Total distance: 3170km
Average speed: 19.5km/h
Weather: rain and more rain
Mother Nature obviously didn't listen to my plea. I woke up at 7am after zonking out for over 12 hours, and left Kashabowie with the exact same winds blowing into my face. The next 50km or so to Shabaqua was absolute hell, so many times I wanted to stop and cry by the side of the road. At Shabaqua, I marched into the Oskondaga Lodge looking for water and was met by my savior. The lady told me to sit down and cooked up a giant platter of breakfast. She also let me use the bathroom to wash up, charge my phone, and it was the best $10 I've spent on this trip. After two cups of coffee, which is more than I've ever had in one sitting, I got going again and managed to ride all the way to Kakabeka Falls in one go. It started pouring on the way but that only made Ontario's second largest waterfall more impressive. Then it was only 30km to Thunder Bay, but man that was the longest 30km of my life. The headwind was worse than it had ever been, and the sky started dumping buckets, such that it felt like icicles on my body, not to mention the thunder and lightning that was all around. My toes and fingers froze completely and I couldn't even shift gears. Somehow I made it to the Tim Hortons in the city, where I called my host Frank because I couldn't even think clearly to check Google Maps. After being chased down by the police for going down a road that had fallen down wires, I finally made it to Frank and Marcie's place where I was revived back to life with a warm shower and hot tea. It is full house here with four other cyclists, two going west from Montreal to Mexico, two going east from Vancouver to Montreal who came back after the atrocious weather today. The energy in the room is quite something as we share stories from our trips, making the killer ride earlier merely a bad fuzzy memory.
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