St. Catharines and Niagara Falls

Posted by: Arin

There's not too much to say about St. Catharines other than my friend Donnie is a great host. We showed up sopping wet at his doorstep to an amazing dinner he made for us (Indian lentil curry with rice an naan). I hadn't seen him for a while so it was great to hang out and talk.

The next morning he made us pancakes and we ended up hanging out until around 3pm. I already miss him. We knew we didn't have too much of a ride ahead of us and in 15-20 miles we had made it to Niagara Falls! The falls were amazing, the town around them not so much.

After waiting in line for customs, we had a quick chat with the officer and were off through more rain to Buffalo.

Toronto

Posted by: Arin

One thing that made Toronto was having amazing hosts. My aunt and uncle were incredible to us, from feeding us amazing food to giving us hot tips on where to go and check out. Too many things happened while we were there, so I'll just post some photos and caption them underneath.

Most of our time was spent skating around the city. Skateboards are really an amazing way of transportation in an urban environment, and provide a fun thing to do any chance you can spot a nice curb or a cool spot. Even Spiderman likes to longboard!

Toronto was one of the few times we got to strip all the stuff off of our bikes and cruise around. On this day, we rode all the way out to the beach, then north to a skatepark a little out of town. 

This was the only show we went to on the whole trip. It was a punk show that my cousin told us about. Some pretty cool bands played and we were able to walk there from my aunt and uncle's place. While out getting some water, we saw a car on fire!

Here's a crazy one. My uncle runs this school out of a rec center. The whole school is based on skateboarding and is amazing, but that's not the point here. Every year, the rec center fills the pool with fresh water and a bunch of fish and lets inner city kids come in and try fishing. It's kind of bizarre but they filet the fish for the kids and let them take food home to their family. Kind of a cool idea, albeit a little cruel to the fish. I'm sure it's not much worse than the farm they came from though.

My aunt and uncle recently got a little cottage on an island, and having a chance to go out there was definitely a highlight. We got to swim, kayak, canoe, and drink beers all day! What more could you ask for?

We had a blast spending a whole week in Toronto, and I can't wait for my next time back. Here's a few more pics from the week.

We did it!

Posted by: Arin

If you've been following the Instagram, you'll have already seen that we made it into NYC yesterday afternoon.

This has been the trip of a lifetime and I want to thank each and every one of you for doing anything to support us, even if it's just looking at our pictures. I know this last month I've been lagging on writing anything but stay posted and you'll be in for some more content. 

I've decided that you guys have heard enough full reports, so this blog will become an outlet for smaller stories, as well as pictures and maybe other creative outlets I want to use. Thank you guys again! Now go out and do something amazing for yourself.

London

Posted by: Arin

London was interesting because of the group of people we get ourselves involved with, specifically park dwellers. 

With darkness coming in and mosquitos galore, we decided to turn to warm showers for a second time. Unfortunately, the only guy who even answered his phone was in Iceland so that plan was out the window. Fortunately we met a guy on a bike in the park. He was a super high energy, 22-year-old dude who was super down to let us crash at his place. We hung out in the park with him and some of his friends before adjourning back to his place and (at his insistence) watching Man of Steel. 

The next day we decided to stay and check out London because it was raining. We ended up back at the park numerous times. Our host had a bunch of friends always hanging out there and he only lived two blocks away so that made a lot of sense. One of the guys we met there was gnarly! He's a big hitchhiker and has traveled that way all the way across Canada, as well as walked all the way to Toronto. It's always cool meeting fellow travelers, and it's funny hearing a guy like that say he couldn't do what we do. I don't know if I could do what he does...

Days 58-59: Ann Arbor to Fenton to Sombra (Canada!)

Posted by: Arin

After getting ready in the morning, we headed to a little hole in the wall diner with one of the people from the house. It was rad, they had this thing called hippy hash that was full of feta cheese, vegetables, and tempeh. It was ideal for a vegetarian like me.

Our initial plan was to head into Detroit and take the bridge over to Canada into Windsor, but after we did some research we found that there is no way into Canada on a bike from Detroit. You can't ride over the bridge, you can't take the bus with your bike, and you can't take the ferry over either. We decided to head north to Flint and then east to Port Huron. We knew the blue water bridge was there and we wouldn't be able to ride over it, but we saw that the blue water ferry does take bikes. 

Starting to ride north was not great. The road that we thought we could take north turned out to be a major highway with no bikes allowed, so we improvised a route on the fly using our phone maps. It was hilly! Up and down and up and down. Some of the hills were close to a 20% grade, I even used my smallest 34/36 gear. After a while we pulled into a town called Fenton to get some groceries and eat dinner. We ended up making some sandwiches outside the grocery store and headed up the road. 

I spotted a credit union and decided to get some cash out. It was starting to get dark and there was a church across the street that had a good place to camp out back. We still had a little bit of time so we headed back to an ice cream place we had seen a little earlier to get some ice cream and play mini golf. I got two hole in ones and got two free mini golf passes out of it! We would have preferred a refund, but it was nice to give them away to some random people. 

*side story* I left my ATM card in the ATM and was left moneyless aside from the cash I had gotten out! The bank opened at 9am so I was determined to go in and try to get it back the next day.

The next morning we went into the bank. I explained what had happened and the situation and they showed me my card. The only thing was that they couldn't give it to me until they talked to my bank, which didn't open for another 2.5 hours. I should have saved those mini golf passes... We ended up wasting some time at a little restaurant drinking water and coffee and went back to the bank at noon. I got my card back! How crazy is that? I was stoked.

After we left the bank, I decided to look exactly where the ferry was so we could plan the best route. It turns out the blue water ferry isn't next to the blue water bridge. You know what? It was in Marine City, which is actually closer to Ann Arbor than it is to Fenton. We had spent an entire day and a half getting further away from where we needed to be. We then proceeded to ride 80-85 miles between 1 and 7pm, making it all the way to Marine City.

The ferry was easy to find and we ended up only paying one dollar for both of us to get over because the guy gave us too much change (nice). We were finally in Canada!

We didn't really know what to do or where to go once we got into the country, so we started heading north. After maybe 3-4 miles we came upon a campsite. We were tired and willing to pay a reasonable amount of money to camp there for the night. The only thing was, the campsite cost an unreasonable amount of money. It was 30+ dollars for two people on bikes. As we were leaving we started talking to some people camping there in rv's. They were super nice and let us camp on their site for the night! After we made some dinner we passed out hard.

Days 55-57: Edwardsburg to Ann Arbor

Posted by: Arin

Waking up in the graveyard, we were both covered in mosquito bites. That day off had been good to us, but the bugs hadn't been so much. We could tell right off the bat that the sun wasn't burning down as hard as it had been the day prior. In fact, rain was in the forecast.

We hadn't left our spot the whole day before, and being in the middle of farmland we were running pretty low on food. Maybe 12-15 miles in we spotted a sign for a little lakeside community that had a diner called George's Cafe. We stopped in for some breakfast and delicious cinnamon rolls. A few miles after getting back on the road, we ran into a couple other guys on a tour from Cleveland to Lake Michigan. They had big backpacks on and we stopped to chat for a while. I think their names were Eric and Kennedy. All the while the weather crept in from behind us. Those guys were heading right into the storm. We parted ways and soon after started feeling some rain.

You know you've been touring for a while when you would rather be in the rain than the sun. However, the rain we had was sporadic and the sun kept poking out. There wasn't even a point to wearing sunscreen and I could feel my skin heating up every time the sun came out. Our main stop for the day was in Sturges, the location of the biggest Harley meetup in the country. It was funny that there was a huge bike lane through the town. By the time we got out of there, the shoulder was back to a foot wide.

As it started to get darker, the rain had let up but we still didn't want to camp where we might get rained on. We stopped at a park in Quincy to sleep under a picnic awning. It was wide out in the open but there was nothing else around and some ladies at a donut shop earlier had told us we could probably sleep there. 

What followed was my most miserable night of the trip. We didn't want to set up the tent to not arise suspicion, but there were Mosquitos galore. I tried to sleep under a tarp to protect myself but it was so hot that I was sweating like crazy. I couldn't stay under there so I kept opening it up and closing it so that I could get some air. That way I got the best of both worlds but also the worst. I woke up sweaty with mosquito bites and only maybe four hours of sleep.

We got out of there early, more for my mental health than anything else. The rain had cleared up and we were able to get some good miles in. Our goal was Ann Arbor and we were on track for it until we decided to go swim in a lake. We stopped to get a six pack and took a little detour into Walter Hayes state park. The lake was nice and we swam and chilled for a while before heading out. 

It was starting to get dark but spirits were high. We were still going to make it to Ann Arbor. 

We didn't, but it was ok. We stopped in Saline and made camp in the corner of a park by some baseball fields. We got woken up by guys rolling up to the area with lawn mowers who didn't really care we were there. We got packed up and headed to a little cafe to get pastries and coffee. It was supposed to rain but it looked like things were going to be chill. The cafe was nice and had a cool basement.

It started to drizzle as we left the cafe, and that drizzle soon turned into real rain. Fortunately we were less than ten miles from Ann Arbor. Once we got into town we went straight for a laundromat. Almost all of our clothes were dirty by then. It continued to pour outside, but we were warm and dry in the building.

While we were there I looked up the closest REI. It was three miles back, we had even passed it on the way into town. It was ok though, we rode over there and I was finally able to replace my faulty solar panel. It was still raining pretty hard so we did something we hadn't done for the whole trip: we used warm showers. After skimming through several possible hosts, we decided to call one of them. Someone named Blair answered and he said it was cool if we came over, so we rode across town to the house he lives in.

We didn't expect this, but the house ended up being a sober, vegan, activist, anarcho-punk house (that's the best way I can put it). They were planning a protest against the MRA (men's rights activists) meeting that was going to happen in Detroit soon. I could totally get behind that. We ended up hanging out with them the whole day, going to a thrift store, getting vegetarian Mexican food, and even dumpster diving at a few grocery stores before retiring to bed. It was funny that using warm showers actually yielded us one of the grimier places we've slept, but it was a fun day.

Days 53-54: Michigan City to Edwardsburg

Posted by: Arin

For some reason my posts were showing up out of order and in an attempt to reorganize I deleted this post. Here's the gist of it:

We rode through a lot of country, and couldn't find anywhere to sleep. I spotted a graveyard on the map and after investigating we found the perfect hidden alcove down a hill from the graves. We found out the solar panel had stopped working so we had no electronics.

The next day the sun was intense and the humidity forced a sweat with even the slightest movement. We decided to take the day off and relax in the graveyard. Aside from each other, there was no human interaction all day. The day was spent drawing, playing hackey sack, and napping.