Spike Jones - "Hello Mother, Hello Father"

Hello mother, hello father,
Here I am at Camp Grenada.
Camp is very entertaining,
And they say we'll have some fun if it stops raining!

Spike Jones – “Hello Mother, Hello Father”

Day 46: Alliston – REST DAY
4775kms biked out of total of 7650 kms

It was so nice to wake up in a hotel room rather than a tent this morning..! Having said that, I didn’t sleep particularly well but I think that it was because I had such a full agenda for the day which definitely had to include eating, cleaning my bike, getting caught up on posting my blog, checking out Alliston and showing my Dad a bit of our routine back at the campground. Mom had to go into Toronto so Dad and I made the most of the hotel’s ‘All You Can Eat’ breakfast buffet. Once again, I’m astounded how much I can eat and still be hungry. I think that my Dad was also pretty surprised when I went back for my 3rd helping of pancakes and crunchy bacon and my 3rd glass of orange juice topped off with a giant bowl of fresh fruit… and 3 cups of coffee.

It was a gorgeous clear-blue sky day so we walked from the hotel back to the campground which was about a 5 minute walk – so convenient..! Andrew and Peter and ‘set up’ just outside of the pavilion and were ‘knee deep’ in bike cleaning. Surrounded by oily rags, chain lube, pumps, patches, hoses and brushes they scrubbed furiously and adjusted wheels and chains and rings. I looked on as my bike stood under a tree, still caked with dirt and grease and decided that this would be a perfect time to impress Dad by showing him how much I’d learned so far about bicycle maintenance. Unfortunately Andrew enlightened my Dad with the fact that he pumps up my tires in the morning, reads the map every day, tells me to clean my bike etc. etc. My cover was blown..! I decided to try to salvage what I could of my reputation and wheeled my bike over and started to clean the chain… and then the derailer… and then I took off the squeaky pedal which had been squeeking for the past 3,500 kms… It was actually quite an enjoyable way to spend the morning and my Dad even pulled up his shirt sleeves and helped out..! My bike got a fantastic wash, tune up and was in tip top condition by the time we hung up the rags at around 1pm.

The rest of the afternoon was spent running errands which included stocking up on snacks for Happy Hour and picking up my clean, dry tent (courtesty of Melanie and John!!). At around 4pm during our shopping spree for food a the grocery store the heavens opened and it began to POUR down. I was so happy to have a warm, dry hotel bed to look forward to that evening rather than the wet campsite..! We did pop by the camp so I could introduce Melanie to everyone and by that point it had stopped raining (well, it had stopped TORRENTIALLY raining). There were huge puddles in the campground and some tents had been flooded as they'd unfortunately been set up next to the storm drains. I am certain that there is a Chinese proverb about tents and storm drains somewhere but unfortunately no one told Erik..!

"He who sets up tent next to storm drain will get wet".

That night Mom, Dad, Melanie and I went out for a lovely meal at a 'German / Italian' restaurant to end the rest day in Alliston. I devoured a huge chunk of lasagne and a black forest cake. It certainly felt wierd to be eating with my family and sat around a restaurant table knowing that I'd see them again in a few weeks time. Part of me wanted to return to 'normal life' and the other part of me longed to continue with the journey. It's been a long time since I've really thought about 'home' and post-biking and can certainly imagine that 'real life' will take some getting used to again.