July 17, 2004

The following is a transcript of the notes I made on July 15, the first day of my trek across Southern Ontario:

12 PM — Stratford warms me up and gives me coffee. I reached the city drenched to the bone shivering madly.

The rain started as soon as I left Kitchener; the wind began howling much earlier. I spent the next three hours struggling up monstrous hills with the wind in my face and the rain on my back, cursing my own stupidity.

"That’s what you get for leaving her," I muttered.

The journey could not have started any worse: rain, wind, hills, and breaks that didn’t work. The freshly fertilized fields smell like diarrhea in the rain. The only thing in my favour is that the load on my back is somewhat lighter — in the morning I decided to leave my warm clothes behind (nobody expects to freeze in July).

Thus, I spent two hours in Stratford trying to dry myself, and when I came out into the street I was still shivering, and the rain continued to fall.

2 PM — The sound of cows in heat is the most desperate and honest sound in the world. It’s no longer raining and I stopped near a field to eat a sandwich. A bull moved away from the cows and started moaning for me, longing shaking his body. For a moment I wanted to cross the fence separating us, but instead I explained to him the whole Martha thing and left him broken hearted.

5 PM — These are the sort of winds that would blow you over while standing. Trying to maintain balance on a bicycle wile cars zoom by at 110 km/h is goddamn suicidal.

7 PM — The sun came up at some point during the day and I stopped shivering. I even sat in the middle of a field for an hour to dry my feet. But the winds continued to blow from the North, and when I looked I saw they where bringing clouds full of rain.

That’s when I panicked. I still had nearly an hour left to reach my campsite and I could already taste the rain in the air. The winds blow cold mist in my face. I dreaded getting drenched again after all that effort to dry myself; I dreaded shivering again.

So I picked up the pace to reach the camp site that was too far to reach, the mist intensifying and the wind blowing me into the road. I was a desperate creature looking for dryness and safety.

The sign was completely unexpected: "camping — 3 km South." So I turned my bike around and the wind pushed me towards the campsite while I pedaled madly, droplets of rain landing on my neck. 3 km seemed too much.

I nearly cried when I saw the camping sign, and set up my tent after much swearing just as the rain started. I managed to remain reasonably dry. And now, sleep!