Granny gear the whole way.

We started out the morning (yesterday) fairly early - needed to make 60 miles on a stretch that we've been told has little to no services. Stocked full of water (added 3 liters to our carrying capacity) - all we had to do was pedal thru a post-tropical storm hitting the island. The night before I searched my magic phone high and low for any definitive weather or warnings for the area we were riding through - didn't come up with much. I read that Nova Scotia got some damage - that's fairly close -- read that there still might be winds along the coast up to 110kph - which is about 70mph - holy shit, the coast seems close (island). Not having read anything specific or hearing danger in any of the locals voices, we decided to try it -- still having the storm (and 79mph winds) in the back of our minds. Once we hit the road we quickly became aware that we were going to be facing a strong headwind the entire day. We were barely moving - our initial average was 8mph - literally pedaling our asses off in our granny gears and the skies were getting worse. Then I had my second flat on the trip - fortunately it happened at a campground and we pulled in their parking lot to change the tube. Since I have panniers on my bike - and it was a rear flat - I have to take everything off in order to remove the wheel for the repair - not awesome, but easy enough. So, standing there with my bags off - in a campground - with forceful winds (nothing remotely near 70mph) and not real sure how harsh the storm would get -- we debated calling it a day and waiting out the storm in the campground. Which is what we decided - no sense in destroying our legs if we didn't have to. 

Campground time in the rain and wind - as you can imagine - isn't super exciting - but we did have a couple openings to go on a sweet hike atop some cliffs above the lake we were camped at - and got most of a game of War in.  After that it was off to the tents - fixing tubes - reading - and sleeping.

Today looks fabulous - blue skies and a light breeze -- a tail breeze at that! And we're off.