Day 65 Murray Beach, New Brunswick
St. Louis DeKent to Murray Beach
Distance: 132 km

Day 66 Cornwall, Prince Edward Island
Murray Beach to Cornwall
Distance: 97 km

Day 67 Lower Barney’s River, Nova Scotia
Cornwall to Lower Barney’s River
Distance 132km

Day 68 Wycogomagh, Nova Scotia
Lower Barney’s River to Wycogomach
Distance: 148km

Patience is not a virtue that I am blessed with; I am one of the most impatient of people, I have been told, by many people besides my parents.
These past few days, weeks and months even have been an exercise in forced patience; or it has been more like a foul tasting medicine being forced down my throat.
The riding over the last few days have offered all of the forces to try anyone’s patience, let alone someone who has none to start with.
The elements have all conspired against us; wind, rain, cold temperatures, hills, making a long kilometer day stretch time to such elastic lengths that at times I felt as if I had been banished to a hell where the days never end.
As I mentioned earlier some kilometers tick by, but over the last few days they have been slower coming than trying to pull lead buckets from a bog-they just would not come.
All of my mental games invented over the past few months have not offered any inoculation to the slow crawl of father time…..my mind and legs are ready to stop riding my bike every day!

It seems as if our bodies know that the end is near, and in anticipation have started to act up; knee aches, back aches, everything aches, is it over yet?
As sad as I will be to say goodbye to everyone, and close the door on an incredible journey, my body is anxiously awaiting for the punch line so the book can be closed.

The night we were in Murray Beach we had our last galley duty; with much glee and delight we no longer have to cook for 27 hungry, picky eaters after a long had day on the bike.
We have each taken turns picking a menu and performing the role of head chef, as the other crew member’s work under your instruction; this time was my turn, and it seemed to be a success, as people came for seconds, which is always a good sign.
Telling, is how other people on the team support you when you are spearheading the project; mostly we have all supported each other, but that night we had one member push off when he felt he had done enough, and left the rest of us to do all of the washing up while he went to make a personal call.
We couldn’t believe that anyone’s conscience could justify leaving the team when he pushed off, and it wasn’t the first time, but thankfully was the last as we no longer have to work together!

The good news was that we finally got our driver back; we are not sure what happened, but were very happy to see her when we pulled into camp; as much as we like drivermike, we had become very attached to Megan.
She informed us that Murray Beach had a bit of a skunk problem; the night before a trigger-happy skunk had apparently sprayed the 73 day group’s cooking cart; we cannot imagine what the cooking cart must have done to deserve the squirt, but the cooking area did suffer from that pungent skunky-aroma.

That night we had a fire around camp, and as darkness descended upon the camp, out came the skunks; we had never seen so many-there must have been 4 or 5 of them sniffing around the truck, cooking area and tents.
Most people were in their tents at this point, some with their reading lights on, so when a skunk ventured near the tent for a sniff, we were all squealed like glee-filled school children, shouting at people to turn out their lights.
We were quite terrified/thrilled at the prospect of these funny little animals teetering around our tents.
Poor Aussie-Pete, after the last horrifying experience, emptied their tent of most of its contents and slept in just a sleeping bag with no bed roll.

The following day we were to leave New Brunswick for PEI via the Confederation Bridge; we had to wait for a shuttle bus to take us across as bikes are not allowed on.
Once in PEI, we made our way to Victoria by the Sea (the other Victoria one) where we had heard about a wonderful chocolate shop.
I was amazed at how quickly the landscape again changed once in a new province; PEI has green rolling fields and the typical red, sandy-earth that the famous potatoes are grown in.
I felt as if we’d traveled back in time as we traversed, or at least had been transported to the Scottish countryside with the greenery.
We had lunch at an amazing café that had received a write-up in Canada’s, “Where to Eat.”
Since it was drizzling and cold, we were more so in the mood to eat than we usually are, and continued on to the chocolate shop for some chocolatey-goodies.

We finished the day by visiting Charlottetown, and in the old part and saw the building where the first key meeting on Canadian confederation took place.
While touring through on our bikes, we happened across one of those amphibious ‘Hippo’ touring buses and saw one of our tour members practically hanging out of the thing, waving and yelling to us-that was quite a funny site.
He later told us that he had interrupted the tour when he excitedly leapt from his seat and practically threw himself out of the bus to wave.

The following day we had to catch the ferry over to Nova Scotia; we wanted to catch the 11:00am ferry, as the next one was at 1:00, which would have put us into camp near 6pm.
We had just a few hours to do 67km to reach the ferry; ordinarily the time we had allotted ourselves would have been ample to make the ferry, but we had head-wig and a very hilly course to contend with before we could get there.
I have a phobia against missing transportation vessels (trains, plains, buses, ferries, etc,) so along with Lewis’ paranoia, we rode like the devil was upon us and heaved and pushed our way over the many hills, into the gusty winds to make it in time.
I felt as it we were in a time trial, as Lewis kept yelling out our times at various intervals-we charged our way along and even had time to rescue a wandering beagle who was meandering along the highway; Lewis leapt off his bike, grabbed the beagle, cradling it like a baby, and trotted off towards the only farm house in the area.
The poor dog didn’t know what was happening as it was whisked away and swiftly deposited at the house; they claimed he was theirs, but Lewis reported that woman took a while to remember the dog’s name.
Off we went, a ferry to catch, and made it in plenty of time; half of our group made it and the other half had to wait until the 1:00 ferry, making the day an even longer one for them.

Once on the other side we visited Pictou, where there was a life size replica of the boat that brought over the first of the Scottish immigrants to Nova Scotia.
After that we got a bit lost and added on quite a few km to what was already a tough ride as the terrain is very hilly.
I was exhausted at the end of that day as the wind and cold with the bit of rain just drained me.

The skies of late have been looming over us with a threatening menace to them-we’d had, up until today little sprinkles here and there, but today the skies opened up and let loose.
The worst is not the rain itself, but the water being kicked up from the road by the trucks that whiz by us at mach speed.
The grit and grime from the road interspersed with the water from the road have a knack for finding its way into all the nooks and crannies on your bike and clothing.
It made a difficult day even more so, as at that point I could only look up at the sky, after battling major headwinds for a 150km ride, and ask, “what else you got?”

For me, I find it most disturbing to see the road kill that litters the roads; some beings completely recognizable, and some, not at all; some are so flat and squashed that their DNA is now at one with the asphalt, and there is very little to indicate that this thing was at one time a living, breathing thing.
I mostly try to avert my eyes when passing by them, often at the risk of my own life as I turn my head and weave all over the road to avoid seeing the carnage; unfortunately, this tactic has not saved me from seeing entire raccoon and skunk families who have suffered fatally under the wheels of speeding vehicles-it is very sad to see this, as I can’t help but think that the babies would have come running after the mother to see what happened.
Just as sad, is seeing a few cats that lie in twisted forms on the roadside, my only hope is that they died quickly and did not suffer any.
We only have two more tent-sleeps until the end, it is hard to believe that I will no longer have to pack my bed and house into a wee little bag every morning, and won’t have to find my light, my glasses, take out my earplugs, remove my eye shades, put on my jacket, unzip the tent, put on my shoes, close the tent, open the fly, close the fly, just to pee in the middle of the night!