BT in review

It is a very gray and rainy day here at home in Toronto. It gives me some relief that the bad weather was not special for our bike trip. Weather is a tricky one and getting trickier by the year.

When I first heard of the BT 700 many years ago, it scared me. I didn’t think for a minute it was the kind of ride that I could do. At the time, this was probably true, but I’m a different rider now – more experienced, better gear, the right bike for this kind of terrain, etc. Turns out, it was pretty much the perfect Ontario ride for who I am now.

As mentioned in the first post, none of us were particularly excited about the route itself, but I think we all had a change of heart while doing it. There was a lot of variation – quite pavement, rail trail in digestible doses, hilly country gravel and just enough rough stuff in short spurts to keep it interesting. I loved the riding, I think we all did. Matt, the route creator (and creator of the rides I did in Costa Rica, Colombia, and others I didn’t blog), is very good at what he does.

The one thing that surprised me was our pace. We were moving at about 10 km per elapsed hour. We have done rides together before, and I feel like we covered more distance more quickly, but maybe I am mistaken. We had some less than ideal weather which can for sure slow things down, but I’m not convinced that’s solely the thing. Anyway, no matter because it wasn’t a problem, but for learning purposes I’d love to understand what was at play.

And one more note to self kind of thing – we created a google doc outlining places to stay, eat, resupply, and where trail conditions would get hard. Its easier to scan a bulleted list as opposed to swimming through POIs in a GPS file. This google doc was organized by day, so had some assumptions about how far we’d make it. And because reality was slower than intentions, it became confusing to scan the document. In the future I might organize such a file by city or distance marker.

Some among you have pointed out that there were a lot of typos in these entries. In my favor, I had better things to do on this trip than proof read my blog! Its a bit of a PITA to maintain this website on a phone. I’ll be forgiven.

More interestingly, some among you noted that it sounded like I was enjoying this trip more than most. This is true and a direct result of riding with Michael and Gary. It would have been even better if Chris could have made it. Next time.