The 24th annual Rideau Lakes Cycle Tour, June 10th and 11th OR Ottawa - Kingston - Ottawa OR Twin Tailwind Tour Organized by the Ottawa Bicycle Club Total distance: 359 km Total time out: 13:19 Total time rolling: 11:45 Avg speed rolling: 30.5 km/h Avg speed total: 26.3 km/h Weather Saturday: sunny and 24 C Weather Sunday: rain then mist then fog then cloudy and 20 C Introduction: I had first heard of the RLCT many years ago, before I was really into cycling. The annual two day touring event, from Ottawa to Kingston and back, sounded almost biblical in scale. The thought of over 1000 cyclist, braving weather, mechanical failures and Ontario drivers, to ride over 300km, FOR FUN!, was not something I could easily comprehend. Nevertheless, it sounded mighty impres- sive, and I added it after "Ironman" on my list of things-I'd- like-to-try-but-probably-won't. Over the last three years, I have gotten more and more into cycling. Mainly as a healthier and cheaper means of commuting, then later on (as I saved money and bought a better bikes) as rec- reation. I was going to do "The Tour" last year, but it conflicted with a conference I had to go to. Good thing too, because the tem- perature hit 40 C that week-end, giving it the name "Rideau Bakes Cycle Tour". So finally this year, come mid-March, I joined the Ottawa Bicycle Club and started building up my base of 1000km, my aim being to be in ideal shape for the tour. Of course, by this point, the tour had lost some of its mythical appeal. Going on 160km training rides with 100 other club members, I started to comprehend the scale of RLCT, and realize that it is not just possible, but pos- sible to do and have a lot of fun! Now that I've done the tour, the sense of accomplishment is minor. I had fun doing it, enjoyed the company of my "teammates", and am enjoying the health that all this training has brought me. It is fun to watch the expression of people's faces when I explain to them how I got the funny looking tan on the back of my hands. More than anything though, it has made me realize that cycling is a very simple pleasure: I like being outdoors, smelling the air, listen- ing to the sounds, feeling the sun/rain, I like exercising my body, I like the speed, and I like being around other people who like the same things I do. Now, what am I going to do with the open spot on my list of things-I'd-like-to-try-but-probably-won't? WARNING: the following text is a rather dry account of my tour. The detail is probably too excruciating for anyone to enjoy read- ing, but I had fun typing it in, so here it is anyway. DAY ONE: I can't say that I slept all that well Friday night. This was partly due to excitement and partly due to the fact that I never sleep well when I know I have to wake up a some silly hour, like 5:45am. I had everything laid out, ready for me to jump into as my regulation 2 cups of coffee soaked in. This included by rain gear, as the "Weather Liars" were predicting showers all week end. I was out the door and rolling towards Carleton University by 6:20, off to register and meet up with Frank and Rene, who wanted to leave as early as possible since it was to rain later in the day. When I rolled into the parking lot outside the University Center, it was sunny and 15 C. Already at 6:35, the place was swarming with the first of the 1200 cyclist who would be doing the tour this year. This made finding my riding partners a challenge. I got my bib, banana and baggage tags, and dumped off my bag after changing into two jerseys, shorts and cap under my helmet. I tucked my mack into a pocket should it decide to rain later. As usual with Ottawa Bicycle Club events, organization was excellent and check-in took all of 30 seconds. After Frank, Rene and I decided we were ready, we set off to find Vianney, Michele and George, three other riders we knew from Sunday club rides. We got underway at 7:20, having to wait for George to get his rear wheel trued by a mechanic (the guy in line in front of him had to have his entire BB changed, don't people check these thing first?). We rolled out of Ottawa along Meadowlands, then Knoxdale, zig- zagged our way along a series of small roads until finally set- tling on Flewellyn on our way to Ashton. At first this part was a bit scary as we were constantly passing slower riders, while being passed by the sportif groups eager to get clear of the traffic. There seemed to be an amazing amount of traffic out for this early on a Saturday. The ride to Ashton was a relaxed, 33km/h pace, riding two-up. We didn't bother to stop at Ashton and rode right through, deciding to make Perth our first stop. The sun was shining bright, we had a light tail wind, the lush and green scenery was only interrupted by the road, barns, or the odd cow. It doesn't get any better than this! On Tennyson Road we were surprised to find a 2km section of gravel. The cue sheet said "59.8 Tennyson Road. Do tell!!", was that what that meant? One of the men from a group we'd joined up with flatted immediately. We pressed on with our original six, trying to stay spread out so that if one person went down, there wouldn't be a pile up (or a least a smaller pile up). I guess we could also have slowed down, but...nah! We later turned on to another gravel road (listed as such on the cue sheet) which had just been graded (this is bad). After 1km, we saw a SAG wagon parked next to a circle of rides. One of them had fallen and broken his leg (ouch!). The road became a bit of jam, with the sportif riders having slowed down, and George and I hav- ing sped up. We had noticed that as long as we kept our speed above 30km/h, there we less vibration and hence better comfort and traction on the gravel. After that, a quick right turn and 6km into Perth for our first stop of the day. The rest stop, at "Last Duel Park" was organized by one of the local organizations, who also sold bananas, sand- wiches and cup- cakes to raise money. There was also free Gato- raid. There were about a fifty bikes strewn around the park and people relaxed in the sun and loaded up with carbo for the remain- ing 100km of the day. After half an hour, we started out towards our next stop, West- port. Route 10 was a little scary; straight, open and narrow with speeding pickups. After 5km we turn up a small side road which lead us to the friendlier Route 6. We doubled up at this point and picked up a couple of stragglers and the eight of us started to drive over the next 30km of rolling hills. As soon as we would come to a hill, the group would break apart, usually with George, Frank and myself darting up the hill, seeing who could make it first to the top. I was impressed with what Frank could do on his 20 year old five speed Peuguot. From route 6 10 km of Route 36 took us into Westport. There, a steep, winding descent took us into the city. At the top there was an marshall warning us to keep to the speed limit or we might get a ticket. There wasn't a stop in Westport this year. It seems the residents took exception to some participants watering their lawns in an unconventional fashion last year. So this year the stop was 2km later in North Crosby. We didn't stop, but did the next 30km of rolling hills at a good pace through a heavily wooded area with the occasional lake. There had been some construction in this area, where heavy machinery had damaged and pitted the road, turn- ing it into a bit of an obstacle course. Towards the end of the hills we stopped at the Country Convenience Store at Perth Road Village. These guys had a boat filled with ice and bottles of water and Gatoraid. They must have made a killing...$2.50 per bot- tle, 1200 riders = $3000. The rest of the ride was mostly straight, open and flat, except for several rises as the road would go from one plateau to another. We kept losing Rene on these, as he had bonked, but someone would always circle back and pace him up to the group. At this point, 150km mark, my neck, shoulders and butt were really starting to ache. Thankfully, however, my legs felt great and I still had lots of power. Division street took us over Hwy 401 into Kingston, the bumpiest and most hole ridden piece of pavement of the trip. We swung into Queen's University just after 2pm. The lawn outside McNeill House (where the registration was) had about a hundred bikes and cyclist all lying about. We got our room keys (took about 30 seconds), and agreed to meet back a 4:30 for supper. I spun up the Victoria Hall, where I gingerly clogged my way around the highly polished floors in my Look-cleated cycling shoes to dump my bike off in my room. I then went in search of my bag for my sandals and then a pay phone to let my wife know I was alive and to brag about my manly achievement :-). She wasn't home so I had to brag to the answering machine instead. I had a nice shower, washed my cycling clothes, and headed back down to McNeill House for more free Gatoraid and a free "adjust- ment" by a cyropractor. Rene and I went for a beer, to help our muscles relax (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!). The best part about leaving early and getting in early was that we didn't have to line up for anything. Rene and I went looking for the other four at 4:30, but it wasn't easy. Without helmet, glasses, jerseys and shorts, it was diffi- cult to recognize our companions who we had never seen out of "uniform". Supper was excellent. All you can eat spinach lasagna, mashed potatoes, broccoli, lean turkey, plus an infinite variety of sal- ads (two pasta salads!), and all the ice cream you could eat! Here I was thinking, "Wow, I just cycled 180km in under 6 hours!". But then again I was surrounded by 1200 other cyclist who had just done the same. Humbling. It was quite the sight though, 1200 peo- ple, happy, cheerful, yet sober, and with the oddest suntans; brown ovals on the back of wrists, a white band between the shorts and knees. First prize went to this one guy whose face was burnt with the image of this Oakleys and his helmet straps! At the Perth rest stop, we had been wining about the goofy brown ovals on the back of our hands. George, being the brilliant guy he is, suggested we all tuck-in the velcro straps of our gloves. Great idea, we thought. Now we all have a section of burnt skin connecting the brown ovals to our wrists! After supper we went for a walk around campus, then back to Victo- ria Hall for another beer. We spent about an hour swapping war stories with other participants before heading off to bed at nine o'clock. DAY TWO: I slept like a rock and woke easily at five am when the alarm in my watch went off. I tested various part of my body for any sort of ache, but it seems my body recovered completely from the pervi- ous day's effort. I guessed the 1500 km of base riding, including two 120+km rides, was sufficient training. I dressed quickly (the shammy in my shorts was still wet - yuck!), stuffed a water bottle into a pocket and went over to McNeill Hall to wake up Rene who didn't have an alarm. He met me in the lobby, having awaken at 3am from a restless sleep. He told me that it had been raining hard when he woke up, though now it was only driz- zling and 15 C. We met the others for the 5:30am breakfast seating. Again the food was excellent; pancakes, scrambled eggs, hash browns and bacon, plus an infinite selection of cold cereals. After woofing down our food, and filling our bottles with apple juice, we headed back to our rooms. I decided to wear the same thing as yesterday, only with my wind breaker over my jerseys. I'd bring the mack with me, but only put it on if I started to get cold. These plastic macks don't breath at all, and are great for when you get cold. I dropped off my bag and room key and met up with my five "team mates". In addition, "the guy with the wool jersey", whose name turned out to be Bill, decided to join us. The pace of the group he had started out with turn out to be too much for him. We knew him from club rides and were happy to have him to share the work with! We headed out into a light drizzle, onto Division Street. Rain was no problem, especially since we seemed to have tail wind again! We came upon a group of riders all fixing flats. Turns out someone had broken several glass bottles on the road during the night (hmmm, is there such things as the Kingston anti-cycling league?). We detoured around it and made it safely out of town. About 30 minutes later we stopped to strip, the drizzle having turned to light fog and the temperature having gone up to around 20 C. We road fast through Ivanary, waved briefly at the Country Conve- nience store guy at Perth Village Road, sitting in the fog with his boat load of ice and Gatoraid. George, Frank and I continued our antics of sprinting up the hills while trying to physic each other out. Rene didn't seem to be enjoying himself as much, and asked if we could stop at the North Crosby Community Centre. What must have been the Ladies Auxiliary was out in full force with a bake sale. I bought a couple of muffins, which to my sur- prise were not overly sweet, which prompted me to compliment the lady on her recipe. This was her third year baking muffins for the RLCT crowd, she explained, and so had done a little research this year and modified her recipe according to the "en-ergy re-quire- ments of an en-dur-rance a-the-lete". I thanked her for her thought- fulness and make use of the port-a-potty before hosing the mud our of my cleats and getting under way. The group had taken off and was busy discussing something when I noticed Rene was missing. I circled back (unnoticed!) and found him fussing with his M-323 pedals. Apparently they kept coming loose which made it difficult for him to come un-clipped. Judging by the mud on his right leg and arm, he had found this out the hard way! We paced ourselves back up to the group, reaching them just before the "Big Hill" out of Westport on route 36. It was steepest to begin with, so I took no chances and did the first stretch in 39x23. I had noticed earlier that Bill had what looked like a "corn cob" freewheel. I asked him if his largest cog was a 19. "No, 18". Ugh! George, Frank and I inflated our egos by leaving the group behind, and passing lots of people, including a tandem which looked in danger of falling over. Midway through the climb, we passed this radio reporter who had been following the tour all weekend. She was standing at the side of the road, pointing her microphone at us, probably collecting background sounds. We all tried to pant as loud as possible. When we got to the top, we slowed down to let Rene, Vianney and Michele catch up. Bill, to my surprise, had been just behind us. Over the last 20 km, we kept passing and being passed by this guy on a Colnago. On the off chance he was just shy, I asked him to join us, to which he gladly accepted. We did the same later to his guy on a very expensive Campy Record Ergo equipped Bianchi with Sidi shoes, Giro helmet, the works, who had been dropped by his group. The next couple of hours were pretty un-eventful, except that Rene was getting tired. He still insisted on taking his pulls, which resulted in him getting cramps. He eventually resigned him- self to sitting at the back. As we approached the turned off from route 6, Vianney and Michele were the two up front. They were too involved in their conversa- tion to notice the turn, and sailed right past, while the rest of use made the turn. Rather novel form of rotation. At the intersection to route 10, there were two marshals with big stop signs and even bigger attitudes. They tried to make us stop about 3 meters from the intersection, which was awkward because it meant we could not see if anything was coming. They then proceeded to give us a condescending lecture about how dangerous this route was and that we should ride single file to the right. We just smiled and nodded. We heard other rides complain about these two, though I don't really envy the job they had to do. Our practice on busy roads was to only stick to the right if the on coming lane was clear, because car will naturally, by them- selves, gravitate towards the center line to pass us. If there was oncoming traffic, the rider bringing up the rear would stay in the middle of the lane and signal approaching vehicles to wait. When it was safe to pass, they would then fall back in line, letting the drive pass at will. This worked fine for us on straight roads with good visibility. We stopped in Perth, but did not stay more than 15 minutes, decid- ing to stop in Ashton later. While we were there, we heard others talking about the gravel road, and that because of the rain, the organizers had thought about re-routing. So, when we left and saw a sign telling us to go left, instead of right (towards the gravel road), we thought great! Turning left took us through down- town Perth and eventually to a dead-end. I then figured that those kids on BMX's that we rode by before the sign must have switched the (velcro) arrow around. The gravel road was quieter this time. This time we all took it fast, and made it with no flats. However, we were not so lucky when we came to the gravel section of Tennyson road. As we came up to it @ 30km/h, everyone but Rene saw that the right side was too soft and kept left. As I rolled along the gravel I distinctly hear Rene yell "Shit!", and then Vianney say that someone was down. I stopped and look around to see Rene sitting in the gravel next to his bike. By the time I reached his, he was on his feet, and Vianney was helping him and his bike to the side of the "road". An O.P.P. officer on a Harley came along moments later and stopped to help. He radioed for a SAG wagon to come administer first aid. We washed most of the gravel out of his wounds with water from our bottles, and he seemed okay. He had this 5mm deep hole in the back of his helmet where it had struck the road. Good thing he had that on. Rene decided to SAG it back to Carleton, now that we was feeling totally miserable. The O.P.P. officer said he would stay with him until the SAG wagon showed up, so the rest of us took off. Without Rene, the pace quickly picked up to 35-40km/h. We passed these two guys on touring bikes (panniers and fenders) who jumped on and quickly jointed in. They seemed to know what they were doing until the first guy rotated to the front, and he couldn't figure out where to go. His buddy behind him told him to move to the front of the right column, then asked me when he should rotate. I decided to be patient and told him that we were rotating when ever we felt tired. Shortly thereafter, we came to a hill, and these guys became hazardous! They immediately got out of the saddle to climb, and in doing so, dropped their bikes backwards, hitting George's front wheel and nearly hitting me. To my sur- prise, George didn't scream at them, but just pulled out and took off up the hill. I dropped back about a meter. No body said any- thing, we just kept our distance. It was at this point that we had our closest call with a car. Some guy and his family, late for church, pulled into the oncoming lane to pass us, despite the fact that there were two oncoming cars not 200 meters up the road. Rather than drop back and wait until it was safe to pass, he leans on his horn and floors it, nearly tak- ing Vianney out as swerves in front of us to avoid becoming a hood ornament. In perfect synchronization we give him the finger. We later pass a church and see the car and its driver. The driver, a man in his early thirties has his 4 year old son sitting on the hood of the car and he is the process of yelling at him. We soon roll through Ashton and pulled into the gravel parking lot of the rec center. Our two hazards thankfully kept on going. I bought a muffin, used the toilet and contributed my share of bitching about the people we had just shared the road with. In 10 minutes we were off again, this time joined by a couple of tri- guys (aero-bars and VERY strong). These two sat in quietly until they were both at the front. Then they started cackling maniacally and proceeded to increase the pace to 45km/hr! Just what we needed after 140km! No one com- plained for about 10km, especially since they were doing all the work! The older of the two fell back and we became strung out. At one point I pulled up beside the one at the front and complemented him on his good form after 320km. He reply by saying "What about you, after all you're still hanging on!". At 168km, 5:35 my computer died. I told the tri-guy his mad pace had fried my computer. He laughed, said he'd buy me a new one. The max speed read 124km/h, which meant the wires had shorted out somewhere. Only then did I realize how dependant I am on my little Vetta to tell me how hard I am working. The pace did not slow at all as we made our way into Ottawa. George started taking turns at the front, trying to reduce our speed a little by blocking. We made our way up Meadowlands and started to break up as we had to share the road with the many car-people out Sunday shopping. I sprinted up the hill after Merivale and lost the group for good, hooking onto the back of a couple sportif types in OBC jerseys. The three of us TTT along Meadowlands, freely mingling with the cars doing 45km/h. I followed them all the way into Carleton, to be the first of our group to ride into Carleton, at 2:25pm. I checked in and found Rene. He had gauze bandages over his road rash, but was otherwise fine. He recounted how he had happily found himself in the SAG wagon with five women! Frank, George, Vianney and Michele rolled in soon after me. We went hunting for our luggage, changed and sat down for hamburgers/ chicken burgers and a couple of well deserved pints of Hart Amber Ale. Only when I got back on my bike to ride home did I find the saddle sores that had formed on my thighs where they had rubbed against the side of saddle. As I (painfully) made my way home, my computer started working again! P.S. Thanks to the OBC and Dyna Vink-Ellis and the rest of the RLCT committee for the excellent job they did on this tour. Thanks to you I really enjoyed myself. PostScript: It is now 2001, and I have just completed my third RLCT. I did my 2nd one in 1996, then took a few years off coz I was too tired from looking after kids. Each year I did less and less training. This year was very fast again. I ran into Michele at Queens and road back to Ottawa with him and my friend Kevin. We left at 7:20, picked up another guy along the road. Next thing I knew we were in Ottawa, at 12:20. The shocker was zipping down Meadowlands at 45kph only to find that Colonel By was still closed to traffic and choke full of cyclists, roller bladers and joggers!!!