Back To Work

We had a fantastic short break in Florida with my sister Karen, her three children, Hamani, Hala and Mimi and my mum.  It was hard work, of course, walking for miles around theme parks but it was lots of fun.

 

Here is a pic of Hamani, Mimi and Hala standing outside our summer Florida apartment.

The journey back to Toronto was a marathon courtesy of US Airways. Flying from Orlando at 10am we had a connecting flight in Washington at 3pm. However, we arrived at Washington to find our flight cancelled due to 'air traffic congestion'.  When I enquired at the US Airways desk about a later flight they said they had rebooked us on the 7am (next day) flight from New York over 200 miles away. Absolutely unbelievable!  Who on earth in US Airways thinks that is a suitable alternative?  The lady at the desk was apologetic that she couldn't magic new planes out the sky and the supervisor was completely indifferent. Anyway to cut a long story short we managed to get our flight transferred to Air Canada leaving at 6pm. I can be very persuasive sometimes :) Unfortunately that plane was delayed by weather but we eventually arrived at our Toronto hotel at 2am. 

Today we walked to several bike shops in Toronto looking for an oil change kit for the Rohloff gears. Should be an easy buy I thought in a big city like Toronto.  However, there are so many bike shops nowadays that really are nothing more than bike 'fashion shops'. They really don't know much about bikes but they can sell you the latest bike or this seasons' fashion. It's not just in Toronto we have found this - Jasper was worse.  You can't beat your local bike shop with staff who know their stuff. Thankfully we eventually found a local bike co-op and bought the oil, break pads and new Schwalbe tyres. So tomorrow we will pick up the bike from storage and do the necessary maintenance. 

Then it's back off on our journey to St John's. 2000+ km to go. Should be easy shouldn't it?