Day 53 Hudson
Ottawa to Hudson, Quebec
Distance: 164 km
August 15, 2006

This morning we all met at the Parliament buildings at 8:15 to have our pictures taken; as usual Lewis and I were the last to leave Carlton, and scrambled to catch up with everyone else so we could also be immortalized with the rest of the TDC in front of our nation’s government HQ.
One of the riders works for National Capital Commission, and organized for us to visit his work around the corner from the Parliament Buildings and have coffee and donuts with the NCC team; they had very kindly put a package together for us, which included maps of Ottawa as well as information about what was happening around town-this was very useful as usually we have no clue what is happening and end up wandering around whatever town, aimlessly hoping to figure out what is going on-and usually don’t, so end up doing laundry and hanging about in internet cafes on our rest days.
The NCC presented us with pins in the shape of the maple leaf made from the old copper roof of the Parliament Buildings-we were all very happy to hold a piece of Canadian history in our hot little hands.

After meeting and greeting with the nice people from the NCC, Bob took us on a route out of Ottawa, and was coincidentally the route on which he rides to and from work daily, and in fact he ended up taking us right past his house.
We also rode past 24 Sussex Drive, and stopped to make faces at the stoic-looking Governor General’s Guards wearing the bear skin hats.
Once we arrived at Bob’s house we couldn’t resist jumping off our bikes and rolling around on his front lawn (very nice and manicured) and had his neighbor take some more pics (our second lot that morning.)
We had a wonderful morning getting a full tour of Bob’s life; his work and work mates, his bike commute to work, and then his house-we all feel very much closer to him at this point.
Too bad we don’t all get to do this.

Since we’d started the ride in such a jocular mood, the rest of the ride seemed to follow suit; for the early part of the day we stayed together-something we never do, and gave the ride a feeling something like a traveling circus, replete with clown and air horns (recently picked up by a couple of riders in retaliation to some of the idiotic motorists.)

We took a ferry which took us right into Quebec, making this our fifth province.
The rest of the ride was very pretty-riding in Quebec has always been a favorite for cyclists due to the scenery.