July 31, 2024. St-Augustin-de-Desmaures to Deschambault-Grondines

 Leaving our Warm Showers Hosts’ House

 Today it was supposed to rain so we decided to do a smaller day of 37 miles. We did have light rain on-and-off all day; if not light rain then it was cloudy and very humid. Kay had felt a weird sensation in her bicycle seat a couple times when starting out from a stop. When we stopped at a beautiful small park, we discovered that part of Kay’s lawn-chair-like seat was broken. With a combination of hose clamps, strips of a plastic bottle duct-taped together and some nails, Jim was able to make a splint (notice use of medical skill!). So far the repair has worked for 10 miles. With fenders from milk bottles & siding, and now this, Kay’s bike has a menagerie of odd parts holding it together. We got the nails from a maintenance worker for the village of Portneuf, Quebec who showed up to work on a leak in the park’s restrooms. He was a very friendly person who searched his truck for something to help us out after the self-tapping screws Kay found along the roadside weren’t long enough. 

    I6n the same town we went out on a pier which had a marina at the end which enclosed in high walls of piled big rocks. We ate lunch at a small restaurant and had smoked meat sandwiches which were very good. We thought it also included fries and salad with the sandwiches but when it came no fries we were puzzled. The way we think it turned out was that it included a very small cole slaw, so when we were stumbling along ordering (the waitress knew about as much English as Kay knew French) and emphasized salad, she gave us a much bigger (delicious!) larger tossed salad instead of fries. After trying to ask why no fries and getting the above explanation (we think), a little later she showed up with a plate of fries for us at no additional cost; we appreciated her kindness.

    We just had gotten one bike through the door into our motel room and it started to pour, so we were grateful we were not still on the road. 

  The motel had an attached restaurant, so we ate dinner there and enjoyed watching some of the Olympics while we ate—we got to see the women’s triathlon.