Day 3 – ‘Nish to Port Hood

Hello from Cape Breton! As I write, there is a live fiddler playing somewhere in the background. I am being completely serious, there’s a concert within a few hundred meters of me.

On a bike trip, problems tend to be immediate and tangible. About 5 kms into today’s ride my chain fell off the ring. I looked down and realized the middle ring has a good 1/4 inch warp in it. Plus the entire front rings assembly is loose. So the warp throws the chain off and the looseness allows enough space for the chain to get stuck in between cogs. This effectively means I can only use the big ring which is the highest gears. Shit. Good thing today was fairly flat.

The first ~60 km today was multi lane trans Canada highway. Not great but truthfully not awful either. I just put my head down and grinded it out. I didn’t stop except to manually put my chain where it needed to be.

Then I crossed the Canso causeway and was suddenly in Cape Breton. Google told me to turn immediately and I knew that meant bike trail! Except not quite.

3 kilometers of pushing my damn bike over big rocks and soft sand. For the record, it is vastly more work to push a loaded bike than to ride one.

But when the trail proper started it was glorious. Hard pack, flat, empty seaside riding for 40 km.

And guess what I found at the end…

I’m now camped 20 feet away from the ocean at sunset sands RV park. I went for a swim before dinner and am 99% sure I saw tons of lobster eyeing my toes as I did so.

100 kms on the button today. Oh, and the park owner lent me a piece of firewood to beat my chainring flat again. I think it worked. We shall see.

Tomorrow looks like rain. Though I’d hate to use it, I have a major shortcut to camp if it is really wet and nasty.