We arrived in Thunder Bay after a nice ride in from Kakabeka Falls.
Tonight would be our first time using the ‘Warm Showers’ app that so many people had been telling us about. It’s an app that connects touring cyclists with hosts, usually also cyclists, who offer a place to stay, or a backyard to set up the tent, a place to do laundry and shower, and sometimes a meal. Sounds too good to be true, so we were not sure what to expect, but Francesco’s ‘profile’ suggested we might get along just great.
Frank turned out to be a masterful host that set a very high bar for what could be expected using ‘Warm Showers’. He cooked up a veritable mountain of spaghetti, with a wonderful Italian salad, while we did our laundry, showered, and dried our wet gear out in the yard.
After lively conversation about cycling, music, politics, economics and more, we slept like stone.
A ceremonial parting photo was taken as we left in the morning.
And Frank escorted us on a lively bike path tour of Thunder Bay.
We stopped in for a Persian. Just one of these $1.65 Thunder Bay fritter like creations loaded up with pink icing is purported to have the caloric punch to get you all the way to Sault St. Marie and is a favourite of the local cyclists.
We figured it was certainly worth a try.
We headed down for the harbour to get our first glimpse of Lake Superior and the sleeping giant.
Thunder Bay is a port city complete with tankers, shipping vessels and huge yachts, right here in the middle of the country.
We stopped in to a fantastic bike shop called Fresh Air to get some replacement chain and we spent some time browsing around. The guys behind the counter had a big box of Persians and offered one up. Still buzzed from the first one we declined.
Back out to Lake Superior, where a storm was coming across the lake from the North. Our path lay straight into it so we donned our rain gear and got ready for the worst.
The calamity of what followed gets no pictures.
First, Andrew had a fall, at fairly slow speed, while crossing a train track buried in the bike path. No injury, but the weight of the bike and rider coming down was enough to break the rear rack making it impossible to hold the pannier bags away from the tires.
We headed for the nearest bike shop, where they unfortunately did not have stock on a rack that would fit. The other bike shop in town, Fresh Air, was 8kms back the way we had come. We phoned, and they had one.
With the storm closing in and panniers piled precariously, we had no choice but head back across the city.
After fitting the new rack, we stepped out of the shop into fully black sky that had moved over the city and was threatening to open up at any moment. A passing cyclist said “Wherever you’re headed, you better get there fast!”
We sped South to try and outrun the storm hoping to find a building with an awning where we could wait it out. None of the buildings along this road had any form of overhang so we ran for kilometres. Behind us we could hear the hail hitting the street and it was moving faster than we could pedal. When it caught us we scurried up beside a building to the lee side to try and lessen the hail and rain experience but it was futile.
Luckily friendly people from the office building invited us inside for shelter just in time for the full brunt of the storm to impact. They offered up coffee and tea and we hung out for a few hours drying off and waiting out the weather.
When the heavy rain stopped we wheeled our bikes back outside and discovered we were in the same spot where we had had Persians earlier that morning. We were a few blocks from Frank’s house, and it was 5pm.
We called Frank who was very glad to host us another night and we would be joining Felix who had rolled in from Kakabeka Falls.
Another merry night at Frank’s took the sting out of achieving zero kilometres for the day, and we were looking forward to riding with our new friend Felix the next day.
Felix had started in Montreal, ridden East to Halifax, flown to Vancouver with his bike and was on the home return stretch through Ontario and back to Montreal to complete his cross Canada. A delightful fellow with an opportunity for us to learn some tricks of the road and practise a little French.
The weather was great now that we were travelling with Felix, (more on that later) and we zipped out of Thunder Bay towards the Terry Fox memorial just out of town.
Having started at the Terry Fox memorial in Victoria, where he had intended to finish, it was fitting that we pay a visit to the spot where he was forced to end his cross Canada run that he had started in St. John’s.
It was important to Terry to run in all 10 provinces, and likewise important to us to ride them all. From this memorial spot we’d be riding some of the same highways he had run 45 years ago.
Pretty cool.
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