Chapter 3: The Wisdom of Phillip French

 Chapter 3: The Wisdom of Phillip French

April 19-22: Some warmer weather, and a remarkable character!

Photo credit: Ruth Thomas. With all the rain, the road to her house was flooded.

 

April 19, Saturday: 51.1 miles (785.8)

“Mrs. Thomas fed me breakfast and gave me some great raw honey for the road."  Since she was also an avid photographer, we took turns getting pictures of each other. 

I stopped at Maynard’s Grocery again, and Ingrid gave me a little Huntsville Ontario patch. That made me so happy. I gave her one of my hand-printed maple leaf cards, thanking her and the other folks for their friendliness.”

“I cashed some traveler’s checks, bought a tire because the one in back can’t last much longer, and left town at about 1:00. It was an incredible, gorgeous, warm day. I rode without a shirt part of the time! Yahoo!"

“I also saw the first green leaves coming out, and got bitten by the first mosquito of the year! This afternoon I bought some Coppertone, and the smell of it made me feel like the middle of summer.”

“I started seeing seagulls Thursday, but didn’t realize their significance until today; I’m getting close to the Great Lakes!”

I camped for the night in a little park, and had the place to myself until dusk, when suddenly a lot of people started arriving. I was alarmed until I got the courage to ask someone what was going on, and they explained that they were there hoping to net some smelt in the brook that ran through the park. (Smelt are small fish in the great lakes that swim up streams en masse to spawn. The runs only happen at night, in late April) “I went and hung out with them (even drank a Molson’s! *see note below) but the smelt never came, so eventually they left.”

*As with coffee, I have never cared for either the taste nor the side effects of alcohol, but I learned that in Canada, as a guest from the US reliant on the good will of strangers, it behooved me to never turn down any offer of their beer, as it was something they were fiercely proud of - it was one thing they had that they felt was better than what their smug, overbearing “big brother” to the south could produce!

April 20, Sunday: 67 miles (852.8)

With clear and warm weather, now the challenge became avoiding sunburn. I was also dealing with ongoing saddle soreness - that drove me to take breaks more than weariness or hunger. I rode from 9:30 A.M. until 6:30 P.M., so only 7.5 mph average, with stops. My journal also notes heavier traffic, possibly because I was now on the Trans-Canada Highway, or maybe because it was the weekend? “I saw a lot of bored drivers and sleeping passengers.”

 

April 21, Monday: 58.6 miles (911.4)

“Another beauty! I dawdled a bit this AM, wrote to [W. Sch friend] John, and didn’t roll until 11:30. Then a spoke broke,* and I spent 2 hours fixing that and reinforcing the tire where the cords were cut earlier, and I still got a good day’s mileage. Saw mares' tails, so rain on the way.

*Broken spokes were a frequent problem on a previous tour, so one of the modifications I made in preparation for this trip was to drill holes in the rear hub and rim and add extra spokes on the freewheel (gear cluster) side. (Always where the spokes broke, due to the wheel geometry.) This may have helped a little, but obviously did not prevent the problem entirely. To replace a spoke, the freewheel has to be removed - not an easy task since it is tightened with the force of every pedal stroke.

“I passed Sudbury today; quite the stacks they have!” Sudbury was at the time home to one of the largest nickel mines in the world, with smelting facilities that had unimaginably tall smokestacks, intended to release the toxic fumes high enough in the atmosphere that they mostly wouldn't poison the locals. Better to poison the folks in the next town downwind! I took no pictures, but I remember it as a barren hellscape; nothing could grow in the piles of mine tailings and furnace slag that extended for miles around the town, and even where there were no tailings, all the trees had been killed by the sulfuric acid rain.

The damage seemed to extend to the spirit of the people living there. “For the first time this trip, someone gave me the finger, and when I passed kids, they laughed and pointed at me rather than looking at me with friendly interest.” When I stopped to buy food, though, I met some friendly people, which restored some faith in humanity.

April 22, Tuesday: 95.8 miles! (1007.3!)

I didn’t take any pictures in this stretch, but my journal entry for this day was long and colorful, so for visual interest I thought I’d post a scan of it, to give a glimpse of the source of all the material here. I'll put a transcript below, in case it's too hard to read it on whatever device you are using, because I think it's worth getting every word! 

(TCH = Trans-Canada Highway, and OPP = Ontario Provincial Police.)

Transcript to make it easier to read: 

YA-HOO! What a day, what a day! The rain held off for another day, and the sun was hot. I put on suntan lotion like crazy, but still got a burn. I rode without a shirt for a little while. I hated the TCH, (Trans-Can. Hwy) though, because of all the trucks. They go 60 mph, and are only a few feet away, and boy do they blow me around. And the oncoming trucks blast me with sand. I checked with the OPP, (Ontario Provincial Police) and asked about the back road to Wawa. They said the TCH along Superior is so beautiful I wouldn't want to miss it. 

When I got back to my bike, I checked the mileage, and it had just turned over 1000. I was so excited I went back in and told the folks in the station. 

I could've easily done another 10 or even 15 miles, and broken the 100 mile in a day barrier, but I met an amazing old man, Phillip French, who talked to me for a solid hour and a half or more.

I stood there listening, thoroughly fascinated, 'though I was freezing and had to pee worse than anything. He covered an amazing range of topics, from predicting weather, to how to sharpen scissors, to the burning down of a local mill, and the politics of the Indian Reserves, ice fishing using the big white grub worms found in rotten trees...

[He talked about] moving his house - "a big house, with two stairs (floors)" using only one horse, when the new highway was built. (He said the gov't men didn't believe him when he said he moved it with only one horse, so he told them "Sure I did, and then I moved these trees over here for shade, too!")

 He was riding a bike, which is why I met him in the first place, and an amazing bike it was. Truly a tinker's bike. Oh, I wish I had gotten a picture, but it just didn't seem appropriate.

It had things tied on it everywhere - an old pack in front, a horn, glasses case, windshield wiper and yards of string and other gadgets tied to the handlebars, a big old tire pump in a plastic bag tied to the frame, and stuffed under the seat were plastic bags, bits of inner tube and assorted goodies. 

He also had a brand-new day pack - bright orange, that he got in Sault  "for 12 dollar." In that he had, among other things, a little coffee jar for water, some candy, and a key for a sardine can, which he gave me.

I'm sure he could have talked to me for two days, and I would've listened attentively the whole time, but it was getting dark, so we had to part.

He showed me a bunch of different ways to predict rain, including: of course, a ring around the sun; if the wind "makes roads" on the water; if the storm "has a headwind" i.e. if the storm is in the west and the wind is from the east, watch out!; "and if you ever see two sundogs at once, you'd better find a place to hide" and he pointed at the setting sun behind me and sure enough, there were two of the most spectacular sundogs I have ever seen. All of the other signs were there too, so I guess I'm in for a helluva storm tomorrow.

The entry continues on the next page, explaining that doing 95 miles was actually easy because of a strong tailwind. It was the first time I considered re-installing the front shifter so I could use the top 5 gears again, but I decided it wasn’t worth it.

I should explain that it was a 10 speed bike, but very early on, I realized that with so much weight, and not really being in a hurry, I would rarely if ever use gears 6 -10. It was a pain having to adjust the front shifter all the time to stop it from rubbing on the chain when I switched gears in the back, so I took it off. I’m always amused now when I see a fancy new bike with 24 gears, and think about the fact that I did my entire trip on a 5 speed bike!

 

A photo from a previous trip, with the front shifter still in place.

April 23, Wednesday; 45.6 miles (1052.9)

Boy what extremes! Yesterday no shirt, 95 miles, not even tired - today wool pants, wool shirt, windbreaker, 45 miles and I’m exhausted! The wind certainly dictates how the riding will go. And  Phillip was sure right when he told me several times that the sun dogs meant it would get cold soon!

 

From a letter I wrote about the day: 

"I spent 9 hours, bent-over struggling teeth-gritting 1st-gear pumping, and barely grunted out 45 miles, so tired I almost fell asleep without supper. A headwind like that is soul-crushing. The road seems to crawl under my wheels - so slowly it seems like I could count the pebbles in the pavement. At that speed the bike is unstable, and weaves back and forth annoyingly. I can feel the wind pushing pushing pushing at every part of the bike and my body, making my movement so sluggish it's as though I'm riding through water chest-deep."

 

"At one point I was pumping and straining, barely moving, and a truck roared by and blew me off into the loose gravel, which stopped me immediately. I was in such despair I just felt like lying down beside the road. But all I could do was look at the truck, driving away down the road, pull myself back onto the pavement, and ride on."

I’ll end this post with an excerpt from another letter I wrote this evening to a group of friends who all worked together at the Wilderness School, sharing a few of the pearls of wisdom Phillip French had bestowed on me:

“Jim, if you’re ice fishing and want to catch a bigger trout than all your friends, (a huge one) use the fat white grub worms that live in rotten trees.

Kelly, if you ever need to make money, go into the woods and pick a lot of flowers, put them in a can or jar (you can even use a plastic bag if you’re careful not to puncture it with the stems) with a little water, and sell them back in town. Motels will buy them every time!

Margo, when you sharpen scissors, just put a very slight angle on them - don’t make them like a knife. And whatever you do, don’t sharpen them on the inside! ‘People bring me these scissors sharp like that, can I fix? I say NO WAY!’ This goes for tin snips, lawn shears, and the outside edges of ice augers too.

Anne, if you want to catch a lot of ‘mushrats’ (Phillip’s pronunciation) here’s how: The first night you set your trap as you normally would (using a potato for bait, of course.) Then after you catch the first one, take his testicles (the first one you catch had better be a male, or this will be difficult) and smear them on the stick to which your trap is attached. "The next night, the other mushrat smell that from all the way over there (pointing across the river) and he come over because he want to know what happen to his buddy. That way you catch lot mushrat.”

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Also, I added a bit more detail to the beginning of the first post, that helps give some more context for things that will come later, so it might be worth a brief re-visit to Chapter 1, if you're invested enough in the story. Sorry, I know it's like reading a book while it's still in the editing process. That's because it's pretty much exactly what you're doing!