Day 46 June 21, 2011 Joliette to Montreal 50km
21 Jun
My sister arrives today!
Once again, Paul was up before anyone and had breakfast sausages, eggs and bagels made before we woke up.
Before leaving Mike and I tried to dump our septic tank, but the connection wasn’t completely flush with the tube and so our dirty septic contents poured all over Mike’s hands. There was a moment, when he realized that the connection wasn’t going to fully work, that he had a panicked look, like he was going to drop it and run. This would have caused a full disconnect and our septic contents to pour all over the grass. It was just a split second but I saw it and I was instantly halfway down the RV to avoid it a whipping septic hose! After that split second Mike realized he couldn’t let go and a look of utter defeat washed over him. I tried so hard not to laugh but…
We tried to find a post office or a mailbox so I could mail off a letter. We did manage to find a post office with a mailbox out front but it was guarded by a picket line and I didn’t feel like having postal workers hurl abuse at me in French. We drove around until we found another mailbox but it was locked. Good think I didn’t walk though the picket line to get to the mailbox in front of the post office.
Mike decided that he was going to run a marathon today. He managed to pick the hottest day I’ve had so far. My feet were still really sore thanks to all my new blisters so after bandaging up pretty much all of each foot I put on two pairs of socks. Later on during the day I think I decided that perhaps the new tape I was using was actually causing more blisters because my socks would stick to the bandage and create new friction points. Next time I tape my feet I’m using different tape.
Paul handed lunch out to us at 30km and we continued on a bit while eating. It was now way too hot and we were consuming enormous amounts of fluid. We were also developing pretty awesome looking salt lines all over our shirts.
My sister Lauren and her friend Kevin showed up towards the end of the run. Kevin joined us but we only had 2.5km left by that point so he didn’t get to run for that long. Mike had initially planned on only doing 42.2km, a marathon, but despite looking like, to use his words, like a puppet whose puppeteer has gotten lazy, he decided to keep going for the full 50km. Awesome!
The arrival of Lauren meant it was Paul’s last day with us. It was great having him with us, and his breakfasts were great! Despite telling us (incorrectly as he informed us today) that Sorel boots were made in the Quebec town of Sorel, which we passed through a couple of days ago (now he says they are made in Kitchener), we’d have him back any time.
We are spending the next three nights at the Delta hotel in downtown Montreal and that means SHOWERS!!! It also means that there isn’t room to park our RV as there is no way it is going to fit in underground parking. Turns out the best place we could find was at the greyhound bus station next to all the other buses.
Once we got to the hotel Lauren brought out a huge bag of stuff that Dave had given her before she left Vancouver. OGIO Canada had sent a ton of shirts, POW had given us a few pairs of gloves, and MyPakage sent along a bunch of underwear. It was like Christmas!
The night ended with dinner on St Catherine’s St.
Tomorrow... I'm not running!
