(Pics to follow at a later date!)
We got a good start on the morning and headed across PEI towards the Confederation Bridge which is an engineering marvel. It is 13 kms long and connects PEI to New Brunswick. It took 4 years to build and cost over 1.3 billion dollars (consequently, I’m sure there will be a toll on that thing until the second coming of Christ... understandably...) It remains the world’s longest bridge over ice covered water and, on average, over 4000 vehicles use it daily.
After crossing the bridge and landing in NB, we headed towards Moncton over what I can only fairly describe as the WORST roads of our entire trip thus far. And it was a stretch of the Trans Canada! Honestly, there were pot holes that you could lose a VW bus in and there were stretches that were so bad, cars drove down the paved shoulders instead. There were a few places that were so bad, I believe them to be dangerous, most especially to motorcycles. I would NEVER take that road at night! All you’d have to do is hook a tire and it would be game over, peeling off into the rhubarb... We were really shocked at how bad it was. The speed limit was posted at 100 kms/hour but you could barely do 50.
Eventually, the road improved and we headed inland and, as we moved away from the water, the temperature started to climb. And it climbed and climbed and climbed. It drifted through warm to hot to very hot to hellishly hot to so %(*@#Y# hot that we, along with many other motorcyclists, had to abandon our travels and pull off. We found our way to an Irving gas station somewhere between Moncton and Fredericton and it was 38 degrees C (100 degrees F) with about 100% humidity.
We’ve only ever experienced this kind of heat intensity a few times before - once in Carmel, California and again in Bakersfield California and then in Las Vegas. Holy moly!! The ONE SAVING GRACE is that that particular Irving gas station also has a beer cooler room and, when I discovered it on my way to the bathroom, I immediately went in and plunked myself onto a stack of beer boxes, next to several other motorcyclists, dying of heat exhaustion. We had a great old time in there, riders from all over the place trying to beat the heat. Gotta love a good beer cooler is all I can say.
We loitered at Irving for about an hour and a half until we really had to move on so we gritted our teeth and headed back out into the inferno. One thing I DID bring with me was a cooling cloth that is made up of some kind of magical stuff that holds something like 100 times it’s weight in water so I soaked it in cold water, folded some ice cubes into it and wrapped it around my neck. It’s amazing what a difference that made...
We made a few more miles but finally, at Woodstock, I’d had enough and there was NO WAY in GOD’S GREEN EARTH I was going to camp in this furnace so we got an air conditioned hotel room. I promptly peeled off and stood in a freezing cold shower for about 30 minutes and, even after that, I felt like I was still baking (you know, kind of like how a roast still cooks for quite awhile after you take it out of the oven!) We cranked the AC and I drifted off to sleep, eternally grateful for the comforts of a good shower, a good bed and a good AC unit. We can only hope this heat abates tomorrow...
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