Back in NYC,

All in all, my bicycle tour was a success! I had a great time, met lots of cool people, went to new places, drunk a little too much, ate lots of good food, partied, rode my bike, and did it again the next day! As Marco put it, we were like rockstars without a band!

picture: me and my bike(in a box) waiting for the bus to the airport.

Here is a brief write up of the trip broken up into places we stayed, no real need to write up on the first two days because all we did those days was sleep eat and ride our bikes, actually the first three days were some of the longest of the trip. I’m going to go right ahead and be a self serving douchebag by giving Kye, Johnny, and I pats on the back for making it to Montreal Canada in three days at a distance of ~400 miles.

picture: outside the first bar we went to in Montreal

Montreal, this was a cool laid back city, though there was a slight language barrier as French is the first language spoken there, but since many people also know English, it wasn’t too much of a problem. We arrived at a bar after a long ride up from Burlington Vermont. The bar was a popular messenger hangout and we were greeted by a bunch of locals there as well as people that traveled in for the bike ride to Toronto, some of which were familiar faces from the NYC scene. Long story short I met lots of cool new people during the two days I spent there including France, and hung out at a few bars, went to a party, and took part in a race, and a scavenger hunt.

Picture: this is Keven from Boston, he fractured a rib during a bike accident in Montreal and still did the ride to Toronto, he's in his fifties and is tougher than you and I!

Picture: the group in Montreal taking a picture before saying bye to some of the people we hung out with during the time we spent there.

Campsite about 50 miles outside of Montreal. We left Montreal at about 5pm, why so late, I don’t know, maybe secretly we didn’t want to leave. Now we’re in a group of about 15, all with the intent to ride to Toronto for the Messenger worlds, and we also have a support vehicle, thanks to Austin, from NYC. We didn’t get to the campsite until about 9pm, not many of us had lights on our bikes, and let me say when it gets dark outside the city, it really gets dark! Camping sucked, because I didn’t have a tent! I wasn’t the only one, so myself and four other guys slept under a tarp we tied around a few trees. I didn’t get any sleep as I spent all night swatting away mosquitoes and other bugs that wanted to eat my ass alive, and it was so hot and humid that I couldn’t just bury myself in my sleeping bag to escape the torture. Worse camping experience ever!


Ottawa (the capital of Canada), wasn’t as cool as Montreal. We only stayed one night, but we did go to a bar there and met some nice people. This was a side trip away from the route planed by the main group, so it was only Kye, Johnny, Marco, and I. One thing to note about Ottawa was that the alcohol situation sucks, actually this is true for all of Canada. I don’t drink much anyways, but when I’m on vacation or occasionally on the weekends, I tend to let loose. Anyways, in Ontario, you can’t buy alcohol at any ol’ corner store like you can here in NYC, if you don't want to go to a bar, you have to go to a store called, you guessed it “The Beer Store” and the beer store is only open till 9pm during the week on average, and I was told it closes even earlier during the weekends. Also Alcohol is generally more expensive in all of Canada, although I don’t know all of the details, I was told that It has something to do with government taxes. So for instance at the bar we went to, I paid $4.25 for a glass of pbr on tap, where as it probably would have cost me $2.00(maybe 2 and some change) here in NYC, and that was supposed to be one of their cheap beers...sheesh!

Prince Edward, Ontario. First I would like to say that the ride from Ottawa to Prince Edward was a killer, not because it was the longest day of riding (although close @ ~140 miles), but because we were working on only a few hours of sleep. By the time we got to Prince Edward to meet up with the larger group, we were all dead tired and looked like we had been through battle. Luckily we had a place to stay, thanks to the cool bike shop owners we met in P.E. They let us (all 15) crash in their barn which they used to store bikes. There wasn’t much room for sleeping, I was on floor space cramped between a bunch of bikes, but I was happy to be indoors.

Campsite in Oshawa, Ontario. With about 90 something miles of riding, this was an easy day of riding compared to the previous one. I got two flats during this ride, on the second flat, Kym (the only girl on the ride) stopped to help me out by offering an inner tube. We rode together for the rest of the ride, and ended up getting a little loss, but between you and me, I didn’t mind because there are far worst things then getting lost with Kym ;)
The camping was so much better than the first night of camping, the temperature was cooler and there were not many mosquitoes out, I slept like a baby under the tarp and in my sleeping bag, poormans camping at it’s best!