Day 20

June 1 - 58km (Crabbes River)

I made some new friends today.

I woke up with the little demons still in my tent; surprisingly, however, they didn’t bite me overnight. When I got out of my tent though, I was swarmed. I really don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say I had 50+ flies/mosquitoes/insects/whatever-elses buzzing around. I had to put my jacket over my head to pack up my tent and I had about 15% of my vision available to me. I was stumbling around in what felt like a fever dream - it must have been a funny sight to anyone that saw me. It was not funny to me in the moment. The flies were so bad that I had to go into the campground bathroom and eat my food there. I headed out ASAP and was on the road again.

As I biked on the TransCanada, I saw something in the distance. It looked like a cyclist. I had to do a double take, because I had not seen many cyclists in my time in Newfoundland. When I looked closely, she had panniers! I was so excited to meet a fellow cyclist and wanted to know where she was going.

When I got closer, we introduced ourselves. Her name was Peri, and she was also biking across Canada! She was with her siblings. Like me, her siblings were completely untrained, so they were further behind. It was a crazy interaction because she was also fundraising for mental health (CMHA) and was from Ontario! I was really excited to have some company on the road.

I eventually met her siblings, Will and Sam, along with her dad Kevin (who I would later refer to as Kevy-poo). Kevin would be soon heading back to Ontario.

We eventually made it to a restaurant and it was Will’s birthday! Kevy-poo treated us all to dinner and I was happy to have made new friends. We set up our tents behind the restaurant and called it a night.