Friday, Day 54, London to Hamilton

This morning, the sweep crew decided to plug 2 - 4 slot toasters, and 3 coffee pots into the same outlet.  For some reason, none of them worked after a few seconds. Anyway, we had 4 stops to make at local churches today, so food certainly wasn't a problem. The route started out hilly as soon as we left London and continued for the first 15 miles.  Our first stop was less then 20 miles from London, and when we arrived, we found tables loaded with sub-sandwiches , baked goods and of course, Tim Horton coffee.  When we left our route took us down a quite county road, past several farm  houses , one with a lady mowing the yard. As we went past the house, a German Shepherd and a black, half breed lab came charging onto the road, chasing after us . Joy and Rick got past fine, but as I was passing, the black dog ran across the road in front of me and hit my front tire, knocking me over.  I went down pretty hard, landing on my elbow and shoulder.  My handle bars bent when they hit the pavement,  my handlebar wrap tore, and my front brakes also bent. After fixing my bike, yelling at the lady about her stupid dogs,  we left again. But as the day went on, my shoulder started hurting more.I don't think that anything is broken and  I'm hoping that tomorrow, it'll be feeling well enough  to ride. Joy and I have ridden every mile so far, and we don't want to take a sag ride this close to the end.

Later in the day, as we rode through the town of Brantford, we found that many of the stores were closed and boarded up. Brantford has a European feel to it, with narrow streets and buildings right together. In spite many of the buildings empty and boarded up, the town if neat and well maintained.  

Our stop for the night is at Redeemer University Collage , which is Canada's version of Dordt or Trinity Collage in the U.S. It's a small Christian Collage with only about 600 students on campus. However, it's very modern and well kept, and the churches here are very proud of it. 

Tomorrow we have a short day of only 46 miles, and we've heard that we have 5 church stops to make. I'm afraid that we are going to leave Canada much heavier then when we came.

Doug and Joy