We also met an interesting chap from Australia who started the “Who Is Happy Guy” group on facebook. He was couchsurfing with Ryan and the lot of us had a jolly old time together.Loop or Bust
After being thwarted in our attempt to make a loop up north, we decided to try again down south. This would be the last leg of our journey in Newfoundland and it would involve some of the most remote areas yet. So after getting Nick’s wheel fixed, we stocked up on several days worth of provisions.
If all went according to plan, this next phase would take us to the town of Burgeo, on the southwestern coast of Newfoundland. It was 200 km (125 miles) from Corner Brook and not a town between. It was a long road. We left Corner Brook in the afternoon and made 50 km in good time to the turn off. Here we bid adieu to the noisy and trafficky TCH (Trans Canadian Highway) for what we hoped would be the last time. Our shadows grew longer, and we followed them west down the 150 km stretch of nothing.
As Gretta points out in this video, 'twas a truly lovely road indeed.We found a spot to camp and addressed a noise that Nick's bike had been making ever since leaving Corner Brook. We have become well practiced at detecting and deciphering noises on our bikes, and we consider ourselves experts now at diagnosing problems with our ears only. But this one had evaded us all day. Upon taking Nick's rear wheel off the bike, we discovered a shocking fact: his rear axle was broken in two. After marveling for some time about the fact that this hadn't immediately resulted in disaster, we tried to figure out what to do. We knew we were not equipped to deal with this at the moment, so we placed the wheel back into the bike. As night fell, we weren't sure what the morning would bring, but we hoped for the best as we went to sleep.
The next day, we figured we were better off limping the bike into Burgeo than trying to head all the way back to Corner Brook. After all, it had broken somewhere along the way and was still running. So we would carry on, closely monitoring the noise and riding carefully. Worst case scenario, one of the 10 cars we would probably see on this remote road was bound to give us a ride if we needed it.
Mid-way through the day, the noise got worse, and his wheel started to develop a wobble. We took the wheel out again to take a closer look. We couldn't take too close of a look though, because taking it apart could have resulted in greasy bearings falling every which way. Figuring that the two pieces of the axle were not lining up quite right, the best we could do was attempt to realign them by feel. We did so and carefully reattached the wheel.
Wouldn't you know it, but the noise disappeared and the wheel spun truer than it had virtually the entire trip. Onward ho!
We started chipping away again, hoping to make it the rest of the way to Burgeo. And then, another strange thing happened. Something we had not encountered the whole trip: heat. We guarded against this by jumping, fully clothed, into one of the hundreds of ponds we came across along this road.
It was refreshing, but between still-sore legs (from scaling the highest peak in all of Newfoundland) and what we now figure was a mild case of heat exhaustion, we didn't make it as far as we hoped. In the evening, the fog rolled in fast, reducing visibility and within 20 minutes we were freezing. We used this as a convenient excuse to call it quits for the day.
Easier said than done, however, for the landscape offered nothing but miles and miles of peat moss bogs and grassy puddles. We rode on, with an increasing sense of anxiety, till we stumbled across the Newfoundland camper's paradise: a gravel pit. We had been told, "You haven't really camped at all in Newfoundland till you've camped in a gravel pit," so we took the advice. It was our only option anyway. We feasted, and we slept.
With some luck, the next day we'd easily make it to Burgeo, which, according to our calculations, was some 40 km away.
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