I have uploaded several pictures that Dave Unrau took at the O-Cup in Albion Hills last weekend. With his permission, I uploaded a few of his photos of us and friends to the Spring 2008 Photo Album. There are great shots of me, Juliette, Tecla, Mari, Dave, Jennie and Eva. Check them out.

If you want to see more pictures from the race, check out Dave’s photo album with hundreds of great shots from the race.

I have also uploaded a video that I took from the race and I have found another video on YouTube of a younger category. It has more of the singletrack sections, so it is fun to watch.

Thanks to Dave for taking the photos and for letting me upload these great shots.

Juliette and I raced the 2nd race in the O’Cup series yesterday at Albion Hills. I didn’t enjoy the first O’Cup race, but I decided to give it a second chance. This race had even more of what I don’t like and my heart wasn’t in it. There is way too much double track and not enough technical for me.

I did have my video camera mounted on my seatpost though and got some good footage of the first 15 minutes of the race until the lens got covered in mud. I have condensed the video down to about 3 minutes of fast double-track and a bit of twisty single-track. It makes for a fun watch.

Juliette did amazing as always, finishing 5th in her category. I managed a respectable 6th against a strong field. We are now back to training for the 24 hour and are looking forward to our first long race, the Opus Epic 8 Hour Spring Relay in two weeks.

I am experimenting with a new feature for the site that allows me to upload the GPS files from our rides and display a map on the site. This is the ride we did last Thursday that I took the video on.

For those people with GPS’s, you can download the GPX file linked below the maps and upload them to your device if you want to ride the same course. Maybe this belongs on the Team Wanderlust site, but I think its cool. What do you think? Please let me know in the comments.

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I added two new photo albums to the gallery tonight. One is of various pictures that we have been taking this spring. So far, it includes some pictures from the Paris to Ancaster race and from the first Ontario Cup race in Mansfield at the end of April.

If you haven’t seen it yet, Juliette wrote a great race report on the Paris to Ancaster and another on the O-Cup.

The second album is from my surprise 40th birthday party at the beginning of the month. All of the pictures were taken by Tecla, so a big thanks go out to her for all the great shots.

It was a wonderful party and it was great to see everyone. I must say, I was quite surprised at how many people came so far out of their way for my party. I really appreciated it. Thanks.

Steve, Terry and the Collingwood crew gave me a GoPro video camera for my birthday, so I have been experimenting with different ways of using it. Last Thursday, I mounted it to the seatpost of my mountain bike while Tim, Juliette, Amanda, Trevor and I rode at Hilton Falls.

It was dark and rainy on Thursday, so I didn’t expect great pictures, but they turned out, so I edited down the video and posted it on YouTube.

What do you think? Like it? Want to see more? Let me know in the comments.

Juliette and I are home safe and sound. We are having a bit of trouble adjusting to the idea of working and snow, but all is well. We both wrote daily about our trip when we were down there, so we will be posting that to the site as we get it typed in.

Update: I have started typing in my journals, so check below.  Each day will appear posted at the date I originally wrote the journal as I get it typed in.

Update: The journals are slowly getting typed in. Only seven days left. The photos are all in the gallery now, although they aren’t captioned. Head over and check them out.

Update: I have finally finished typing in all of my journals for the trip. It only took me two months! If you are interested, the easiest way to read them all is on the page I have created for the bike tour. It has a list of all the pages in chronological order and will hopefully eventually have more general information on touring in Cuba.

I don’t do tourist very well. I think it is because I am so easily bored. I see other sitting in the cafés all day drinking coffee in the morning, then beer for the rest of the day. They just watch the people come and go. I try it, but I get restless and leave after one drink.

We spent the day walking around the city seeing the sites, checking out the shops and wandering the streets. We have past the point in this vacation where your mentality shifts and you switch into going home mode.

By 3pm, we are done, head back to the casa, call a taxi and are at the airport before four. It is still four hours until our flight, but it is quiet and we can sit and read in peace without someone asking us for a handout every five minutes.

We are first in line to check in, then head for the passport control. I pass through quickly, but Juliette didn’t come through. I wait and wait wondering what to do. I am beginning to get a bit frantic when she finally comes through. The officer didn’t want to let her through because she didn’t have here Canadian Citizenship card. It took a fair amount of pleading before he finally let her through.

Back in Canada, immigrations and customs wasn’t a problem. We dug out as many warm clothes as possible, then headed out into the snow to find our van and head home.

We had been planning on staying at the resort until lunch, but we woke up restless and missing our bikes, so we packed our panniers and were on the road for Holguin by 9:30.

The ride passed quickly with a tailwind and beautiful scenery. Steep cliff topped mountains dotted the landscape and the terrain rolled enough to keep the riding fun, but not overly hard. We rode through the east side of Holguin to see the Plaza de la Revolution and the monument to Che Guevara. We then rode south out of town to the Villa Miradore Maybe for a nice lunch overlooking the city.

Back in Holguin, it was harder than we expected to find a free casa. Luckily, we stopped at the one recommended in the guidebook and they called around to all the casas that they knew until they finally found one that had a room. The owner then grabbed his bike and rode over to the casa with us.

Our room is in a nice house, but the family are very cold and unhelpful. They also don’t offer dinner or breakfast like all the other places have. It is a room though, so we are happy.

We spent the afternoon wandering around Holguin trying to find cardboard boxes to pack our bikes. The great box hunt proved to be more of a challenge than we expected. The problem with Cuba is that it is so clean and there is nearly no garbage anywhere.

We found one small box witha few rocks in it. We couldn’t figure out where to dump the rocks, so we tried to put them in a garbage can in the town square. Wrong! One of the women that keeps the square clean was immediately upon us giving us hell for our transgression. We scurried away with our tails between our legs while she fished the rocks out of the garbage can. We haven’t been back to that corner of that square since.

We went in several stores asking for cardboard, but were turned away. We found another small piece of cardboard on the street, then later, out of sheer desperation, we paid a bar tender one peso for one of his beer boxes.

Our quest complete, we returned to the case to disassemble the bikes and pack them down for the flight home tomorrow. Handlebars, derailleurs, chains, seat posts and wheels were removed, then everything was bound into as small a package as possible. We then took the boxes, wrapped the chainrings and put a piece of cardboard on each side of our bikes like a pretend box. An entire roll of packing tape, some zip ties and we were done.

Now the sun has set and we are sitting under a roof of vines and flowers drinking beer and making up stories about the people at the other tables.

We were up and by the pool drinking coffee by seven this morning. During these weeks of riding, I have settled into the rhythm of the sun, rising and setting each day like one of its disciples.

A buffet breakfast, a swim in the sea, worshipping the sun; leisurely days in a place like this pass so quickly and everything begins to blur together. It is not for me, already I am feeling restless and miss my bike.

I was at the front desk promptly at eleven to find out our fate. Would we be moving on, or could we rest for the remainder of the day? A couple in front of me was begging for a room, but were turned away because they are fully booked. I stepped forward expecting the worst. I asked for another day as nicely as I could in Spanish. Maybe I flirted a bit, because she rolled her eyes and said that she would see what she could do.

She headed into the back to talk to the manager, then returned many minutes later with a smile on her face and good news. We could stay, but just for one more day.

I think that only the manager has the authority to release the spare rooms. If you can get the clerk to take pity on you and argue your case with their manager, you can sometimes get in.

We spent the afternoon reading, swimming, sailing and having the odd cocktail, then retired to our room to dress for dinner and unwind from a tough day of leisure.

Last night in the square in Banes, we met an American with a touring bike. He was big, loud and Texan. He didn’t want to hear anything about the road ahead or our story, he only wanted to forcefully regale us with his epic stories of his tour so far, his bike and his mishaps.

He had already done the tour from Havanna to the western end of the island. Halfway through, his rear rim cracked and he couldn’t get a replacement. He left his bike there, caught a cab back to Havanna, then a plan back to Texas via the Caymens and bought a new wheel at his local bike shop. He then turned around and headed all the way back to continue his tour!

Once he completed the western tour, he caught a flight from Havanna to Holguin to begin the eastern tour that we are doing, only in the opposite direction. I looked at his rear wheel with a 700×23 road racing tire and didn’t have the heart to tell him how bad the roads ahead were, not that he would have heard because he had seen it all.

He said that he had planned on staying in Guadalavaca that night, but that all the hotels were booked up. With this thought weighing us down, we set off early once again so that we could make it to Holguin if we ran into the same luck.

The ride out of town was beautiful with the sun rising behind us and casting a rich orange light on everything. The road went north through rolling hills and lush bananna groves. By eight thirty, we had reached the high point in the center of this part of the island and were flying down the hills towards the coast laughing with the joy of it.

By nine thirty I was standing in the lobby of the first hotel in Guadalavaca; they were booked solid. The same thing was repeated at every hotel along the coast and we were soon on the road again for Playa Esmeralda. We received the same response at all the hotels there and began steeling ourselves for the ride to Holguin.

We have both worked so hard getting around the island and we were so looking forward to a few days at a resort. Having the final reward of the best beaches in Cuba denied us was hard to face. We tried to look on the bright side though, we could continue our tour a bit and see more of the country.

We discussed our options as we turned off the main road again 15 km later at Playa Pequero. The first hotel gave us the expected answer and we moved on to the second. At Blau Costa Verde, the clerk said he wasn’t sure if they had anything because they were booked, but that he would check with his manager. He went into the back and came out with good news, they could give us a room for at least one night.

Even though all the hotels are fully booked by tour groups, they keep a few rooms available in case there are problems with a guests room and they need to be switched. I think we were either there at the right time of the day, or they took pity on us.

Juliette was outside watching the bikes. She looked like she had lost her puppy as I tried to look unsuccessful. When I finally told her that we had a room, she jumped up and down laughing and yipping like a little girl who got a pony for her birthday.

We spent the afternoon swimming in the Caribean, drinking the complimentary drinks, watching all the people, reading and just relaxing. We will see what tomorrow brings.