Bike Across America – Day 40

Friday, July 28, 2017

Start: Port Huron, Michigan
End: London, Ontario
Mileage today/cumulative: 83 (134 kilometers) / 2,956
Elevation Ascended: 2,260′
Weather: Cloudy, 64° at start; cloudy, 22c° / 71fº at finish
3D Relive Video (approx. 1 minute)

Before today, I’d crossed international borders by plane, boat, and foot. Now Bev and I can both add “by bike” to the list. Day 40 of this constantly surprising adventure started with something crazy, even by our standards.

Our hotel in Port Huron, Michigan was located at the foot of the Blue Water Bridge, which connects the USA and Canada. At 6:30am, our entire group rode out of the hotel parking lot and onto the bridge, which was closed eastbound to all motor vehicles for our entire 1.2 mile crossing. When we reached the Canadian side, everyone dismounted their bikes and customs agents were waiting to process our passports. The entire process was very efficient and, when done, one of the customs agents took a group photo for posterity and, perhaps, identification purposes.

We took a quick “Welcome to Ontario” photo before hopping on our bikes and riding another 80+ miles into some very tough winds. The first thing we noticed in Canada, besides the metric system, was the improved quality of the roads. They’re generally smoother, better maintained, and cleaner. The US dollar goes pretty far here, they have good maple doughnuts at Tim Horton’s, they have high quality, affordable health care, and their government isn’t completely dysfunctional. We’re moving to Canada. Oh wait, there’s that little thing called winter. Oh well. So, instead, we bought a pair of cool Canadian bike jerseys to remind us of how nice it is here in late-July.

After the excitement of the border crossing, the ride was a bit of a slog with double-digit winds in our face for nearly the entire day. More of the same is predicted for tomorrow. No choice but to carry on and know that it’ll make us that much stronger before this thing ends in ten days. Also, with the end approaching, we expect that we’ll soon be getting the “start dialing back the food consumption” message. Things could get ugly.