mad mamblings: Day 11 - day trip: St. John's

the riding's not over yet....and we missed the boat.

(Great Island, Witless Bay)

daily stats
weather: sunny, 22˚
avg speed: 18.8 (m) / 18.4 (b)
max speed: 60.0 (i rule) / 58.0 (b)
total distance: 69.72 kms

GRAND TOTAL: 618.77 kms

so this was it. our last day of riding on the east coast.
even though we got back to St. John's a day early, we still counted this as the last day.
the early homecoming wasn't by choice...it was necessary to get bob's bike fixed up.
there was no way it would have made it up another hill with a welded chain.
and so we decided to go back to Witless Bay to do a whale and bird watching tour.
on a zodiac!
well, we sprinted to Witless Bay, and i mean sprinted up and down those bloody hills and missed the 11:30 boat.
and when i say missed, i mean we sprinted up that last hill to the cafe and dock, panting, lactic acid burning my quads, and watched the zodiac speed away from the dock.
and so we waited.
we had coffee and waited.
it was quite annoying. but relaxing none the less.
hey, we were on vacation after all.
so we finally got out on the high speed zodiac (complete in our padded orange prison suits) and we sped out to Witless Bay Ecological Reserve.

(Gull Island, Witless Bay)

we saw humpback whales! minkes!
and puffins! and gulls! common murres and kitty wakes!
but the whales! oh, the whales.
i have a blurry picture.
it was windy and the waves were big. and, oh yeah, i was in awe.
so i have a blurry picture of a fin. and a splash.
so i tried a video.
they were so close my jaw just dropped, and so did my camera.
so i have a blurry video of my knee in an orange full-size lifesuit and some "ooohs and ahhhs" as background vocals.

so here i insert yet another story of that true newfoundland spirit.
when we got back to the dock, the other tourists sped away in their full-size chevy eldorado rentals and bob and i, after peeling off our lifesuits, decided to eat our packed lunch while sitting in the parking lot with our sea legs and pondering the immense hill we'd have to climb to start our trek back to the city.
we watched a man park his boat down at the dock, and walk up the hill to the cafe.
we share passing hellos.
on his way out, coffee cup in one hand, the irish loop cafe's famous pistachio bar in the other (i'm calling them famous because i had one that morning and they're that good), he starts small talk.
next thing you know, he has convinced us, along with our bikes, to take a ride on his boat, as far as Bay Bulls, the next town over.
because that's where he's heading. and he'd save us the first two out of three major hills back.
and because he'd sure love the company.
so what would have been a gruelling 30 mins of riding, turned into a 2 hr tour of the bay and coves.

(the bikes ride shotgun)

our faithful guide, mr neil parry, hauled our heavy bikes over rocks and into his boat, which used to be a small tour boat he bought off of one of the big tour companies.
mr parry used to be a kayak tour guide.
and he loves tourists with a sense of adventure.
he showed us his wife's favourite rock formation. the only place where wild strawberries grow in the bay.
and he regaled us with stories of the history in the area.
our wish to repay him with a coffee when we docked in Bay Bulls (which he pays $94/year for a prime spot!) was met with a "have to meet my wife and take the kids to lessons" but he advised us to check out the church because there were old wwII cannons for gate posts.
and so we did.

(cannons as part of gate)

inspecting the cannons from the gate, a man driving by in a car stopped to tell us to go into the grounds and check out the freaky statue which the parish priest had made for this brother that fell in the war.

(statue on church grounds)

on the way home we stopped at Bidgood's in Goulds...really just to check out the flipper pie.
we ended up buying 3 big pieces of dried, salted cod (baccala for nonna!).
at roughly 5 bucks a cod, my italian grandma, who would normally spend around $30 for the same piece here in toronto, nearly shit a brick when she saw it.
i'm the favourite granddaughter again. that's right.