On Bicycles and International Borders

In the past two days I have biked across the border, twice. The first time, Saturday July 3 at around 12:30 EDT at the Rainbow bridge there was one car in front of me at the bridge and when the border guard found out I was biking from Toronto to Rochester he was... well his reaction was exactly what I was expecting (hoping) for. His final remark to me was, "have a safe ride."


Now as I noted earlier, I did not quite make it to Rochester, Jeff was tracking my progress on Google Latitude, which apparently reported that I was moving at around 30km/h on the multi lane limited access expressway that is the Lake Ontario State Parkway, I guess the rGPS isn't quite as great as Google would like everyone to believe (I was about 10km away from the Parkway, on route 18). At some point Jeff decided to drive out and meet up with me, which he did about 35km from his home. Now having run out of powder (my own mix of carbs, soy protein and electrolytes) and now surviving on diluted Poweraid (most gas stations don't sell Hammer Nutrition products), my muscles were starting to cramp and I was not exactly feeling 100%. Jeff offered me a lift and I took him up on the offer.

I did not want to fight the West Wind for the journey home so Jeff, ever so kindly drove me to the border (and if Jeff ever reads this, I really do appreciate that drive), I would bike across the border and take the GO train from Niagara Falls, which meant returning on Sunday as there is no weekday service to Niagara Falls. While in line at the border I made the egregious error of lining up at a new border guards queue, and being that I was on a bicycle as opposed to everyone else in their two ton steel cage, I couldn't really switch lines without annoying several motorists, so I waited while Mister dot all the I's and cross all the T's processed people at about half the speed of all the other agents.

Finally it was my turn to face Canada's answer to border security. Let me just say to border guards far and wide, as a good generalization most bicycles do not in fact have licence plates. Sorry guys you will just have to make do with my passport. (Which reminds me, I have to get a new one, sigh.) Even better than the fruitless search of a licence plate and let me add, honest to god, you cannot make stuff this good up, the border guard asked me if I had made any significant purchase while in the US. Imagine if you will, I am on a fancy schamncy S-Works Specialized Roubaix (in fact the same frame that carried Tom Boonen to victory in the 2009 Paris-Roubaix) with all the fittings and trimmings of a very expensive, very fast road bike. My jersey pockets are loaded down with supplements, passports, credit cards, cash, tire changing equipment and a Blackberry. I do have two water bottle cages (with water bottles, that have, surprisingly - water inside) and fitted on one of the cages is two CO2 cartridges. My only other storage, a tiny saddle bag, has just enough room for two inner tubes, a photo copy of my health card, a Tim Hortons prepaid card and a multitool.

So the border guard asked me if I had made any purchase, I often wondered what I would do in response to such a question. It turns out, I would stare at the border guard looking incredulously at the source of such a profoundly lunatic question. The border guard suggested that perhaps I bought my bike in the US - a curious notion, since I had to get to the US first before I could buy my transportation home. Ultimately the border guard did let me go, after having found out that I have been to such bastions of criminality as China, the UK and France. (I'm still not sure why he made three passes through my passport, but hey at least that his his prerogative, apparently being mind numbingly air-headed is also his prerogative!)

Having cleared the silliness that was that particular border crossing, I had an hour to kill before the GO train would arrive, I decided to go to St. Catharines and get the train there, except I took too long (head wind) and had no choice (not that I was bothered) but to bike home. The ride home, 154km, a little riding around in Rochester with Jeff, plus 285km on Saturday means that in about 40 hours I rode about 3 full proper centuries. I did not achieve the outlandish goal of biking to Rochester and back, but given what I did achieve (and the pain I endured almost from the beginning - I rode the Coppi earlier this week and the saddle height is now so far off the mark that my right knee is still hurting). I think I can be proud of what I did, I think I can also say that if I ever propose to ride to Rochester again, can someone please come and kick some sense into me, biking a double century in a day without support is a really dumb idea and I would not recommend anyone do it.