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Bike Touring Journals by Neil Anderson and Sharon Anderson

Partners in Grime

Partners in Grime

Thanksgiving

"On Thanksgiving Day all over America, families sit down to dinner at the same moment -- halftime."
~ Unknown

The sun forgot to get up in the morning. We woke from our cemetery sleep frazzled, feeling a bit dead ourselves. A pool of water, large enough to drown the average sewer rat, lay puddled in one corner of the tent. I recalled the advertising copy on the tent's box.

"Desert dry," I scoffed.

"Maybe it only applies if we camp in the desert?" Sharon grinned. It was heartening to see that someone hadn't lost her sense of humour.

I clambered out of our coffin-like sagging and drooping wet tent. "Holy cow!" I exploded. "Watch your step!" I cautioned my exiting partner. We were all of ten feet from a freshly dug grave. "Stumbling around in the dark last night...," I mumbled, peering wide-eyed into the muddy hole. "I have no idea how I didn't fall in."

Sharon lobbed me a taut smile. "I guess it wasn't your time."

"Yeah," I agreed. "I guess that's true. Besides," I kidded, "I'm way too young to take an extended dirt nap."

"And too handsome," Sharon responded, playing along.

"Why, thank you, dear," I replied. "Like Mother says, 'Live fast, die young, and leave a good-looking corpse.'"

Humming a happy tune, we packed our soggy tent-casket and pedalled off in rayless grey dimness, searching for a restaurant to buoy our spirits.

But, rather than a cheerful environment with petite French maidens scurrying about to care for our every whim, chagrin and disappointment met us instead. Nothing was open in Petite-Matane. All the shops in the next four towns were closed, too. Is it because they're so small? I wondered. We arrived in the larger settlement of Cap-Chat. Every business there was closed as well. "Huh?" I said, mystified. I was beginning to suspect we had overlooked something. "Is today a holiday by any chance?"

Sharon shrugged.

"It's not Thanksgiving, is it?"

"Hmmm," Sharon said, nodding. "That would explain all the hunters we saw yesterday. They must have been out trying to bag goose dinners."

"You know," I said, frowning, "I'm a wee bit worried we're beginning to lose touch with the real world. That's the first time I've ever missed a holiday! Especially Thanksgiving! With all that food, it's one of my favourites."

"All holidays have lots of food," Sharon reminded me.

She was right, but still, it was depressing. The inclement weather, our unknown overseas departure, deadlines looming for getting out of Canada before the snows came to stay. I needed some warm reassuring. And who, I wondered, would help my brothers-in-law eat all those lemon squares? We pedalled on, heads down, feeling homesick, missing loved ones.

The Saint Lawrence River became so wide we couldn't see the opposite bank. The river looked like an ocean. Breakers smashed against a rock retaining wall, splashing up and over the road - and onto us. Sharon's new Gore-Tex jacket did a fabulous job of keeping her dry. Soaked and miserable, I wished I would have parted with a few dollars and bought one, too.

An arctic wind howled from behind, pushing us, speeding us along at 40 kilometres an hour. The quick pace warmed us. The sun came out and our malaise lifted. Life became wonderful again ... even if we weren't gobbling hot roast turkey and savoury pumpkin pie.

A level road swept us along until 20 kilometres before Grande-Vallée. Then our route reared like a snorting stallion on hind legs. "Hey!" Sharon exclaimed. "Who paved this cliff?"

"Understatement," I grunted, and shifted onto my smallest front cog. "I should have gotten a smaller granny gear," I whimpered, my legs feeling like they were about 90-years-old.

Eighteen kilometres of knee-popping, thigh-burning inclines followed. My lungs felt as though a gorilla's hairy arm was down my throat trying to rip the pink wonders out. Then it got worse.

We spent two hours sweating up 15 percent grades, wheezing and panting like a pair of old cart horses with bronchitis. The exertion soaked us. "Look at me," I gasped. "I'm sweatin' like Mike Tyson at a spelling bee."

We pulled off the road into a closed rest area and, with difficulty, dismounted. Hypothermia became a definite possibility - the wind chill pegged the temperature below freezing. I unbungeed a two-litre plastic Coke bottle from my rear rack - I had lugged it 200 kilometres and up 4,880 vertical feet, nearly a mile straight up. "At least it's cold!" I puffed, taking a long chug.

"I think I'm colder," Sharon said. Our feet dragged behind us like frozen clods of dirt. We found a hidden spot to pitch our tent and assembled it with slow uncoordinated fingers. Shivering, we dove inside, fleeing the bitter wind, and pulled our sleeping bags around our shoulders. For 20 minutes we huddled together without speaking - but thinking warm thoughts - until we thawed enough to take out our stove. We lit the WhisperLite cooker inside our tent - actually hoping the fire would increase the air temperature (no danger of asphyxiation with the wind snapping through our much-screened abode). Sharon tore open a box of macaroni and poured it into the boiling water.

"Hey, Thanksgiving dinner in bed," I spouted.

"How romantic."

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