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Things I Learned on "Le Tour de PWRDF"Category:
“Le Tour” de PWRDF Suzanne Rumsey lists 19 things she learned on Le Tour de PWRDF I returned to the PWRDF office yesterday (Monday) to a warm welcome from my colleagues – a welcome banner, cake, flowers, the whole nine yards – and our twice-yearly cleaning day. Nothing like a little filing to get the post-Tour juices flowing! Many thanks to my colleagues for their wonderful, good-humoured kindness. Today I spent a bit of time looking at the photos I took over the course of Le Tour de PWRDF. So many good memories of people encountered and places visited. And it reminded me of the many things I learned on this journey. Herewith a list of those learnings, some of them sublime others ridiculous, but all good to have learned. 1. There is no such thing as a “good hair day” on a bike tour, just “bad” ones. This was especially true because I sport bangs and had my helmet plastered on my head all day. Therefore, learning number… 2. It is never impolite to warmly greet one’s hosts and then immediately request a shower, as in, “Hello, it’s very nice to meet you. Could I have a shower? No really, you WANT me to have a shower!” 3. As noted in a previous blog, there is ALWAYS a hill at the end of the day! And in the case of the route from Charny to Thetford Mines, Québec, there are SIX hills! Thus, learning number… 4. Once I had committed to cycling up a hill there was generally no other choice but to get to the top, especially because I was cycling with clip-on shoes/pedals. Unless I could be really sure that there was no traffic coming over the crest of the hill, there was no turning across the road to get enough glide to unclip. So it was pedal or fall over! But this brings me to learning number… 5. Just when I thought my legs couldn’t dig any deeper, they did. I was prepared to walk at least part of the last hill into Thetford Mines. I had my shoe on but not clipped into, the pedal, but halfway up heard a “CLICK”, and so locked in I pedaled to the top. Physical limits are what we choose to make them. And now I have legs of steel. 6. Canada is an incredibly beautiful country. I grew up in southeastern British Columbia, so I have a particular bias for the Rocky Mountains. But the hills, valleys, coastlines, woods and lakes of the Maritimes and Québec were a treasure to discover. However… 7. Google Maps knows nothing about distances when it comes to navigating those hills, valleys, coastlines, woods and lakes on a bike. Plugging in Halifax to St. Anne de Bellevue gave me a distance of 1,318 km door to door. That’s on the Trans-Canada. I wasn’t on the Trans-Canada, except very briefly. And so I cycled 1,393 km and got a few lifts along the way for a total distance of over 1,600 km. 8. Canadians are friendly and helpful in BOTH official languages. Whenever I asked for directions I always got “helpful”(!) responses, and when I explained that I spoke only a little French, the person I was speaking with would usually just smile, nod and carry on in rapid-fire Québécois! One piece of advise I received repeatedly was that the prevailing winds blow from west to east, and therefore I was biking in the wrong direction, that is east to west and against the wind. This I knew before I set out and it was confirmed for me especially between Fredericton and Woodstock (gusts up to 50 km/hr) and between Rivière du Loup and St. Jean Port Joli along the St. Lawrence River (thanks to the young couple who I shared leading and drafting with that day). The next time I do this I hope General Synod is in Vancouver and my destination is Toronto. 9. Canadian Anglicans are equally friendly and hospitable. I had more good parish and home-cooked meals than I can count, not to mention good, hot showers (see no. 2 above) and comfy beds. Speaking of eating… 10. Long-distance cycling requires one to eat. And eat, and eat and eat, and oh yes, hydrate… Hearty breakfasts were followed by a mid-morning snack, lunch, afternoon snack and a good dinner. I carried a bottle of water and a bottle of Gatorade on Olive, and went through both each day, as well as other drinks along the way. My Lester (the lobster) sandwich still stands out as my all-time best lunch. Thanks Moncton! 11. Speaking of hydrating… I am a tea drinker. This meant that about 15 km down the road each morning I needed a toilet. Sometimes that came in the form of a Tim Horton’s or an Irving gas station (clean bathrooms, very nice), but often it meant the woods. And… 12. Good old Tim Horton’s. Who knew they make excellent hot chocolate? 13. How does the saying go? “An ounce of prevention is worth…”. Hmmm… something good I recall. Well a special word of thanks to the bike shops in Toronto, Halifax, Fredericton, Quebec City, Montreal and Edmonton (Mark Rumsey at Hardcore Bikes, my unofficial official sponsor), who equipped and boxed and shipped and unboxed and tuned and refitted with rear gears, and adjusted “les vitesses” (I learned that’s what gears are called in French), and boxed and shipped Olive again. Please support your local, independent bike stores. They are good people. 14. The relationship between time and distance is different when you are on a bike. It took me a day to cycle 100 km, the distance it would normally take an hour and a bit to drive in a car. And so time slowed down, the intensity of the urban life I lead in Toronto diminished, and a certain “spaciousness” (to quote Adele Finney, PWRDF's Interim Executive Director!) opened up before me each day. That was such a gift. That and… 15. Time to think, but interestingly, it wasn’t the “deep” thinking I thought I might do about moving forward into a new job at PWRDF, or other changes-in-life themes. It was more thinking about how my body was feeling (“Man my butt hurts.”), what I would have to eat on my next break (“Hmmm, energy bar or muffin?”), how amazing the eagle and eagle’s nest I just stopped and took a photo of looked, and who I might be meeting down the road. Interestingly, the journey enabled some living in the moment that urban life makes difficult. It also allowed me to… 16. See and hear more than one does travelling in a car. Who knew there were frogs living in the marshes along the road side who sang to me? Bird song was everywhere too: mourning doves, yellow finches, blue jays, cardinals, red-winged blackbirds (very territorial – defending their nests they chased after me), robins or as we call them in our house, robin birds, and many others that I could not name. 17. Physical tiredness is good. In my day-to-day world of work and family, there is often a fair degree of mental and emotional tiredness that I experience. What a gift it was to come to the end of the day and more than anything else be simply physically tired, and then to be renewed for the next day with a hot shower, a good meal and a comfortable bed. If only we could be renewed mentally and emotionally so easily. 18. The Primate, Archbishop Fred Hiltz often describes PWRDF as one of the “good news stories” of the Anglican Church of Canada. I learned that indeed it is. And it is good news because Anglicans in parishes large and small across this country support PWRDF and the work of our partners in many creative and meaningful ways. An organization doesn’t get to celebrate its 50th birthday without the steadfast commitment of many, many people, some of whom I had the privilege to meet along the way. And finally… 19. I will never be able to say thank you enough to all those who made this ride possible. You are too many to number and name, but I do hope over the next weeks to, as I promised I would when I stopped riding, to do the old-fashioned thing, put pen to paper and send some thank you notes. A thousand thank yous. I have been so very blessed. If you didn't get to follow Suzanne's reflections on her trip you can read about them on the PWRDF blog http://pwrdfblog.livejournal.com/. |
