Lessons learned from my first big bike trip

Over the many kilometers traveled in Eastern Canada in the last five weeks I pondered some of the lessons/truths I learned along the way.

Traffic

Most motorists don't seem to know how to pass cyclists on the road. 

Two out of ten do it right by gently shifting over to the left so their left wheels are on or just left of the centreline and maintaining their speed or, even better, taking their foot off the gas while passing.

Seven out of ten move too far to the left all the way into the opposing traffic's lane and usually accelerating so that when they find traffic coming the other way they have to wrench their vehicle back over to the right often ending up closer to the cyclist than if they had just stayed in the lane going straight.

One out of ten don't give a shit and just keep driving no matter how close they pass the cyclist.

Trucks, especially dump trucks, can be hard on the nerves just by their size and noise but the drivers are professionals and usually do the right thing. 

Once you get use to the proximity and noise of the trucks, they can actually be a bonus sometimes because the air they draw after them can pull you along for a certain amount of time. I especially appreciated this when bucking a head wind all day.

When riding on the road, a mirror becomes an essential tool to allow you to see if traffic is coming and whether it is moving over for you or whether you have to haul over to the right (if you can) to get out of the way.

I also put on my little bike lights (MEC has these great little lights for $10 that fit on the bike with an integral silicone strap and recharge with a USB plug) in the flashing mode whenever I was on a road to increase my visibility to motorists. I don't know if it made a difference but it made me feel better.

Truck traffic seemed to die off quite a bit on the weekends. I cycled through the Matapedia Valley on a Friday and a Saturday. There was a lot less traffic on the Saturday, which allowed me to enjoy the nice scenery even more.

If you can ride earlier in the morning, you will usually get less traffic, especially on the weekends.

Every town, no matter how small, has a rush hour and people drive like mad at these times. 

Not to stereotype people but my experience was that the biggest assholes tended to be in pickup trucks. Not sure if it is the redneck factor or what but that is what I found on this trip.

But my butt!

There is no way around it, your butt is going to hurt. If you are spending five, six or seven hours on your bike saddle it is going to get painful at times.

I finally got use to my bike saddle after a thousand kilometers and doing some minor adjustments to the positioning. Before the trip, I had even bought another saddle in the hope of finding a more comfortable one. I tried it for one ride and then went back to the original one. Make sure you've tried adjusting your saddle position before expending a lot of needless funds looking for the impossible ideal.

My main suggestion is don't squirm. If you squirm around on your saddle trying to find the best position you are going to be rubbing your butt against the chamois or whatever the material of the shorts you are wearing and the skin is going to get irritated, which is just going to make things worse.

I found the best thing to do is stand up in the pedals briefly and then sit back down to try to find the most comfortable spot on the saddle. If you don't find it the first time, stand up again and reposition. It might take awhile but you'll be giving your butt a break in the mean time and you won't be rubbing the skin across the material.

Make butt cream your friend. I never used a special cream before this trip but I figured I would give it a try. I got some Assos chamois cream off Amazon ($33) and the tub lasted for the whole trip. I don't know if I absolutely needed it but I used it religiously every day and I didn't have any skin irritation problems the whole trip so I'm not sorry I expended the funds.

To cleat or not to cleat, that is the question

Up until last fall I had never used biking shoes with cleats because I was worried about knee pain.

I finally broke down when I bought my Surly and decided to try cleats and SPD pedals. 

It took awhile and I had to play with the positioning of the cleats to get them right but it was the best choice for me to go with the cleats for this trip.

I had read numerous blogs where some had said it wasn't worth it to have special shoes and others had said you absolutely needed to have shoes with cleats.

I did do some short days on the trip with my regular running shoes but I was always glad when I put the cleats back on. For me, the efficiency gained with the shoes cleated in made a world of difference over a long day.

I am a convert.

Take Five

You are going to be riding many hours, day in and day out, so it doesn't make any sense to try and be a martyr by staying on the bike hour after hour. 

I was amazed at how refreshing it was to just stop and get off the bike for five minutes. Take a drink, walk around, stretch. 

Most often, the excuse was to stop and take a picture but the break was the main reason.

Blame it on the Rain

I admit I cheaped out a bit on the rain gear going with a very basic jacket, pants and no gaiters for my shoes.

For my helmet, I used the trick a hotel in St-Jean-sur-Richilieu gave me last year by using a shower cap, which worked perfectly well.

I had to bike through some rain during the trip but nothing torrential. There was only one day when I had to bike through rain the whole day.

In future, I will get a better quality jacket that is also breathable. I will also get some gaiters to protect my shoes as it was awful feeling the water squish through my toes with every pedal stroke.

Personally, I found rain pants to be a waste. I just ended up soaked in my own sweat instead of rain. It was more comfortable just wearing my bike tights without the rain pants.

For my bike panniers, I went with good quality waterproof Arkels that are made in Quebec. They are a bit heavy but worked perfectly for the trip and kept my gear dry.

One suggestion, though, is that it is a good idea to take your stuff out of the bags at the end of the day and let things air out. Chances are that not everything in your bags will be perfectly dry if you've been riding in the rain so the moisture will stay in the bags because they are waterproof. 

I got lazy a couple of days and kept most things in the bike bags in the hotel. Then when I took something out a couple of days later it was a bit funky.

I would suggest keeping a microfibre cloth in your rain jacket. It doesn't weigh anything and I used it each time I stopped to wipe my glasses before starting off again. It seemed to make the rain not so bad just by the fact of having clear glasses for a couple of minutes.

And remember to drink. It seems counter intuitive to drink liquids when you are being pummeled by rain so I had to keep reminding myself to drink on the rainy days. 

The path not taken

Beware of bike paths if you are not sure of their condition. 

My experience over this trip was that bike paths in built up areas tended to be in good condition because they got a fair amount of use by residents. However, the farther you got away from a town or city the more likelihood that a bike path was not going to be well maintained or a poor compromise of rough gravel roads or piggybacked onto a hiking trail or just plain awful unless it was a former rail line converted to a rail trail.

If in doubt, stick with the road.

And don't trust a Route Verte sign or Sentier NB Trail because that isn't a guarantee of a certain standard throughout. Each section is maintained by the respective municipality so is subject to their interest in maintaining the paths. The Confederation Trail on PEI, however, was an exception with a high standard of trail maintenance throughout.

Cool, clear water

Plain water is great but it isn't enough to get you through the whole day. If you are sweating, you need to replace the salts and other minerals you are losing.

I didn't buy any fancy bottles for the trip. I would just use Gatorade bottles for three or four days and then replace them. I bought a can of powdered Gatorade as well for the trip as I find the full strength drink too sweet so I make up my own about half strength once the bottled stuff is gone. 

I had a bottle of plain water and then another of Gatorade to start each day. I was pretty lucky not to run into any issues getting water but it was June and not too hot so I wasn't drinking constantly. Still, every chance I had to top up the bottles I did so because there was the odd time when I expected to find a source of water and none was to be found. Once I had to buy a litre of water from a store as that was the only option.

Maps

I took along paper maps but I also had mapped out the trip with daily routes via a mapping program on my phone. I found it helped to plan out the trip and it also was helpful sometimes on the road to keep me from heading too far in the wrong direction.

I would start the program at the start of the day and then blank the screen to save on the battery. I tried running one day with the screen on all the time but it killed the battery before getting to the destination. Plus, you don't need to refer to the map constantly.

I used MapMyRide, which worked pretty well though you need cell coverage to get all the functions and detail on the maps. One nice feature was that once I uploaded my day's ride to the web anyone who was a friend on the site could see where I had travelled and ended up each day.

I didn't have cell coverage in certain areas of the trip so I also downloaded an OpenStreetMap app that had offline maps. I was able to export my routes from MapMyRide and import them into the OSM app so I would have a backup. In the end, I didn't use the OSM app very much but it was nice to have a backup.

The End

I'm sure there are other things I thought of on the road but I can't remember them now.

I do remember that I was starting to think about my next trip before I had finished this one so I took it as a positive sign this was for me.