Day 1

We left today at 10ish to go to Bowmanville for the first leg of our cross-Canada tour.
By 1:30 we had made it to Port Perry for some lunch at a chalet type restaurant where we had some decent sandwich and fries. Will forgot to tip the nice lady.
After lunch we set out for Bowmanville, with make shift google map instructions. As a result we ended up on a dirt/sand road and we had to walk the bikes for about 45 mins until we found a rideable road. When we got off of the dirt road we found out we were on the edge of Oshawa. After some Iphoning from Will we got new directions and set out again for Bowmanville. By this time it was about 3:30 (our original goal to get to Bowmanville by).
This may have been the most difficult part of todays trip because of the amount of incredibly large hills that we were not prepared for, so we ended up taking a few unplanned breaks.
Once we made it to the outskirts of Bowmanville the roads started to get flatter and smoother and we got to our destination pretty quickly. We reached Kim and Rons house at about 6 o'clock, only a few hours behind schedule. Dinner was waiting for us and now we're excited to relax, watch the hockey game and have a good nights sleep.
Thank you again to Kim and Ron for the hospitality, as it was much needed at the end of our first day.
Tomorrow we are biking about 110km to Belleville.
Highlight of the day: Seeing a mailbox that had the following painted on the side of it: NO PAPPERS!

The Plan

We're just days away from starting our journey across Canada, and we've decided to share with you our game-plan.

We'll be leaving from Richmond Hill/Aurora, Ontario on May 1st. We will be heading east until we get to St. John's NewFoundland. We'll then fly over to Victoria, British Columbia, and continue cycling eastward until we arrive back in Richmond Hill/Aurora. 

Here are a few highlights:

May 4th - Kingston

May 6th - Ottawa

May 9th - Montreal

May 13th - Quebec City

May 20th - Dalhousie (or we may go to Fredericton instead)

May 24th - Moncton

May 25th - Charlottetown

May 30th - Cheticamp (considered to have some of the best bike paths in all of Canada)

June 10th - St. John's, New Foundland

June 12th - Victoria, British Columbia

June 16th - Vancouver

June 18th - Squamish

June 26th - Jasper (the trail from Jasper to Banff is an early front-runner for "Highlight of the Trip")

June 30th - Banff

July 2nd - Calgary

July 8th - Saskatoon

July 16th - Winnipeg

July 23rd - Thunder Bay

July 30th - Sault Ste. Marie

August 5th - North Bay

August 7th - Bracebridge

August 9th - Aurora

This is how it has been planned, but we may take a few extra days off at various points in the trip.

We got business cards that have our website's URL, so we hope to be able to continue raising money for the First Nations Child & Family Caring Society while we're cycling from town to town. That URL again is: http://www.canadahelps.org/GivingPages/GivingPage.aspx?gpID=17127

We've got our bikes, now we just need our camping equipment and to tie a few more loose ends and we'll be good to go.

Harry insisted on holding this blank piece of paper

Getting Ready

We are delighted to announce that we have officially chosen the First Nations Child & Family Caring Society of Canada as the charitable organization that we will be fundraising for. Please feel free to visit their website (www.fncfcs.com) to learn more about the cause. In particular, please check out the Seven Ways to Make a Difference and Shannen's Dream, an initiative that we are especially happy to be contributing towards.

To donate, please go through our fundraising website right here. All of the funds will be going directly to the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada.

We have also set up a twitter account to keep you updated throughout our journey across Canada. Our Twitter handle is @WsdHjBikeCanada.