76 kms
It was up, out the door and in front of the TV cameras this morning. At one point I would have spent some time on my hair and face for that kind of engagement, and I definitely would have selected my most flattering outfit, but these days I'm lucky if I'm dressed at all at that hour of the morning, and as for hair and make-up... well, I have to trust that people understand.
Andrew did the bulk of the speaking, but I was lucky enough to get a spot alongside Max. He normally never shuts up, but understandably, put a camera in front of him and he a) goes mute, b) turns into a total goof, or c) refuses to participate. This morning we got 'a', followed by 'c', then a touch of 'b'. When I was speaking he was playing with the microphone to create an unusable rustling sound, so I had to repeat my spiel a few times. It sounded natural the first time round, but by the third time, not so much. My best hope now is that nobody I know sees it.
After the filming was over, feeling confident in our ability to get the MBR show on the road, Andrew took off and I took Max and Isla to breakfast. We have been really lucky with our hotels on this trip, getting free or drastically reduced rooms in almost every town along the way, and in Cobourg we had a nice restaurant connected to our hotel where we had breakfast. After ordering his Rice Crispies, it became clear that Max was pretty smitten with our waitress, who was definitely going over and above to deliver good service. After completing the 'Kiddie Sudoku' on his placemat, he said, 'she's a really nice person, isn't she mum'. Good judge of character my boy.
We headed back to our room, feeling relatively calm, and then came the text from Andrew. "I've broken a spoke." Plans to pack up our room went out the window, and I jumped on the phone to try to find a bicycle repair shop en route. A super helpful guy tried hard to give me a lead, but all roads led to nowhere and before I knew it, it was time to check out and we still had nothing lined up. We drove to Newcastle, today's halfway point and a beautiful spot on the lake, but instead of our usual picnic, today we loaded the bike into the van and headed into Bowmanville to the nearest bike shop we could find.
Unfortunately, we were unable to find a replacement spoke, so the decision was made to ride on. The wheel was still true, and our feeling was that it would hold for the rest of the journey. Also, and perhaps primarily, we had no choice! We got back on the road and Andrew pressed on to meet up with yet another fire department on the road in Oshawa. He and Max were escorted across town for about 5kms by another friendly fire fighting crew, before parting ways and heading on to our hotel in Whitby.
So despite finding our feet as far as routine goes, there is never a dull moment on this road trip and you never know what's around the corner. Tomorrow we ride on to Toronto where there are some exciting plans afoot. Stay tuned!