New Brunswick 4 Corners ride report

September 13th 2002.

 

Let's see, where to start... 

I had a day off to enjoy some riding and wasn't sure where to go or what to do.  My wife Hélène and I were planning to go to Bar Harbor Maine for the weekend so we would be leaving fairly early saturday morning.  This meant no returning home too late (or too early in the morning).   

One ride I'd been meaning to do was another lap around New Brunswick.  I had done one 2 years ago but it was more like 'the biggest circle within NB' that was doable without any backtracking.  I had also decided to avoid the whole Acadian Peninsula and just cut south from Bathurst.  The peninsula makes for some really slow going, with all those small villages with their 50 km / h limits and such. 

This was the tour I did, around 1 000 km total.

 

 

Nice ride, but I wanted to do something a bit bigger.  After all, I had more time on my hands than 10 hours right ? 

I'd been reading about the ride a lot of people are doing in the States, the 4-corners tour and the logical thing seemed to be to see what a 4-corners of NB would look like mileage-wise.  Start playing with Streets & Trips and this is what turns up. 

 

Total mileage was around 1 580 km or so.  That's more like it.  If the weather cooperates, this would be the plan. 

Thursday night.  Check the Environment Canada Website, looks like cloudy with a chance of showers here and there.  Not bad.  On closer inspection, it seemed the northern part of the province would have showers in the morning and the southern part later in the day.  I decided to do it in a counter-clockwise fashion to beat the rain.  Hélène and I go running on Thursdays and I ask her if it's okay for me to come home a bit later than she finishes work.  How much later ?  Oh I dunno, If I leave early enough I figure I could be back around 7:00 or so...  I thought you were done with these long rides ?  WHAT time are you going to be leaving in the morning ? 

Of course I'm done (for now) with 'those' rides.  This ride is meant to be a purely silly one.  A Saddlesore 1000 that is designed to be difficult with a lot of little villages and a timeframe that would force me to keep a Bun Burner Gold average pace.  Not much stopping with this one...  Of course I would document everything like it was a true IronButt Certified ride, but I won't send it in.  I already have one of those Saddlesore certificates...  This one is for me alone, one to savor. 

3:30 AM Friday.  Time to wake up.  Easy.  I never have a hard time waking up to go riding.  Slip out of bed and get dressed.  Out the door by 3:45.  Ride up to the Irving and gas up.  Time on the receipt says 03:56:37.  I'm off ! 

It's a cool one but at least the stars are out to keep me company, clear skies.  The thermometer on the bike reads 6 degrees celcius.  I have my liners in my suit and the electric vest is quietly doing it's thing and keeping me toasty.   

My original plan was to head up north to Edmundston but to avoid the rain I'd head Southwest to St-Andrews first.  This meant riding in small twisty roads surrounded by forest and wildlife.  Thankfully my lighting is supplemented and I have a total of 320 watts pointing forwards.  This lets me see the large cow moose running on the side of the road early enough to slow down almost to its pace.  It doesn't decide to try to cross in front of me.  Hypervigilence persisting.   

The temperature has also dropped.  My fingers are freezing.  I stop and put on my heavier gloves and even they aren't enough.  A while later I stop to put the rainproof covers on them to turn them into mittens.  Much better. 

First corner done.  I wanted to get a picture near the water, but at this time in the morning, I wanted something that would show I was in St-Andrews.  I didn't figure the water would show up nicely in pitch darkness.  This town is famous for the old Algonquin Hotel, so this would be my destination for this leg of the trip.  You can sort of see the outline of where the hotel crosses the road in the picture.

 

Next stop would be the Confederation Bridge in the SouthEast tip of the province.  Fairly uneventful ride up to there except that when the sun came up I finally got to see the thermometer which isn't backlit.  It was indicating 3.4 degrees and I'm sure this wasn't the coolest It had been during this trip.   

I stopped for a leisurely breakfast at McDonalds in Moncton where I put on my tinted faceshield and warmed up my insides with a sausage McMuffin, hash brown and coffee.  45 minutes later it's back on the road. 

 

Here's the Confederation Bridge, 08:14 AM.  Checkpoint number 2 done.  Now it's north up to Miscou Island. 

Up to here, the sky was clear.  Shortly into this jaunt, things would change for the worse.  I think it was around Rexton when I saw kind of like a line across the sky.  This side of it, nice and blue.  The other side varying shades of black.  No sooner was I under this blanket that the first drops of rain hit my visor.  It would not let up for the next 5½ hours.  The closer I got to checkpoint 3, the worse the weather was.  

The Acadian Peninsula really sucked.  From Miramichi to Miscou Island to Bathurst it was really slow going, with the small communities and their slow-moving traffic kicking up dirt from their dirty streets and messing up my already fogged-up visor.  The weather was just getting worse with heavy winds (probably the tail end of Hurricane Gustav) and a temperature that was playing it safe in the single digits.  I was miserable.  Wasn't this supposed to be fun ?   

 

Here's checkpoint number 3, 11:18 AM.  The bridge linking Miscou island to Lamèque Island.  I could have gone a bit more North and a bit more East, but I felt the bridge was a nice big structure more suitable for a checkpoint.

 

After passing Bathurst, I stop at a gas station to ask if highway 180 is paved or if it's a dirt road like my old map says it is.  No, they chipsealed it.  Cool.  I didn't want a mud road. 

Unfortunately they had JUST chipsealed large parts of it and it was quite loose and gravely.  I managed to get behind a car that kicked up a rock with perfect aim and took out one of my aux. lights.  Perfect.  I'm all smiles at this point. 

The rain let up as I was approaching St-Quentin and some of the roads were actually dry.  Menacing black clouds hung all over the place but seemed to spare me for the time being.  I stopped at the Tim Horton's there and took off my rain jacket and dug out the Camelback from the saddlebags.  Extra large single single please.  In the Camelback it goes.  Hot coffee drunk out of a plastic bag tastes funny, but I'd just been rained on for a long time and I wanted some internal heating.  Of course no sooner had I entered the Tim Hortons, a mad thunderstorm chose to pour its guts all over St-Quentin.  Off I go in the blatting rain. 

I came this close to cutting it short and bee-lining for home as I approached St-Leonard.  The detour to checkpoint 4 would add about 200 km to the trip.  When I got to St-Leonard the sky seemed a bit lighter up north so I decided to go for it.  Why not. 

The rain gradually got lighter and eventually ended close to Edmundston.  More small towns and slow traffic but eventually make it up to 'Lac Baker' and the NB - Quebec border.  3:20 PM. 

 

Make my way to Fredericton and realize that I don't quite have the mileage to qualify for a Saddlesore.  I'm okay according to the odometer but the GPS is about 40 km short.  Part of this is because on 2 occasions the power cord to the GPS got disconnected due to vibrations on the 'chipsealed' road and it took a while before I noticed. 

Okay, the GPS accepts that I've ridden over 1 600 km so I can check in at the Irving for a timeslip.  I put in a dollars worth of gas and get a receipt showing a time of 18:35:48 as my official end time.   

Here's a view of the GPS for the trip.

 

Summary; 

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