Entering Ottawa

First of all, thanks to everyone for all the comments and e-mails! It gets lonely at times on the white line and they help point the way.
So, we saw this fellow on a Segway the other evening, having some problems negotiating the speed bumps at the campground. Ahh, the wheel was an amazing invention, but sometimes I think the journey was not that far from the caves to the suburbs. That was one of the goofiest sights I've seen and I'm sure my club wielding ancestors would be scratching their heads in bewilderment.
We have also rediscovered the slushie, another amazing invention and decided that koolaid has the best product. Yes, that smiling chubby face on the koolaid pitcher continues his reign, from when I was running around barefoot on Blair Road with orange peels on my head.
Perhaps Tucker will write the next post with relevance.

Flax and Fleur-de-lis

Well, after 8 days of biking along the St. Lawerence today we finally left it behind. After our last post we went for some well deserved and delicious strawberry crepes. With vanilla ice cream. It was all quite nice. The next couple of days the weather improved greatly, sunny and hot, so we now both have beautiful and well distinguished flip-flop tans. Today we took a detour off Hwy. 158 to La Plaine to visit Stephanie and Co. Stephanie was in Katimavik and stayed with us for a week during the winter. A greatly appreciated supper and swim was one of the best parts of the trip so far, especially because of the 30+ degree weather. And now we only have 2 more days in Quebec, which only makes me happy because it means that we might actually make it to Ottawa. Hooray!!!

What We Saw Today

Up the St. Lawrence River on Thursday into a fierce headwind, 11 km. an hour, very slow and we only made Riviere Ouelle. Tucker was sick all night and I have been fighting off a cold, it was a bad day, spent all day in the tent, raining and cool. Saturday the wind turned, our health improved and our spirits lifted... tail wind and 110 km. Sunday, same wind, a tad wet and then by ferry over to Quebec saving about 30 km. going around by bridge. Spending the day in Quebec, great town, hunkered down at the hostal. Oh... and what we saw today... a smart car with a bike rack. Too much!

La belle province

Spent the whole day biking the Trans Canada Trail from Edmunston to Rivière-du-Loup. Final tally of 137 km. at 16.8 km per hour which is epic on a single track trail. Tucker had to brake hard, 1st for a snake, then a chipmunk, then a rabbit... see where I'm going with this... yes indeed, a moose. (based on a true story) No animals were hurt during this ride. Needless to say we were very tired, and found no room at the inn (auberge internationale) but the tent is safely pitched in the back yard, and the bellies are full of sugar pie!!

Fiddleheads and Covered Bridges

So today as we rolled into Perth-Andover for lunch we figured that there is no time like the present to write a post about the last few days. On Thursday we woke up nice and early and took the ferry to St. John, and then spent the afternoon at a table set up for us by Maureen in the market. Our next day wasn't quite as peachy, we biked from St. John to Fredricton, a grand total of 120 kms in the rain. The day improved when we dropped by an old friend of my dad's, Ilkay, and she fed us a delicious and unexpected meal. Fredricton continued to surprise us when we went to the market the next day and found out that we weren't allowed to set up our banner anywhere. The last surprise was when we dropped into Savage's bike shop and Matt Savage gave our bikes a check-up free of charge, which mainly involved new sets of brakes for both of our bikes. We thought that our trip was doomed after we almost hit a black cat that ran across the road infront of us. Turned out to be quite the opposite, we got a free campsite in Hartland and an awesome picture of this car inside the bridge. And today we had a lovely morning biking up the St. John river valley to PA.

on the whiteline

1st day
blue flags and columbines
swallowtails and red wing blackbirds
a raccoon after the bumble bee bag (our food bag)
free firewood for a crane
the 1st 75 clicks have unfolded

3rd day
1st starbucks coffee for both of us on the Digby ferry
we saw no fireworks
porcupine falling out of a tree
farmed seahorse eggs destined for China

Human Rights College = Awesome

I really don't know where to start writing about the HRC, it was just that incredibly amazing. To avoid rambling on and on I think I'll just pick a few of the highlights: (According to me and in no specific order)

1. The Amazing Activist Race, part of which included taping up 4 Amnesty posters in the best places you could find. For our group these places included a Metro bus, Theodore the Tugboat, and Jenn Farr's bike.

2. Getting to hangout with people from right across Canada. A couple of them were even from....
Manitoba. Which is a joke that you might not get unless you were at the concert at Grand Parade, which happens to be the next highlight.

3. The march in support of the Lubicon Cree and the free concert. For the march pretty much everyone who was at the HRC and AGM walked from the Dalhousie Student Union Building to Grand Parade in downtown Halifax carrying posters with various slogans on them. Once we made it to where we finished we listened to some live music and had our pictures taken infront of a pumpjack that we the HRCers had made.

4. My final one would have to be taking part in the Annual General Meeting. I also realized during all the discussions that doing all the workshops during the HRC really prepared me to be able to talk to other Amnesty members and tell them my point of view without having to make everything up as I went.