Day 37: Waterloo, ON to Grimsby, ON

Today was originally going to take us down to Lake Erie, but instead takes us through persistent and dreary rain to a hotel off the water near Grimsby. Not exactly the most triumphant penultimate day, but sometimes you take what you can get…

(That photo isn’t actually of today, sadly - we were too wet to even think about taking pictures.)

The morning is rainy, and our host Jeff has already headed out to teach his morning yoga class. We’re exhausted from the long ride yesterday, which was quite possibly the longest of our trip. The road takes a lot out of even the most travel-hardened of people: the elements, the bouncing and jostling, the constant attention needed to the other vehicles and to the roadside forests from which, at any moment, a trip-ending deer could spring foolishly into your path. Motorcycle travel is, without a doubt, more tiring than car travel, and though it is not so tiring as hiking or cycling, neither do you get the benefit of exercise that those human-powered forms of transportation bring…

We share a sizeable breakfast of eggs, vegan sausage, and delicata squash with Ben, one of our host’s roommates before poking around downtown Waterloo. The city has changed considerably since Evan went to university here, the most notable difference being the construction of a light rail line connecting Waterloo, Kitchener, and Cambridge. This will undoubtedly be a great boon to the area when completed, but in the meantime pedestrian and vehicle traffic alike is mired in a confusing mess of road closures, detours, and temporary one-way restrictions. The Huether is still there; Lion’s Head has reinvented itself as an upscale craft brewery; the Ukrainian church still sells pierogis; the park has way more historical signage; the Perimeter Institute has some kind of addition along with a new eastern façade. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même…

The rain lets up slightly around noon, and the weather calls for rain right through the weekend, so we reluctantly make the call to leave: we’re so close to the end of the trip, and we feel a personal obligation to finish it! As we go to load up the bike, we run into an older woman by the name of Theresa, who just can’t believe that we would ride across the country - and in this rain! - on our scooter. She’s lived in Waterloo for over 30 years, and has probably seen all kinds of changes in that time. She offers a room in her house as a refuge from the rain, but we’re committed now, and true to character we’re stubborn enough to believe that we just have to follow through with our ride.

We stop in Kitchener for a two-part lunch. One part is a stop at City Café Bakery’s original Victoria St. location, the other a visit to the farmers’ market building for a stuffed pepper and some pierogis. Yum! Except that, by the time we intrepid travellers have finished our meal, the rain is coming down significantly harder. On towards Cambridge, it beats harder still, then lightens up just in time to meet the other end of the light rail construction.

By the time we crawl through Cambridge downtown, we’re getting quite soaked and have to make a difficult call: do we forge onwards down to Lake Erie, or do we head instead for Lake Ontario and attempt to make it to Niagara-on-the-Lake today? We decide on the latter, for although we had been very excited about the prospect of one more night camping off the lakes, we have no wish to spend an extra few hours riding through this sort of rain.

Along Highway 8, the rain slowly picks up again, so that we’re well and truly drenched as we pass through Dundas and enter into Hamilton. It’s getting later, and as we pass through the main part of Hamilton we realize we probably won’t make it to Niagara-on-the-Lake after all: in another hour or so, it will be too cold to ride safely. We persevere long enough to find a hotel off the water near Grimsby, where the receptionist is nice enough to knock $10 off the room rate (because, you know, of course we have one of those CAA memberships or whatever, right? wink).

We throw ourselves out of our soggy clothing and directly into a luke-warm shower, where we spend the next 20 minutes gradually restoring warmth to our bodies. Hypothermia is no joke, and we’re dangerously close to it, but after the shower we feel once more close to human. Just “human” isn’t enough, though: why not cap off the trip with a fancy dinner in the 8th floor restaurant? Good question, and we can’t come up with a reason not to, so soon we’re sipping Shiraz and chowing down on truffle parmesan frites as we look out into the storms over Lake Ontario. Toronto is somewhere out there, but we can’t quite see it - ah well, better eat more maple-bourbon-glazed salmon and medium-rare tenderloin in a really tasty red wine-based sauce. We cap it all off with a visit to the hot tubs before our last night of sleep on this trip, for tomorrow we reach my parents’ house, where we’ll hang up our jackets before heading onwards to Toronto after the weekend…