Day 1: Quebec City Deja Vu

Distance: 14.5km

Speed: 16.5km/h

Weather: Sunny

In true Sherry fashion, the adventure starts before the real adventure even begins. When all of the below happens on the same day, it makes you wonder if biking to Quebec City again would have been the easier way.

1) 15min before I was suppose to board my first flight to Montreal, an announcement comes on that our flight is overbooked and asks for volunteers to give up their seats. I have only ever heard of this so it’s the first time it’s happening to me in real life. I have a minor panic that I’m going to get bumped off because I’m travelling alone, but luckily eventually I get on the plane.

2) Upon arrival in Montreal, our entire flight gets locked out of the Montreal Airport for 20min because there was no airport agent to clear us (again another first!) There were so many other passengers with proximate connecting flights that I’m pretty there was going to be riot if we had to wait one more minute. 

3) When I finally get inside YUL, I run like a madwoman to my gate because there was only 2min left before my boarding time, only to find out that my connecting flight was delayed by 3 hours because there was a shortage of pilots??!! 

4) A 3 hour airport nap later (which was actually much needed; red eye flights are only good in theory and never good in reality, despite that I always book them in my quest to save time anyways) and after finally flying the last 45min to Quebec City, I end up taking a public bus with my bike because no taxi or Uber wanted to take my bike box. I look on Google Maps for the closest bike shop and the bus got me within 550m of it. As I get off to walk the last stretch, an old man who thought I was crazy for trying to lug my bike box offers me a 2min ride in his truck.

5) I get to the Primeau Velo and all seems to be well with reassembling my bike. The guys there even let me use their bike stand and tools! Until we realize the elastics that hold my fenders to the fork weren’t there for some reason. They were such a small thing but so critical. I take up way too much of the bike shop guys’ time but after 1.5 hours they finally found some time elastics in the back and I’m at last on my way.
Here’s the only picture I took of the whole day, stumbling accidentally onto the Laval University campus was a full circle moment right there.


Unfortunately because of all of the above, I wasn’t able to join my Warmshowers hosts Maud & Gail & their son to visit an art exhibit in Vieux Quebec in the early afternoon. The rest of the evening was a lot more smooth sailing. Maud & Gail have bike toured with their kids across Europe and the USA and it was super inspirational to hear their stories!

In other news, the French I learned 8 years ago is definitely buried very deep. But maybe it will resurface in these next few days.