Day 63 — Thursday, August 21

Gander to Lethbridge to Argentia to west of St. John’s
We left Johnal’s house, but not before her neighbours gave us some capelin that he had caught himself. We packed it and were to enjoy it later. After an hour or so of driving (and a bit of a detour) we were in Lethbridge . . . Lethbridge, Newfoundland.

We wandered around a bit and took some pictures just for fun. There is basically just a church, a post office, and a general store, a cemetery, and some houses. A fellow there told me the population was about 400 or so.

We moved on and aimed the van for Argentia. My legs were still not feeling great. Vanessa massaged my IT bands as much as she could in the van. I was going to ride today

We finally got to Argentia and unloaded the bikes, pumped our tires, greased our chains, and went on our way. My knees didn’t feel great, but it felt so good to be on a bike again.

My first test was a decent sized hill which wasn’t too bad. The wind was at our backs and it helped. Within 15 minutes I went down a winding hill and hit about 60 km/hour, which also felt good. No peddling required.

Not long after, my left knee started to ache a little more. I kept going.

Ten minutes later my left knee hurt a little more. I had to stop and stretch. Strike one.

Ten minutes later, my left knee hurt even more. My right knee started feeling funny too. I stopped to stretch. Strike two.

Five minutes after my last stretch, my left knee was in slight pain. I stopped to stretch and knew for sure these were the warning signs that I experienced in both B.C. and Ontario. I have no doubt if I was to keep going it was inevitable I’d be in extreme pain again – even just a few kilometres down the road. Strike three. I was out.

For the third time this trip, I packed it in. Again, it wasn’t easy or fun, but it had to be done.

Vanessa and Kelly kept cycling and we ended up at a nice campground just west of St. John’s. We were probably about 50 km from St. John’s.

It was super windy when we were setting up our tents which made for a good time, and by “good time”, I mean “not a good time”. We sampled some capeline (which wasn’t bad) hit the hay.