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There are many flavors of bicycle touring, from the Butterfield and Robinson packaged tour where all your needs are cared for and the biggest surprise is what kind of wine is served at dinner, to the “get on your bike, head west and see what happens” approach. Needless to say, I gravitate more toward the latter. On the other hand many of my earlier trips were characterized more as fiascos than trips (after a few of these experiences, my friends instigated the “Fiasco Report” which detailed things like what percentage over the advertised mileage the trip actually was, level of exhaustion the participants were pushed to, and other life threatening incidents that occurred).
One semi-planned trip that ended up deviating quite a bit from the program was when we took the tandem to Nova Scotia. It was late August and we realized that I had vacation time coming that we hadn’t planned anything for. So, we said, let’s tour Nova Scotia. Through the magic of the internet, we were able to buy ferry tickets and make B&B reservations in short order. Only thing we hadn’t planned on was the aftermath of a hurricane joining us on the vacation.
To set the scene, I should confess that before the deluge we were beset by a variety of mechanical problems that Mrs. D blamed on my lack of proper maintenance of the rolling stock (I opined the real reason was that Mercury was retrograde). As I recall, things like cables and tires started self-destructing, and finally enough things had broken so the bike really wasn’t rideable any more. So we resorted to the kindness of strangers, and hitchhiked to the next town with a fellow driving a utility truck (which had a sticker on the windshield sternly forbidding the driver to pick up hitchhikers). Tandems are hard to fit into cars, but this was the perfect vehicle, it even had a hydraulic tailgate to lift the tandem with grace and ease. It was after finding a bike store and fixing the bad bits that the hurricane arrived.
We started out with a destination in mind, and then the rains came. It was not that bad since it was really warm, it was kind of like taking a shower. This lasted for quite a while until we came to a town, at which point we decided discretion was the better part of valor and went looking for an alternative place to stay. We found this really nice B&B near the water. It was still early in the day and it was nice to be warm and dry, so we took a nap. Several hours later, it was time for dinner, and we were getting ready to walk into town, when the B&B owner offered to loan us her car. We declined her incredibly generous offer, mostly because based on our tandem experiences, I didn’t want to risk destroying anything bigger than a bicycle. So we walked to dinner, where we came upon some other B&B residents we’d seen in passing. They were a couple who had arrived on motorcycle, and they had availed themselves of our host’s offer to borrow her car. We ended up having dinner with them, swapping stories. Turns out motorcycle tourists and bike tourists have a lot in common. Then back to the B&B for a good night’s sleep and we resumed our original itinerary. Serendipity came through again.
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