Day 15, May 21 2011 Charlottetown to Confederation Bridge 45km
21 May
Blueberry pancakes!
After breakfast graciously cooked by Debbie, we headed back to the high school I finished at yesterday. I started out on my own while Mike and Serge headed out to find somewhere to empty our RV waste. It was drizzling at the start and raining hard by 5km. Another shortcut by Google maps found me doing what seemed like hill workouts in the mud. Nothing was flat; each steep uphill was followed by a steep downhill. At least it was keeping me warm.
Mike and Serge couldn’t follow me on those roads so after dumping they met me when I came back out onto the paved road. I took a left hand turn, ran 100 metres and missed the right hand turn onto the dirt road I was supposed to take. I continued on another 3 km, and would have continued the remaining 2km after that had a large German Shepherd not decided that I had come far enough along his road. The RV had driven ahead and stopped, waiting for me, and was less than 80 metres away but the dog wouldn’t let me get by. And the RV couldn’t reverse because we were towing Serge’s car. So Mike had to drive ahead to find somewhere to turn around. They ended up having to detach Serge’s car so they could turn around. This took about 20 mins, by which point I had been chased about 800 metres back down the road. It’s too bad I wasn’t carrying my bear spray at the time!
I took out my phone to see where I was and realized I had made a wrong turn so started walking back the way I had come while waiting for Mike and Serge to come back. It was still windy and pouring rain, and by the time they arrived my whole body was shivering.
After the morning run we drove to visit Anne of Green Gables and had tortellini at Cavendish Beach. It was super windy and cold but Cavendish Beach and its red sand was really nice.
The afternoon run started where I should have turned off during the morning run. It was a dirt road and so Serge took the RV ahead to the bridge and mike followed me in the scooter. Mike quickly discovered that the scooter maxed out at 78km/hr downhill and about 35km/hr when going uphill.
The run to Confederation Bridge was mostly downhill, and the only exciting point before the finish was yet another dog encounter. This time, a sort of Rottweiler mutt ran more than 100m across his yard, up the huge embankment on the side of the road, and tried to cross traffic to get at me. I hopped on the back of the scooter and we blew past him. Soon after I was at Confederation Bridge.
Instead of immediately driving across, we headed back to Charlottetown so I could get fitted for a suit for a friend’s wedding, and then bought a new quilt that was a little less cardboard than my previous one. No cartoon characters unfortunately but bright coloured stripes.
We stopped just before Confederation Bridge to fill up with gas after going over 80km with the low fuel light on. Serge was sure we were going to run out before we made it but Mike and I had faith. We filled up at the Irving station and bought a copy of the Charlottetown Guardian with a photo of me running on the front page. Mike put the paper down with my picture facing up on the counter and asked the lady behind the cash register if she recognized the guy in the photo. After a long look she replied "Nope, he's not from around here." Mike asked if it was easy to make the front page to which she replied "It is if you're a criminal, that's who's usually on the front page. If you go to jail you'll definitely make the front page." Mike pretended to look at the photo and said "what if you were raising money for charity, would that get you on the front page?" She replied "Maybe, but you'd have to raise a lot of money, probably $1,000!" Awesome!
We stopped just before Confederation Bridge to fill up with gas after going over 80km with the low fuel light on. Serge was sure we were going to run out before we made it but Mike and I had faith. We filled up at the Irving station and bought a copy of the Charlottetown Guardian with a photo of me running on the front page. Mike put the paper down with my picture facing up on the counter and asked the lady behind the cash register if she recognized the guy in the photo. After a long look she replied "Nope, he's not from around here." Mike asked if it was easy to make the front page to which she replied "It is if you're a criminal, that's who's usually on the front page. If you go to jail you'll definitely make the front page." Mike pretended to look at the photo and said "what if you were raising money for charity, would that get you on the front page?" She replied "Maybe, but you'd have to raise a lot of money, probably $1,000!" Awesome!
Driving across Confederation Bridge just at sunset was pretty cool, all 13km of it. We immediately pulled off the road in New Brunswick and spent the night, our last with Serge, in the Visitor Information Centre parking lot.
Tomorrow we begin New Brunswick!
