Montreal to Washington Bike Tour - Days 2 and 3

Granby, Quebec – July 6, 2012

I’m motelling it tonight after the first day’s ride.  I can’t believe how much I’m paying for a second-rate motel.  Granby has about 60.000 people, isn’t without tourist attractions (according to Wikipedia) but has only three hotels, two of them first-class!  I did tell the desk clerk that I really didn’t think I needed the hooker, which I was sure the price must include.  Apparently it didn’t, however, so here I roost, alone and annoyed.  Granby really needs some Ugandan Indian-owned cheapo motels.

Anyway, back to the trip.  I arrived in Montreal about 7:30 PM Wednesday night uneventfully.  By the time I put my bike back together and rode the approximately 25 km into downtown Montreal in the dark, however, it was about 11 PM.  FYI, if you ride due south from Dorval airport to the river, there’s a riverside bike path that will eventually take you to downtown Montreal via the Lachine Canal.  I knew about the path because I’d ridden it ten years ago.

Yesterday was a semi-rest day, after a fitful night’s sleep in steamy heat.  Apparently whoever owns the Montreal IYH hostel figured we’d survive without air conditioning so they didn’t turn it on.  My three room-mates – a Swiss engineer, a Pakistan-Canadian grad student and a Korean kid who’d just completed an English immersion course - were excellent Thursday morning company.  There were no semi-housebroken nineteen year olds, which is always a possibility when hostelling. 

So, getting back to yesterday, I jumped on my bike sans baggage and spent the afternoon touring central Montreal. The tour included a climb up to Mont Royale Park, McGill University, St Catherine’s Street and the old port area. I also managed to catch a couple of Montreal |jazz Festival performances that I stumbled on en route

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All in all, it was an interesting day, I now kind of know my way around the central city and the locations of many streets whose names appear in various Mordecai Richler novels.

I started out this morning in blistering heat and rode a modest 75 km in dead flat country.  The first part of the ride through interminable commercial sprawl, heavy traffic and hundreds of traffic lights lived down to my expectations.  Things improved somewhat when I hit a paved bike trail – an old rail bed - which carried me for the last 25 km into Granby.  Apparently there are several of these in la belle province, more than in BC.

The main problem I had was the heat – I lost track of how much water, Gator Aid, Coke, etc. that.I knocked back en route – and I was pretty well bagged by ride’s end.  I suspect it will take my aging body a few days to adapt to this sort of heat and humidity, which is forecast to continue for several more days at least.

Since I left Montreal Island, I’ve been in deepest Quebec.  To date, Quebecois culture appears to be like various unauthorized guidebooks describe it – Pepsi and Poutine, an interesting but not particularly attractive blend of redneck and French culture.  Some observations which may be expanded upon

·         There are lots of oversized Mussolini-modern churches and crosses from the pre-1960 theocracy that are often illuminated with naked household light bulbs.  Considering how secular contemporary Quebois appear to be, one wionders who maintains them.

·         I’ve just returned from a big-ass [Chinese] buffet where I was one of two or three non-obese patrons.  There are lots of other fatties on the street.  Granby reminds me of similar fat towns in Mississippi and Alabama I’ve passed through.  That could be what the French in France would look like if the food there wasn’t so expensive.

Near Sherbrooke – July 7^th

I’m sitting in a campground a few km before town.  70 km net again today, 80 onh the clocki after a few directional mistakes.  Rolling country, high overcast weather, low 20s temperature I suspect.

Riding today was somewhat more civilized temperature-wise.  I rode the first 25 km on a continuation of the former railway trail I rode yesterday – part of the Trans Canada Trail.  The rest was a combination of Quebec Highway 112, a secondary highway with sparse traffic, and another bike trail for the last 10 km.

The trail part of the ride was very civilized with periodic beverage stops and bike shops en route,  There were lots of locals on it (Saturday) and I ran into some nice ones en route.  getting complements on how well I speak it from les Quebecois.  I think they’re just being nice but I also think I speak it as well as some of them speak English.

I decided to try camping after my $120 plus motel last night and I’m now ensconced in a huge trailer park.  There must be three or four hundred mobile homes here in the middle of nowhere with nothing much to commend it.  There are several nice large lakes in the area but here, there’s one sub-Olympic-sized pool for several hundred families in what appears to be a former forest cut block.  It's strange that such a large campground wouldn’t be on a lake somewhere.

I’m getting my nose rubbed in small-town Quebecois culture again.  Tonight’s highlight is the big Western dance In the trailer park’s restaurant/ballroom.  It’s very strange.  The music’s all US country and there’s a large group of 50 to 70 something retirees who appear to have gone to the same night school dance class tripping the light country/western fantastic – line dancing, Texas two-step etc.  I saw the same thing in Granby last evening.  ‘Quebecois hicks appear to be even hickier than ours.

There’s not too much else to talk about today, it’s just about dark, the mosquitos have come out so I’m going to bed early.  I’ll hopefully hit the Maine border tomorrow and try to post this from a Macdonald’s in Sherbrooke (no Wifi here).  All for now.