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Quest for Percé Rock "The major difference between a thing
that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong
is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong
it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair."
The night passed peacefully: traffic-free and calm. Upon arising, my thermometer read a cool four degrees Celsius. "Have you noticed I've lost my craving for ice cream?" I said, rubbing my hands together briskly. Our day's ride began with another frost-nipped downhill. Just when we were beginning to warm up, we came across road construction. A flagman stopped us. An oil truck coated the right lane in black muck. "They'll let us go after they finish the lane," I said. "They just don't want to splash us." At the end of the row, the driver turned, and drenched the left lane in a mass of sticky gunk. I was still optimistic. "We can ride down the middle," I said, noting the still-free centre strip. Oh, to be wrong twice - and so early in the morning, too. The oil truck turned 180 degrees again, and sprayed the centre. When he had finished, the entire road was one mass of oozing oily scum. I winced, half-expecting The Monster from the Black Lagoon to rise from its midst. A pickup truck stopped behind us. "Hey," I said to Sharon, half-joking, "ask if we can throw our bikes into the back of his pick-me-up." Sharon wasted no time. She whipped her bike around on a dime and pulled up to the driver's window. "Hey!" Sharon called. "He says, 'No problem.' Hurry up and throw your bike in the back!" "I like that a lot better than 'I think not,'" I said. Smiling, I tossed my bike into the back of the friendly Québecer's pickup. Our bikes safely stowed, the driver, instead of making us ride in the back truck box like a couple of unwanted French poodles, motioned for us to join him in the cab. With the truck's heater on high, and the sun shining warmly through the windshield, a wave of tranquility washed over us. Warm and serene, Sharon and I nearly dozed. "What a difference a windshield makes," I yawned. "And a heater," Sharon said, closing her eyes and moaning. "Since I left Plumtree, down in Tennessee, it's the first time I've been warm," she said, quoting The Cremation of Sam McGee. Far too soon we passed the oil, tar, and gravel construction. Our driver pulled over and let us out (had he continued down the road with us, I'd bet neither Sharon nor I would have protested). We wrestled our bikes out of the truck and onto a shoulder strewn with shards of broken glass. "Looks like we've arrived on the Glasspé Peninsula," I joked. In the town of Gaspé, at the Jacques Cartier shopping centre, we filled our panniers with fresh goods: eggs, milk, cereal, rye bread, muffins and doughnuts. (Never mind the pedalling! We required a huge number of calories just to keep warm.) Sharon spied knitted gloves at the check-out counter and bought two pair. They'd make a fine addition to our infamous "stormless-shelter" gloves. "Anything to take the bite off," Sharon said, pulling on her newest acquisition. We filled our water bottles at a nearby marina. A worn path led us to picnic tables. The sun shone impotently. Even so, it was great to see old Sol finally making an appearance. Apparently I was a mite hungry. I scarfed down nine eggs, six glazed doughnuts, three banana chocolate-chip muffins, and a couple of bowls of steaming hot chocolate. I suspected that if there had been a partridge in a pear tree, I would have chomped that down too. "Talk about eating oneself into a coma!" Sharon grinned. "Just a little fuel for my internal combustion engine," I said, patting my stomach. Sharon stretched back against the picnic table, not fazed by my gargantuan appetite. She had seen me eat more. Instead of staring at me in wonder and admiration, she was peering at my bike. I hated when she did that. "Bloody hell!" she suddenly exploded. I wasn't surprised. "When's the last time you cleaned your chain?" Hmmm. I thought hard, but couldn't recall. Was it before leaving home? Then I recollected. "You cleaned it last," I informed her. "Remember that day my tire went kablooie (a technical term) and I went to buy a new one and had left you unsupervised with my bike?" Sharon squinted at me like I was a bike abuser of the lowest kind. She whisked a rag off her rack, and bent to wipe my bike's grimy rear rim. Polishing a two-inch section to gleaming chrome, she attempted to spin the tire to a new section. "What?" she sputtered, barely able to turn the wheel. "You've been riding like this? Your brakes are stuck on!" "You know," I said, rubbing my chin, "my legs have been feeling a tad tired." Even tiny hills had been feeling akin to monster Ozark grades. "Look here," Sharon scolded, shaking her head and pointing a greasy index finger toward my rim. "You've got a broken spoke!" I looked, and sure enough, there was. When had that happened? I wondered. Then I recalled: the previous day, going up a steep pitch, my rear tire had jerked sideways for an instant. I figured a pebble had squirted from beneath the tire and never gave it another moment's thought. "But you're lucky." "Huh?" I interrupted. "How is a broken spoke lucky?" "It's on your non-freewheel side," Sharon explained. "We won't have to remove your cluster to replace it." "Ooh," I nodded, pursing my lips. "That is lucky!" Clusters can be notoriously difficult to remove in the field. (And even sometimes in a shop with the proper tools - as Arran and I discovered one sad day in Germany.) Sharon searched the collection of spokes taped to her bike's down tube. She found one the correct length. I threaded it through, then Sharon got the tough part, truing the rim. "Whew! Truly an art." I whistled in admiration after she completed the task 20 minutes later. "Watching you made me hungry!" I grabbed a box of Mueslix cereal. On a side panel, the manufacture thought it prudent to caution: Use less than your regular cereal. "Harrumph," I smirked, tearing open the foil package and pouring the entire contents into my mixing bowl-sized trough. Then I added a litre of milk and four bananas. "Ah, heaven," I grinned, scooping up a mouthful. I finished the heap in record time and looked around for more. Two more banana chocolate-chip muffins and another six doughnuts disappeared down the old hatch. Eating frenzy completed I declared, "Let's ride!" We hit the road, and were soon reminded that October daylight hours were short. We had planned on making it to Percé Rock before nightfall. (I wanted to take a photo of the morning sun rising behind it.) But, as the sun set, we were still 42 kilometres short of our goal. We rounded a corner. In the distance, Percé Rock with its famous pierced hole loomed, rising ship-like out of the choppy grey Atlantic. We stopped to admire it and remnants of a sunset over Saint George's Bay. It was nearly dark by the time the lingering sunset faded. I went over to a house to ask if we could camp on their property. A geriatric couple, staring at me through a picture window, studied my approach. They opened the door on my first knock and peered out at me. "Bonjour," I greeted in lilting French. "I don't speak English," the old woman said in perfect English. "Camping," I tried, and pointed to a swatch of land behind their house. "Tent? Votre terre?" At my massacre of the French language, the old woman's husband stepped to the fore. His English was marvellous. "You can camp by those trees," he said, gesturing to a nearby hill. "No one will mind." I thanked them and turned to leave. The old man cleared his throat. "You can stay in the house across the road if you want," he said. "The fella who owns it lives in the States. He hasn't been here for ten years ... the last time was his 65th birthday." "Maybe he's dead," I twirped. "There's no electricity," the wrinkled chap continued, ignoring my capricious remark. "But the door around back is open." He craned his wattled turkey neck upwards, taking a gander at the clear sky. "Might get cold in the open tonight," he reckoned. I thanked him, and turned to leave. The old man cleared his throat. "The fella who owns the house used to have souvenirs inside," the old gent said. "But a gang of bikers from Toronto broke in one summer and stole them." He paused as if remembering. The old fellow cleared his throat again and pointed to the ditch. "They burned his Fleur-de-Lys flag over there." The old man raised a hand and wiped his eyes. I shook my head. What kind of senseless act was that? And people wonder why some French dislike the English? It was dark by the time I pried myself from their yard. I found Sharon on the grass beside our bikes, reading a book by flashlight. She had adapted to my one minute questions turning into half-hour-long ordeals. I told her about the old man's suggestion of staying in the abandoned house. Sharon snapped her book shut. "I don't feel right about staying in someone's house without permission." "I'm fairly sure the owner isn't going to show up tonight," I rebutted. "And we do have permission ... sort of." But Sharon was adamant. We bypassed the "biker" house, opting instead for a little patch of ground with an expansive view of the bay. The view was indeed grand, but we needed protection from the elements. The chilly air gnawed our fingertips and licked our Popsicle toes. We assembled the tent and jumped into our sleeping bags. I lit the candle lantern. It cast a warm buttery glow throughout the tent. We broke out milk and chomped down chocolate wafers. "Another fine dinner by candlelight," I grinned, taking a big swig of cold milk to wash down the crumbs. "It's not exactly what I had in mind for a romantic candlelight dinner," Sharon replied. I glanced over and noticed she was so cold she was eating her portion while wearing gloves. Maybe it would be a good idea to change the subject? "We sure are getting good value out of our candle lantern," I said. "It throws off a surprising amount of light. And candles are a lot cheaper than batteries." Like my other camping 'technology' purchases, Sharon hadn't been keen on the idea. "It'll get busted," she had said, fingering the glass enclosure when I had shown it to her. But, when the lantern isn't in use, the glass slides down into an ingenious protective metal covering. And, so far, it had survived the rigors of bouncing in my panniers. "I'd say," Sharon said, "out of all the gadgets you've bought, this is your best." She reached her hands toward the flickering flame. "It even gives off some heat!" |
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