- by David A. Robinson (catch up with chapters I, II, III, IV, and V)

On a windy, warm day, I coasted slowly and carefully down the steep swooping ramp into Percé. The tire was pumped and holding air, and its skinnier profile seemed to translate into better speed. Everything seemed fine. Here was a place I'd dreamed of seeing for years. People walked the sidewalks between boat cruise arranging kiosks, souvenir shops, motels, auberges, restaurants, galleries of what I would assume would be pretty chintzy items intended for quick sale, and it all started taking the form of a perfect tourist location. All I wanted was food. I rolled up to a cheaper looking motel facade that included a restaurant and asked two men sitting smoking on the wooden steps. "Fermé, Monsieur" was the message. I asked "Où est un restaurant bon ici, avec les prix non très cher ?" (this is an example of my on-the-spot francais). "Oh, 100 feet you will find a good restaurant oui monsieur!" and that's how I found my lunch site, phone recharging centre, washroom clean up station, and conversation spot of the day.

The woman working the place seemed all alone. I thought maybe she was inundated and overworked, but eventually a young, bearded, pony-tailed man appeared in the back kitchen. The food looked splendid, artistic, and I was starved so I ordered pasta salad and pizza, and an Americano coffee.

After a while, the very beautiful woman running things revealed an accent in her French that seemed British, so I inquired, and it turns out she's Australian. "Oh, so French isn't your first language?" "No", she said, "But you started trying so I just played along." Other customers began speaking to me, in French and difficult English, asking all the familiar questions. Once again, I find myself at the centre of attention, other customers staring, listening, with raised eyebrows and excited comments coming from retired and holidaying couples. One man, sitting with his wife, explained that their daughter had bought a road bike second hand, from a woman who was on the national road racing team, for $8000.00, but that she had just recently died from a bout with cancer. She was 56. They wished me all the best, heaped praise on me, and seemed to be in pretty good spirits. It's strange, and amazing, how quickly people open up and share with you when you walk into someplace with the wherewithal of a touring cyclist. It's like you're read as a go-to person for sincere conversation. I felt the seriousness of their loss, felt the need to respond in the most sincere and caring way that I could muster in the moment, and tried to accomplish the other stuff I needed to do there which was to eat a lot of lunch, check my phone, rinse my grimy face and arms and neck and get my day sorted out for the ride back westward, against the wind, towards the mouth of Chaleur Bay, and New Brunswick.

At this point in the trip, I coach myself through the little challenges. I had hit upon a practice of softly mumbling my "grateful fors" any time that the going would get tough. I needed to pause, after lunch, to sit and sketch a couple more views of the great Percé rock, which sits there in the water so unbelievably accessible to all, just showing itself off with its size, novelty, texture, and legendary grandeur. How could I have actually made it all the way out here? In a roadside park where i was sketching, I heard behind me the familiar "chukka, chukka, chukka" of an excellent bike pump inflating a high quality bike, and turned to see a young woman beside her parked car, preparing for a day ride on her super-cool road bike. I grabbed the chance to force a bit more air into my newly mounted rear tire, and asked to borrow the pump, "pour une minute", since my little on-board pump seems only capable of 85 or 90 psi. It was a luxury to use her shop model, and I got my tire up to 115, and thanked her, along with some conversation about our comparative ventures. In Québec these days, you will see plenty of strong women on great bikes, out riding solo or in pairs and groups, and indeed I met many more female tourist cyclists than men this year, which I read as a great sign that cycling is no longer a male-heavy sport, at least not in this Belle Province.

Well, another day rolls by, with lots of wind, new villages and towns, more fruit and cookies and beer for second lunch, and another woodsy campsite, with yet another freezing cold night. How can it be so cold this time of the year? Even the locals make mention of how odd and unappreciated the weather has been. I don't own a super warm sleeping bag. So I took two with me, and I sleep with socks (sometimes two pairs) a toque, long johns, t shirt, fleece top, even at times a jacket, and it's still a cold night. Clearly, it's not fair. But I remember the grateful fors: I'm camping for free, I'm healthy, the bugs aren't bad, I have lots of coffee, these are the best years of my life, etc, and I try to drift off into a chilled slumber.

Next day, more rain. More wind. I have about 150-200 km until New Brunswick. Then, the sun comes out. All in all, life ain't so bad. I'm going to get this thing done. Then, just like any awful surprise that comes along when you least need it, a shrieking hiss erupts from beneath me, and in seconds, I'm bumping along, the newest victim of the scourge of cycling, 'crevaisson', and it's, of course, a rear flat.

Now, let me say this about flat tires. Cyclists get them way more often than any other tire-bearing vehicular travelers. And, in almost every single case, the flat you get comes courtesy of a piece of glass, or metal, which has found its way to the edge of the road via questionable means. It's frankly surprising how many staples you pull out of a tire. I'm not going to directly blame anyone for those. But glass. How do little shards of broken glass get on the road? Well, we all know how. Drivers throw bottles out their windows, carelessly and deliberately, and if you're lucky enough to see them glinting in the sun ahead of you, you can quickly steer around them. You hope. In this case, upon a cursory inspection (the kind where you curse a lot) I could see that it was a bad one. A big shard. A big hole. Probably the kind that leave you susceptible to blistering tubes coming through the tire like a hernia, threatening to re-flatten a mile or so down the road. I would need another tire. I had just installed this one. I felt all my motivation, all my self-coaching and determination to "make it" escaping from my heart and soul.
To hell with it, I said to myself. I don't want to do this anymore. I would need a bike shop, again. Another tire. Another fix, expense, probably a taxi to whatever town, whatever next encounter with whoever, to patch me up and get me on my way again and I just didn't care.

As fate and fortune would have it, I look at where I am. 100 feet or so from a little community park, with a little diner/trailer parked in front, in a village called Shigawake. This is near the southernmost part of the Gaspé peninsula. I walk my bike up to the window of the diner, and crouch my head down to the low window, bending to look up, all sweaty, squinty, hot and bothered, and start to make inquiries about the place, the availability of buses, taxis, whatever. Kathy, the proprietor of the diner "La Fourchette" (the fork in the road; how appropriate, I think) explains in unaccented English (she's from Kelowna it turns out) that there's a daily bus into Paspébiac, the next town of size which has a bus to Matapédia. The local mini-van taxi might also be available she says, but first, she wants to give me a cold drink of my choice, and she opens up the community centre cabin, not really open to public at that time but she says to go in, sort myself out, there are showers, there's electricity, I can take my bike apart, and she even phones the Mayor to check if it's alright that I camp in the park that night. Her young niece, Malina, is helpful, running messages to me, bringing me free French fries, telling about how her grade seven class of 27 kids all rode bikes with their school on a trip to New Brunswick and back. Once again, I'm humbled and moved at the kindness of strangers. I sit down in the building and begin the task of checking with bus companies, and I call VIA Rail to see about switching my ticket from Halifax on the 2nd of July, to Matapedia on the 14th of June. I speak with a guy named Winner. "You mean like, Winners and Losers?" I ask. "Yes", he says, and I wonder at how many people ask him about his name. I always ask the person's name whenever I'm doing these phone transaction things.

By the evening, I have it all planned out. I'm going to Matapédia by bus from Paspébiac tomorrow, and Kathy's brother Ron is coming by in the morning with his pick-up truck to take me to the PetroCan where the bus checks in. It's all so easy; like these strangers were just poised there, ready to catch me when I fall.

Next morning, Ron comes, and he rearranges shovels and rakes in his truck to fit my rig, now broken down into two halves. He also fixes the road pot holes for the municipality. Ron takes his daughter along with us for the ride, and he's a booming-voiced, super friendly man who's retired from being an airline pilot. He tells me his plan is to build a pedal trike recumbent, with an electric assist motor set up, and tour across the country, nice and slowly, stopping to fish along the way. I'm sitting there, completely disillusioned with the concept of bike touring for the time being, but I'm amazed at the synchronicity of all this and I encourage him enthusiastically to pursue that dream. We both agree that the motor should be in the trailer wheel, where you can also store all the battery weight. Bike talk. I love it.

So now, the story goes quickly. I get to the PetroCan, the girls there give me a fold-out bike box, into which my bike needs to go, but I only have ten minutes. So I feverishly begin to break everything down, having to snip cables, can't get the pedals off, throw in the packs that can fit, I get tape and scissors from the girl, and I wrap as much as I can around my very roughish-looking box, which has two extremities of my frame sticking right out. I tape over those, and the girl runs out to me "L'autobus est ici!" and off I go, doing a quick sell and sob story to the bus driver who clearly doesn't want to take this massive box and trailer all on at once. But we work things out, and we take off and I get my favourite seat on the bus, the front right side, and as the bus speeds away from Paspébiac along the #132, I sit back and catch my breath and marvel at how fast it all came to a dramatic sudden finish.

The truth is, I'm homesick. Nobody is waiting for me in Nova Scotia. I'd planned to seek out taverns where songs might be sung about the Halifax explosion a century ago. I'd wanted to see Halifax; experience it's fabled good times atmosphere and walk it's streets. I'd wanted to finish what I'd started. But really, I told myself, this is all such a philosophical matter, and it's all relative, and how many times do I have to cross the country on a bicycle anyway, etc. etc. etc. and presently, the bus rolls in to the familiar sight of Matapédia. The driver lets me off at a corner between a school and a hospital. I don't know whether I've won him over with my banter along the way, but now he wants to shake my hand and wish me all the best. He takes off, and I stand there, with a choice of school or hospital to seek my next step. I choose hospital, and, leaving all my stuff out on the grass, I walk in, and say "Je suis okay, mais je suis avec la bicyclette, et j'ai besoin d'un place pour camping, ou motel, ou...?" And, of course, this works for me just fine, because, almost without missing a beat, the lady at the emergency desk waves down Yves, who just happens to be walking along the hallway, and she gives him the low down, and Yves smiles at me, gestures towards the parking lot outside, and in a quick friendly English/French discussion, we start shoving my massive bike box and trailer into his little Sunfire car. He wants no money. He explains that the Restigouche (Ed. note: Whew! A French place name which does not have any accents!) Hotel is closed now, and that the next nearest motel is five miles away, but he says "If you got camping,..." and I answer yes, I have all my camping gear, so he takes me to the Matapedia village campground, and five minutes later, I'm delivered to my $20.00 per night campsite, complete with an extra tarp and rope to keep over my cardboard box in case it rains. At first I think I'm going to be able to buy Yves some beer, but he won't accept anything in payment. He's a carpenter, and had a bunch of tools already in his car. He says "If I help someone like you, I'm gonna hope someday, somebody stranger gonna help me" and I can't argue with him. Seems to be the way of the universe, at least for me on this trip, and, come to think of it, all my bike trips.

Matapédia. A Miq Maq word meaning where two rivers meet. I was here in 2012, the last time I rode east. Back then the old Restigouche Hotel was still up and running, but as Yves explains, the guy, he's 70 now, it's up for sale... and I think of all the old photographs of fishing trips I'd seen on the walls there, the hummingbird feeders, the nice people and the cozy dining room. I was sad that this village was maybe going to lose one of its landmarks. But, at least I got to experience the beauty of the campground this time. Marie, who greeted me, gave me a bit of a primer on what they do there, serving as outfitters for canoe adventures and other expeditions. I love this corner of Quebec. Apparently, you can take a five day, down-river trip from some place in New Brunswick, and wind up right there at the campground, with no portages, and no difficult rapids, campsites all along the way, and now, that's what I want to do in the not distant future. I needed to wait two nights for my train. So, while there, I set up my camp, got all rooted at my picnic table, availed myself to the friendly and well stocked magasin right by the entrance, with lots of beer and gin, and good groceries. And, while camped there, I found myself caught up in yet another personal change of course: I became vegetarian, again.

Maybe it was in compensation for what I perceived to be a drastic shift in my plans, ending the bike trip suddenly like this, that I needed to do something to balance and compensate for any possible karmic debt or something, but the simple fact is, you know, as much as you take yourself "away" on an adventure, or any trip, you never really leave home. And, with our cell phones, we pretty much keep ourselves in touch with the rest of the world from wherever we are. So, it looks like, the frequent postings on Facebook by my good friend Jim Ansell finally pushed me where I guess I felt I needed to go for some time now, and I made the solemn promise to myself to give up meat.
It's been a week now. As I sit here in Toronto, at Richard W.'s computer in a place within feet, perhaps inches, of the spot where I was born (Richard's condo is built on the site of the Wellesley Hospital where I emerged in 1959) I reflect on the connectedness, the mystery, the meaning of "it all". I don't want to make long posts like this on Facebook, not really. I was spurred into doing so last Summer by a couple of deeply religious, extremely kind men who helped me out for no other reason than that was what they felt was the right thing to do. and I've been inspired to write about many other people since, who have engaged me, assisted me, cheered me up, laughed at my jokes, given me free rides, free food, free advice, all from the goodness of their souls. It has seemed, altogether, enough of a reason to write some stories.

I think maybe the time has come, however, to move on to something different. Friends encouraged me to continue to write from the road this summer, as last. I have been so happy to hear that some people enjoy these accounts. I'm not sure if there will be more.

I'm really looking forward to getting back up to Kimberley tomorrow, back to friends, back to my little choir in time for our next performance, and back to my running shoes. Enough with the bloody bike trips! It's a crazy way to be, folks.

Joan Beecroft had supplied me with the perfect song for my experience. " Matapédia," by Kate and Anna McGarrigle. I don't think I know how to post it here, but I certainly loved hearing it, from my little campsite right there in it's namesake. Sitting around with new found friends at the picnic table, Geneviève placed my phone in a pink plastic cup to amplify the volume, and five people were entertained and touched by the beauty of that song. Maybe Joan will be kind enough to re-post it here for everyone else. (Ed. note: You bet!)

Thanks for reading, folks. Thanks for liking and commenting.

If you see a cyclist on the road while you're driving, slow down. Give them space. And if you can, get out there and ride while Summer's still here. (Ed. note: it is, and so will Halifax still be there whenever, however, you get there.)

The End.