Day 90

August 10 - 98km (Marathon)

The biking was hilly, the scenes were gorgeous and the shoulder was still atrocious.

I want to talk more about the road conditions. The shoulder quality required me to be on my A-game; I had to focus at all times. I bought a mirror that attached to my handlebars - while it was shaky and hard to use at times, it gave me somewhat of a view of the cars behind me. I also bought a higher-end rear light to keep traffic aware of my presence.

But that wasn’t enough. I had to not only look at traffic behind me, but incoming traffic as well. For example, if there were two trucks on each side of the highway (and it was only a one-laner), that meant there was no space for me on the shoulder and I had to jump off to the gravel. I would constantly monitor incoming traffic visually and listen for trucks coming up behind me. Sometimes, there would be trucks carrying oversized loads - I would also have to jump off the shoulder in these situations. Other times, incoming cars would zoom to overtake slower vehicles which was a jarring experience.

This was going to be my experience for hundreds of kilometres, and I learned to get used to it.