With all my bike touring gear packed up in cardboard boxes, I was off to SFO to catch my plane to Canada. After some faff checking in my previously-used camp stove, I was waiting on my red-eye flight to Toronto. A quick layover later and after a bit of a delay, I was off again for Charlottetown, the capital of the Canadian province of Prince Edward Island.
On landing, I got to experience my first Airbus A320 U-turn, as the plane did a 180 on the runway to taxi back up to the airport terminal. Disembarking by staircase to the tarmac, I found the airport full to capacity with Canadian vacationers!
I found my brother, Chris all ready to go, with his bike all together and loaded up. This was great! Now to get my bike re-assembled and geared up!
What a pain in the neck it was to get my bike assembled! All the extra doohickeys on my fancy touring bike made it a nightmare, and I had taken my bike much further apart than Chris had when he had his disassembled at a bike shop. Bleh. We were easily in the airport an hour after the last passengers from my flight had left. Without Chris’s help, I’d probably still be in the airport wrenching on my bike!
We left our bike boxes with the super-nice people at the airport to pick up when we complete the trip. With bikes assembled, we made the short ride from the airport to the Confederation Trail to ride downtown to our hotel.
Now for a quick history lesson on Canada, Charlottetown and PEI. For those that don’t know, Canada is a confederation of the remaining British colonies of North America (after we all know what happened to the 13 colonies to the south). Confederation of the colonies of Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Ontario and Prince Edward Island (PEI) to form Canada was first conceived of in Charlottetown with the Charlottetown Conference of 1864. PEI eventually held out when the Canadian Confederation was formalized in 1867, and didn’t join the rest of Canada until 1873 when the Canadian government agreed to provide year-round ferry service to the island, even in the frozen seas of winter! That said, PEI is fond of referring to lots of things here as Confederation-this and Confederation-that, and just know that it’s not the Confederation you’re thinking of, it’s Canadian Confederation! Now, with that out of the way…
After arriving at the hotel, we decided to go drum up some food at a local establishment, and boy does Charlottetown not disappoint. Within a 10 minute walk, we had our choice of pubs, wood-fired pizzarias and fine seafood. Of course, we went straight to the pub and enjoyed some fine local brews!
With beer in our bellies, and our spirits a little lighter, we rode out to the grocery store and camping store to get food for tomorrow’s journey. The red-eye flight, 4-hour time change and looming 100km (65mi) had us in bed pretty early. Tomorrow would be journey from Charlottetown to PEI’s second-largest city, Summerside!