Lunch – Day 2

The route on Sunday took us west of Hamilton and, eventually, all the way down to Lake Erie.

Compared to the 200 km route, which is mostly on country roads, the 200 mile route spent a fair bit of time on arterial roads heading south (I don't recall which ones specifically – the morning's heavy rains meant that we cycled with our heads down for most of it).

The lunch stop was at a trailer park called Long Beach something-or-other. A fairly busy place for vacationers. There was a steady stream of cars and buses going in (and leaving) the park in addition to the cyclists.

Aside from the early morning rain (and wind!), temperatures stayed reasonably low throughout the first part of the day. By the time we reached Long Beach, we were soaked (again) and cold. At the entrance to the tent area, one of the medical crew was handing out packets with emergency blankets designed to combat hypothermia. The blankets come folded into a small package the size of an iPhone; unfolded, they can be wrapped around most of a normal-sized person.

A visitor to the camp that afternoon would have seen something out of a science fiction film – dozens of people in brightly coloured spandex uniforms and helmets, wrapped in what appeared to be aluminum foil.

[Post-script: I was checking our house's voice mail on Monday morning and picked up a message from Paul Alofs at the Princess Margaret Hospital advising us that the weekend was going to be humid and that we should wear lots of sunscreen. Shame we didn't get a team picture at the lunch site, wrapped in our hypothermia blankets]