For anyone paying attention, I should point out that we technically arrived back in Canada two days ago, but it was a stop-over at a friends house in Leamington, some 300km from Toronto where we live. So while yesterday was spent basking in the warm glow of friendship and great company, today was back on the bike for the absolute last part of the trip.

As this is about riding in southern Ontario, it’ll be far and away the shortest post yet. There’s so little to tell. From Leamington, you really only have two choices – highway 3 along the shores of Lake Erie or the 401 and playing “dodge the people who don’t know how to change lanes”. The skies were clear when we set out but by lunch, the rains had started and we stopped in the Dutch diner in Iona. It really is a cornucopia of ephemera and I ended up buying a 1940’s Louisiana cookbook as it was so damn cool. The food isn’t much to write home about though.

Whilst eating, the rain came down hard but by the time we’d finished, it seemed to have stopped. Foregoing rain suits, we set off again but were soon caught by more rain, presaged as it was by the spectacle of forked lightening in the near distance. Pressing on, we got wet. Granted, it was mainly road spray but it still messes with your visor. In the rain, Ontario drivers respond in two ways. They drive slower and look less so it was hang back time.

One more stop for gas and we finally hit the city limits though. We knew were back in the city as the traffic had basically slowed to a crawl as it always seems to around here. Maybe it’s just me, maybe it’s the routes we took, but it seems the worst traffic we had was both leaving and entering this city. The last 30km was definitely the slowest and we eventually arrived back home after detouring the ever-changing set of closed intersections we have here. I make it sound like I hate driving here and I have to say, after being in the US for seven days, I’m starting to realize how bad it is here, but I’ll save that lambast for another day.

The trip has put precisely 4070.6km on the Tiger and this place looks exactly as I left it. The garbage strike is still on and there’s no food in the refrigerator and I’m already starting to think of the all the work and the chores I skipped to go on this trip. It’s enough to make a man pack up his panniers and see which way the road is pointing…

Tags: 1 Comment