First day: commuting to Canada

Saint Albans, Vermont wasn’t our first choice of starting point. Given our druthers, we would already be in Montreal, but as the train gods were not on our side, we’re making the most of it.

We eat breakfast at a little cafe in Main Street, Saint Albans. The town is only small – population some 7,000 – but our little cafe is hopping with the local coffee afficionados, business people, and the odd, well, odd-person. A stringy-haired bearded man taps away at his computer, getting up occasionally to offer opinion, and a man who has the look of the mild-faced rural redneck who goes just a bit mad in a Stephen King movie slides in, walking kind of straight-legged, leading from his skinny hips in a silly walk variation.

Today we ride through northern Vermont countryside. It’s hot and humid, and we have rain chasing us, so we make haste, stopping only for essentials, like a maple-flavoured creemee ice-cream (the local soft-serve), a brief visit to the historic train station at Rouses Point, and the very important border crossing. We are interrogated ever so nicely by a rather handsome young border guard whose North American accent is sweetened by a French lilt.

From the border it is heads down, bums up for the last 25km. We are lucky that it is a straight, flat, smooth road so the going is easy. The rain catches us though, and we arrive at the none-too-fetching Motel Montgolfier rather wet and steamy.

Fortunately the motel is the type that is better on the inside. It also has special little rooms just for bikes –
quite sensible really, otherwise they’d have dirty dripping bikes messing up their lovely renovated rooms.

We are a few kilometres south of Saint Jean sur Richelieu and as there isn’t much around in the way of food, we hoof it into town, which is very, very quiet on a Monday night, with most restaurants closed. After a beer at a brewery alongside the river, we head back to a pizza restaurant (because it is open) and luck out that it is more than just pizza. Last night’s brown food is still sitting heavy, and pizza is not so appealing today.

We’ve made our share of mistakes on first days, mostly because we’ve taken on more than we can handle, distance-wise or climbing-wise, or a bit of both. Today’s ride was more than we needed for a first day, but thanks to Vermont and Quebec being relatively flat in this area, it was OK.

Stats for today:

• Distance: 77.6km
• Climb: 148m
• Average speed: 22.5km/h
• Average temperature: 26C
• Moving time: 3:27:20
• See our ride on Strava

The beer picture

At the end of a day’s ride, our tradition is to enjoy a beer, and to photograph it for posterity. Today’s beer came from a store just across the road from our motel. The photograph was taken just outside our room and features Neil with our two cans of mass-produced brew.

Along the way today: