Every time I travel to Canada it turns out to be an adventure and this trip didn’t let down.
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Burns, Cyr, Colt from cylingdirt.org and myself all piled into my father’s Explorer for a weekend of racing north of the boarder. We left Yarmouth around 9:30am and headed north. I had to make a quick detour in Waterville to pick up Colt. From there we headed North West on route 201 to the Jackman, Maine border crossing. Let’s just say the border crossing didn’t go so well. I guess the Canadian police officer somehow scanned my passport incorrectly and his computer was informing him that I had quite the lengthy criminal record. I was first asked to pull to the side. Then two police officers came up to the car, asked everyone to get out. We were then instructed to empty our pockets. Colt had some purple pills that apparently show the plaque on your teeth when you chew them in his pockets, these didn’t go over so well with the police. I had a small rock in a plastic bag that Hattie gave to me. She said it will help me sleep well at night if I put it under my pillow. Again the police were not impressed with what they were finding. When the police moved on from searching our pockets into the car all they could find was bike equipment and more lycra than one could imagine. From there we were asked to go inside. Several minutes passed by and then some questioning began. I was the last to be questioned. Somewhere during my questioning the police officer did a double check. It was then that the idiot realized he was talking to Andrew Freye and not some Frederick guy. The police officer handed me all the passports and sent us off.
After a 90 minute scare of me thinking I wasn’t going to be able to make it to the race at all things started to go more smoothly. I was able to get in a lap Friday night before it got to dark to inspect the course. To my surprise the course was pretty much completely new this year! It is so nice to go to a venue and be surprised by a new course. Maybe someday the race promoters in the US will catch onto this fascinating idea of changing things up from year to year.
Saturday was another day of the usual, make it over the course for a few pre race laps, get in some leg openers and what not. Chris, Burns and I did go into downtown for lunch. Down town Baie Saint Paul is a really cool place. Tons of art galleries, restaurants, and shops are lined up right next to each other on a narrow street. We decided to hit up Joe’s Smoked Meat. I had no idea what I was ordering, but I figured it had to be some type of meat. To my surprise I was served a roast beef sandwich! The meat was incredible, it almost melted in your mouth it was so juicy. I will be sure it hit up Joe’s next time I am in the area.
Race day went really well for me. I had a second row call up and found myself lined up right behind Chris Snendon from the Kona Factory Team. Not too shabby. Right from the gun those Canadians were flying! These starts are insanely fast! Maybe too fast as my asthma kicked in. It wasn’t until the end of the first lap that I could use my rescue inhaler. After a few puffs of my inhaler in the feed zone I was ready to pick the pace back up. Snendon had put a 20-30 second gap on me during my brief slow down to use the inhaler. I wanted to close the gap, but for some stupid reason I didn’t. I guess I was being too conservative of pushing too hard to early in the race. I was afraid maybe my asthma would kick in again and hurt me even more. Any way you look at it I didn’t push hard enough, a group of 4 pulled away from a 20 second gap into a minute or two by the end of the race. On the bright side of things I was the top American in 12th place. I picked up some valuable UCI Points and even made some cash money!
The drive home went a lot better. We made a mandatory stop at Tim Hortins for a Turkey Bacon Sandwich, Chocolate Mile, and a Boston Crème donut! The border crossing even went smoothly. The American police officer was only concerned about us bringing fruit that we purchased in the US back into the US. I think we might have been stopped for maybe 4 minutes total. Never have I been through a border crossing as fast as that. From there it was smooth sailing all the way back to the 497. Now all I need to do is prepare to head back up to Canada for race #2 which is only six days after Baie Saint Paul!
