Day 20 - "The Day I Almost Broke" - Queenstown to St. John

That title comes verbatim from my journal...it was the only title I put on any of my daily journal entries. 

Woke up this morning to another beautiful morning - fog breaking over the lake, cool (great for biking!), minimal cloud.  Packed up and pretty pumped - only about 75 km to St. John, which I'm excited to see - haven't heard too much about it, but how bad could it be?  Pictures look nice - although they are mostly from the Bay of Fundy, which we don't really get to see much of...oh well. 

Started out our ride, and man - it was a great morning...but, the legs just aren't quite working like they should after a hilly 105 km yesterday.  Bas dropped back so we could chat and explained to me this is called Pap in de Benen in Holland - meaning legs feel like they're full of oatmeal.  Actually, quite a great explanation for the feeling I'm experiencing...the legs just don't feel like doing the work that I've come to expect my legs to do.  Heat and hills mean I'm in need of a recovery day!

As we rode along the St. Johns, the weather seemed to continue to be pretty nice....for now...

View of the fields and St. John River

First rest was at this abandoned fish market

But, in the distance, weather was not looking plesant.  It was a pretty hilly ride - not huge up and downs to start, but lots of up and down - essentially no flat riding to be had.  And then the rain came....just as we passed by a gas station, where we stopped to rain gear up, get some coca-cola and beef jerkey (coke gave a nice little jolt of energy).  Well, the rain just kept coming...and it was really coming down.  We had a lengthy downhill called the Devil's Back (learned this at the gas station) where the rain really hurt as it pelted you on the way down - had to keep speed reasonable too.  Rain is bad - a spill on a downhill would make this day worse.  More up, down, up, down...

The rain in the distance...it got close quickly

Beef Jerkey Break - this is me, not happy.  The wet and unhappy look
I was going for just looks "special"

We pushed through - and swore lots to ourselves as we did.  This is the last day of riding with Bas, and I'm glad we could curse together to get through it.  Once actually into St. John (ohhhh, so close to a warm hostel), we drove through some construction...and (insert curse of your choice), I get the first flat of the trip.  Smoke showed my back tire on a rather huge pot hole - flat right away.  Great - now I'm sweaty and cold (yes, at the same time...), and need to fix a flat on the side of the road.  Yes, this was the day I almost broke!

Eventually, we pulled into St. John.  Our hostel is in a sketchy area - just outside our door on the way to downtown was a fight at a house nearby - fight over girls, drugs and why one of the participants should/shouldn't get back to jail.  It was funny - but, we didn't stick around to enjoy.

I was excited for St. John - but, whether the poor city never had a chance, or it really is worse then Hamilton, I will likely never know.  The downtown seemed to me to be just one gigantic eye sore of a harbour.  Many of the stores in the downtown core are empty (possibly due to bad economy?  I don't know).  The seafood restaurants were as expensive as home, the market was small and very much unexciting, and the beer at the place everyone recommended going to for the night was $9 a pint.  This place sucks man....I did get one nice photo.  I think this was the only photo of this crappy city that was shown in the guidebook - now I know why!

We ended up a little tipsy from our three/four beers each (riding a full day makes tolerance a little lower - little is inaccurate), found a McDonalds and had bigmac combos (another stereotype checked off for Bas), and went back to our hostel to pout.