me who knew what to do and insurance to make treatment and a full diagnosis available. The doctor’s orders included no mandatory rest and he told me that if I could ride there from Seattle he figured I was able to attempt continuing on Monday. My front wheel ended up in the shape of a pringle and while my bar tape, seat and derailleur are scraped up they are not broken. I had access to a new front wheel which has replaced mine now and should treat me well for the rest of the summer. I also was notified lated that I was named the honorary winner of the sprint into Lemont. John Vanderveen did end up winning the big race into GR for those of you who are interested.

My arrival into camp was a bit overwhelming to say the least. I had just been sitting for a while in the van and just wanted to lay down in the shade and get some food. I had 4 complete discussions after opening the door before I could even get out of the vehicle. I then proceeded to do the awkward left handed handshake with all sorts of people who I would have loved meeting and talking with under almost any other circumstances. If you’re reading (and I know a few of you are) I apologize for lousy first go of things. I didn’t catch a single name in the whole process but did figure out that I had an hour before someone was coming to pick me up to shower in her house, to let me do my laundry and have a real bed for me to sleep in. I finally got on my back in the grass and put a few drugs in me and that’s where I stayed for the entire hour letting everyone who asked know that I was allowed to ride on Monday and would be making an attempt to do so. The conversation repeated itself all weekend long and I’ll have to admit I am a bit sheepish telling people that we were racing when I crashed.

My host for the weekend was Cobi Hofman, the wife of the pastor who way back more than 50 years ago baptized my Dad. She had been a part of the CRC that I was riding as a representative of during its very early years meaning even though I’d never met her before we did have an endless supply of topics for discussion. We did watch a bit of the Olympics, which I haven’t otherwise had an opportunity to do and I was fed well. I also had a good bed to sleep in for the weekend and got a ride to check out Neland Ave CRC on Sunday morning.

If you think the jokes about the pilgrimage to Michigan by the SeatoSea bike tour are growing old… you’re only getting a few of them. There are new ones each hour of every day around here. Seems like everyone has the same sense of humour in that department.

Friday we rode north from South Haven to Grand Haven and rode through the town of Graafschap and Holland on the way. The very first CRC ever hosted us for lunch and a peruse of the little museum in the basement. A stop at the bike shop in Holland and then a stop to pick up a new camera. Followed by an afternoon on the beach at Holland State Park. 3 hours of sunburn later we finally decided to hurry up and head north to make it in time for dinner. Only half an hour late for dinner we rolled into the conference grounds and were just in time for the last few Steaks from the BBQ.

Here’s the newsletter from SeatoSea communications headquarters: The link for end of week 7!.

We rode into Michigan today for the first time. With more than 60 cyclists from this state there are alot of people excited to be here. There was in fact a lineup at the “Welcome to Michigan” sign to have their picture taken. My camera is broken, perhaps temporarily perhaps permanently at the moment so I didn’t bother standing in that line.

I set out this morning with Johnny Pierce, Peter Rabbit, Jody, Stretch (Marc VanOtteren) and Kevin Pasma and we were soon joined by Lawrence. The route started out through a wealthy community along the shore of lake Michigan and the road was flat… we were flying along in the mid 30s and having a great time with overcast skies and perfect temperatures.

Reuben then passed us while people were taking pictures of the Michigan sign and I latched on to him for a bit. The road took us away from the beach and through some tree lined backroads in hardwood forest which were beautiful. Soon enough though we passed a few people who didn’t exactly want to be passed by a couple guys with silly grins on. They organized themselves and came howling past us at more than 40 kph. We of course latched on to the group and made 6. Pieter Pereboom, Jim, Josh Nyenhuis, Nathan Beach, Reuben and myself.

That group worked well together until Reuben’s tyre had a sidewall bulge and he needed to change it. He was heading to visit some friends and wasn’t planning to ride the whole day anyways with us so I just unclipped my second tyre from below my seat (Markus got the other one a couple days ago) and our group left him in the ditch to fend for himself. You don’t get alot of pity when you’re the cream of the crop. Sorry Reuben!

From there on in it was an efficient paceline working into the wind in the high thirties. When we were about 15 miles out from camp the pavement improved by a huge margin and that pace picked up a bit (now hovering around the 40 kph mark) as we no longer had all those potholes to dodge. Oh yes, there are a million potholes in this state. When 10 miles out from camp Pieter peeled off the front of the paceline and said “bring us home”. Looking at my odometer I thought we had about 5 kms left and decided to give it a shot. Well that 5 kms was more than 3 times longer than I thought it was. As that 5 kms dragged on I kept being able to dig a bit deeper and kept finding a bit more strength. I haven’t really pushed the pace for nearly 2 weeks and when Nathan Beach and myself pulled into camp it was really satisfying to be burning from the tops of my hips to the tips of my toes. (Trying to do the last hour of my 5 hour century into Wray was the last fast day.) In any case, I was beginning to wonder if all this riding was still making me faster and I suppose the answer is still yes, if only a bit.