August 31, 2015
A Classic Pareto Day: Day 90 - Springdale to Grand Falls - Windsor
We cycled about 100 km today. The first 20 were very very picturesque as we worked our way from Springdale around Green Bay to South Brook.
The rest of the 80 km's distinguished themselves by just being there. It wasn't bad riding, just a bit boring along the TCH. The road was in decent shape, nice shoulders, slightly overcast and just warm enough to cycle without a jacket. Nothing to complain about, but nothing to see either.
That pretty much demonstates the Pareto Principle, 20% of the day delivers the majority of the value.
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It's kind of fitting that the day ended in Grand Falls - Windsor, which bills itself as being "Perfectly Centred".
Less charitable cynics would rephrase it as "In The Middle of Nowhere", but that's not really very nice. It is in the middle of Newfoundland and that is not Nowhere.
We continue to really like this place, more each day in fact. However it is true that the best parts are on or near the coast, and that wasn't today.
We got another early start and made good time again today's. We were travelling more or less south all day, and the winds had shifted to the south which meant a moderate headwind for most of the day. The forecast called for the winds to increase to 20 - 40 km/hr by mid afternoon but that didn't happen. We continue to be really lucky with the weather. At some point will the weather gods deal is a heavy body blow like all the other folks we know have experienced here in Newfoundland?
A few pics from this morning around Green Bay, and one quite important roadside marker we saw.... The 500 km marker on the TCH! Not much further to go and that's spurring mixed emotions, but we'll wallow around in that pool more over the next few days.
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Song of the Day:
Blue Collar by BTO
This song fit today. We started the day at Timmies in Springdale at 7 am.
Like every other small town Tim's in Canada in the early morning, there was a table of older guys (about our age or a little older) shooting the breeze. Some looked retired, others looked like they would be heading off to work, driving a truck, doing construction, maybe fishing.
They were the same as all the other guys we saw all across the country but for one thing. They were Newfoundlanders so they didn't keep the conversation to themselves. We were drawn into it and were a big part of it. "That bikes got a belt, do you carry a spare? What do you have to do to maintain it? How far are you going? When did you start? If you're going through Badger there's a good place for fish & chips just as you enter town......Danny, the Tim Horton's owner let us know that if we had any trouble on the road that we could give him a call and he'd be out to help us"
We've had conversations with lots of other folks in truck stops and Timmies across the country, Saskatchewan was really good for this, but these Newfoundlanders take it to a new level. And that's good.
So Randy Bachman and Fred Turner’s cool little number goes out to all the Newfoundland working folk!
No historic monument today ...
Today's ride: 103 km (64 miles)
Total: 8,294 km (5,151 miles)
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