We’d just turned the corner around Campbellton when I noticed two bicycles that seemed a little loaded with bags headed towards me on the other side of the highway.
One of the best parts of cycle touring for me is talking to and meeting other people who are crazy enough to undertake such expeditions. Discovered quickly that they were from Kingston(!) and pedaling towards one of their kids and grandkids in Halifax. Kanji and Susie are their names.
They’ve been blogging from the road and you can follow along at Nakatsu’s of Kingston.
They met in the early 70s at UBC (and are now in their 70s), her lab was above his and one day—because someone had used the electron microscope in her lab and not set up the hoses in the right position—she accidentally watered his lab. He was a graduate student in the pharmacology department.
They got married pretty soon after that and it’s been almost 46 years since. It was a truncated conversation, one which I hope to continue in the fall with them.
They’re cycling about 120 km everyday which is crazy to me, but they’re also loaded down more sensibly. It is tremendously inspiring to meet a couple who can cycle tour together, particularly after so many years, and this was not their first rodeo. Not by a long shot.
“As long as you don’t quit, you’ll keep going.”, Kanji told me.
Got a quick debrief on what the road ahead looks like for us. Something I didn’t know is that if you stick on the Trans Canada Highway (which we are not for the next little while) the slope gradient is never worse than 8%.
Fair winds and smooth roads, fellow travelers.