Written by Dave

Day 66 – August 2 – 66 Miles, 1,188 feet climbing (Blenheim, ON CA to St Thomas)

Back when Nancy and I first started bicycle touring, to keep her keen to ride the next day, we came up with the wet feet rule. That is, if your feet are wet at the end of the day, you have to find an indoor place to sleep that night (i.e. not camp in the rain). We didn’t have much money back then but it seemed like a good rule to keep Nancy going on crazy adventures with me. Some of the places we stayed have been less fancy than others – abandoned restaurants, hotels and police stations, chicken houses, church sanctuaries, etc.

Well, no prizes for guessing what happened on our ride today…

Yes our feet got wet. In fact, by noon we’d been caught in three massive downpours and soaked to the bone three times. In between the downpours we had some sun and even some dry roads. After the first two downpours it almost seemed like our feet may have dried out, kind of. After the third downpour, nope, not even close. In fact, after the three drenchings, I’m not even sure that our shoes will be dry by tomorrow morning.

We were not surprised by the downpours as its pretty flat our here in Southern Ontario. You can see the clouds and banks of rain off in the distance long before you reach them. You could stop to try avoiding them but it is hard to tell how fast they are moving and which direction. Plus, unlike places like Malaysia and Thailand, where there are bus stops scattered everywhere, there is really nothing out here that would provide shelter. If you stop and the storm finds you, you’re just going to get wet.

It was probably close to 70 degrees when we left Blenheim and it clearly never got any cooler so there was little risk of getting cold from the rain. The biggest worry honestly, was not riding in the spray of the person in front of you. Today would have been a good day for mudguards but it’s not as though you’d be staying dry anyway. Some of the showers were virtual walls of water. Just keep riding and hope you can bust out the far side of the storm before the roads flood. It was that kind of day.

We finished up our third downpour right on the edge of Port Stanley. We stopped to check our maps under the awning of the Community Center. They were having some sort of disaster reaction team meeting there but it was weird as there were vests, phones, radios, binders and paperwork scattered about, but there were no people (perhaps attending to some disaster?). Too bad, we could have used some advice, if not help, at that point.

We decided to head to town for lunch and stopped at a restaurant called the Breakfast Place. We made puddles on their floor but they weren’t busy and didn’t seem to mind. While eating we made the team decision to re-route up to a hotel in the town of St Thomas. This made today a little shorter and tomorrows ride a little longer but there are very few options down on the lakeshore. We’ve been surprised how little development there is along the shores of Lake Erie – very few tourist towns and no obvious signs of development.

We’ve ended up in the Comfort Inn on the east side of St Thomas. The rooms are pretty nice and they have a good brekkie spread for us in the morning. We cleaned the bikes, oiled the chains, wiped down all the bags before we moved our mess into the rooms. It’s not raining now but there are some dark clouds on the horizon. If you happen to drive by the hotel, you can easily spot our rooms by the three pairs of shoes, with liners removed, sitting out on our patios. Everything should be dry by the morning – I hope.

In Michigan and now in Ontario, we’ve noticed that a good number of the hotel staff are from India. When we booked this hotel we debated getting one closer to town. The hotel we are in was cheaper but further from town. Turns out that the other option was not much better, we rode past it on the way here. Which brings me to the India comments – I asked the two young Indian chaps working the front desk where to get the best Indian food in town. They laughed, both of them said that Indian food here is nothing like what their mums make, but that The Clay Oven did OK. Best of all, The Clay Oven delivers via UberEats. Chris took a look at their menu and is happy to go in with us on an order – I think that means that we can now call him 100% man.

Tomorrow we have about 79 miles to ride to get back on schedule – we are heading for the Peacock Point area and a provincial park. The forecast is better, though not rain free. Fingers crossed for no wet feet tomorrow.