Zero Days: St. John's, NFLD

Date: Friday, September 15, 2023-Thursday, September 21, 2023

Friday

I woke in St. John's still feeling tired, and once I stood up I realized just how much my legs ached.  But it was ok, because I didn't have to get on the bike and go again today.  It would be the first of many many days off!

I got up and spent the day with my hosts and good friends: Kate and Terry.  Which leads us to the last introduction we will make for this entire trip...

I met Kate in 2011 when we were both at the University of Calgary for our Masters degrees.  During my second summer living in residence one of the few people who also happened to be there for the summer was Kate and - despite being in different programs - we became fast friends.  After that year we stayed friends which is a bit of a miracle considering we've never lived in the same place since.  Credit here goes entirely to Kate who made sure to stay in touch and schedule video calls.  I was a willing participant, but I feel like she put in most of the leg work to make sure we remained in touch!  This is one of the many reasons I'm still friends with her today.  Others include her keen intellect, infectious enthusiasm, and a sense of humour that I can only describe as being both dark and upbeat at the same time.  Despite us both sharing a strong "climate anxiety" as we worry about what is happening to the planet, Kate's spirit remains a bright spark in what could otherwise be a dark and foreboding world.  It's that inherently happy and upbeat character that I always look forward to sharing time with on both calls and visits.  I think I fall victim to cynicism a lot, but Kate never does.  Despite all the jokes we make, I always feel there's an optimism there and so many times I have thought of Kate when things got dark or difficult.  

Also we share memes about Communism.

Kate's husband - and whole human being in his own right - is Terry (he's been looking forward to having that phrase applied to him).  And here again credit goes to Kate for making sure I got to know Terry.  Were it not for Kate making sure to include him in our video calls in those initial years after they met I wouldn't have had a chance to get to know him as well as I do today.  I remember those first few calls being awkward, but we managed to push through it.  After many years, many calls, many visits, and many shared interests I'm happy to say that Terry is more than just a friend by association!  Despite neither of us starting there, we're both computer science folks these days...and in case there's any sense of parity there I should say I have a lowly Bachelor's degree in the field and he's a professor on the subject at MUN!  You don't get to that level without being sharp as an old cheddar, but what's more is a kindness and social consciousness that is always looking to make the world a better place.  It's exceedingly rare in his profession.  There are plenty of people out there who make you think "this is why we can't have nice things" but Terry is the sort of person who makes me think that maybe we can.

I always have a difficult time writing these little odes because it never feels like I do them justice.  I don't think I can do it for Kate and Terry.  Like so many of you that I've written about along the way, they are good people who I would trust with my own life.  And I don't know how to capture it in writing.  But I'm sure if you met you'd like them too.  They're great.

The last time I had visited them here in St. John's was their wedding in 2017.

Kate and Terry were my final hosts for the trip, and they've been reading this blog and preparing for my arrival for months.  And it showed.  They'd clearly prepped all kinds of places for me to see and things to do.  They had a long list of bakeries, breweries, war memorials, libraries, parks, and sights to visit while I was in town.  I was exhausted from pushing across Newfoundland and would have been happy to lay in bed for an entire week, but knew that wasn't an option.  I wondered if this is what celebrities feel like: people being endlessly kind and trying to give you things.  I'd warned them before I arrived that I was likely to be tired and possibly not great company, but I did my best to be a good guest and take in the area.  And I'm happy I did!

Our first day started with breakfast - and because they know me well - it was oatmeal.  Except it was better than anything I'd made myself on the entire trip and a real treat! (turns out the trick is to make it with milk!)  We then visited the public library where I was able to get some blog posts done.

The A.C. Hunter Public Library - the main branch for St. John's - is surprisingly far out of downtown.  It's on the MUN campus (or maybe technically adjacent) and so doesn't feel too accessible without a car.  It's rather petite and about this I'd been warned by Kate, but I was still impressed.  What the St. John's Public Library lacked in size it made up for in services and curation.  This library was obviously staffed by lots of passionate librarians and staff.  There were all kinds of displays, setups, and services around.  The musical instrument library really stood out and felt appropriate for a culture where music is so important.  There was a floor for children that had lots of displays and recommended books.  Something that I'd never seen anywhere else were bags of books that you could take out and take to the cottage or on vacation with a curated collection of books inside on different topics.  As you probably know, I love a good public library...and St. John's really made sure to remind me that a library isn't just a building.  It's people helping people.  And they do it incredibly well here in St. John's!

After this we tried for lunch at a local spot that Kate and Terry were eager for me to try only to find that - of course - it was closed.  They could hardly believe it, but I told them to expect more of it with me in town!

Luckily we found a spot that WAS open and had some wonderful vegetarian food.  This was followed by a visit to a bakery where I had a sample platter of gelato.  This is something I wish more places had!  The flavours were scrumptious and I thought I'd make it back for baked goods, but it turns out St. John's has too many offerings!

We took it easy for the rest of the day and enjoyed each others company, catching up and enjoying a wonderful dinner!

Saturday

The majority of this day in covered in the previous post (found here).  This was the day I rode to dip my tire in the Atlantic to officially end the trip!

Later in the evening on this day we went to the home of some friends of Kate and Terry to play board games and drink beer.  While sitting and socializing and playing games I reflected on how normal it felt it be sitting around with people and enjoying one another's company.  It felt nice knowing that this was going to stop being a one off at various stops and become a more regular part of my life again.

Sunday

This was a big day out on the town!  We woke up, had breakfast, and had a slow morning.  Kate and I took a walk around noon to a local coffee shop - The Battery - that looked out over the harbour just off of Signal Hill.  The day was surprisingly warm but the coffee and pastries were top shelf!

In the afternoon we headed out by car to try out some breweries because the microbrewery craze has not missed St. John's!  The last time I was in this city there were two breweries, but now the city and surrounding towns are jam packed with them.  It was a tragedy of microbrewed riches!  Our first stop was nearby Quidi Vidi Brewing, located on a small inlet off the ocean known as "The Gut."  The water is walled on either side by steep cliffs and it feels almost like a tiny fjord.  The brewery is housed in a former fish plant and so sits right on the water.

It is one of the two breweries that existed when I first visited St. John's almost 7 years ago but I never got a chance to visit.  At that time it brewed about 5 beers that were all somewhat generic, but since that time has leaned into the craft beer scene and had some excellent offerings on tap.  We sat outside overlooking the water while a small group of musicians inside played accordions, violins, and guitars inside for a local jam session of traditional Newfoundland music!  It was all too perfect as the sun was shinning and the day was warm out on the patio.

From there we drove out to Conception Bay South.  In an attempt to be more hip and marketable, the town has branded itself as "CBS" and despite Terry and Kate's best efforts, I refused to call it this.  Just before arriving at the brewery in Conception Bay South we stopped at Berg's Ice Cream for a cone.  And it was very good.  It's the kind of place that's been around for maybe 50 years and makes 50 flavours of ice cream, and all of them are terrific.  Nothing pretentious like contemporary hipster ice cream shops.  It makes ice cream, milk shakes, sundaes, and banana splits.  This place IS your daddy's ice cream shop!

So good it was that I neglected to take any pictures...

From here we went to nearby Ninepenny Brewing.  A new brewery to the area - around 4 years old - the beers were good but nothing exceptional stood out.  This isn't uncommon for new breweries in my experience.  It can take years of experimentation before most breweries are able to make something worth coming back for.  But I'm always happy to try something new, and I was happy for the good company and the tasty suds!  I look forward to coming back the next time I visit St. John's to find out what they've figured out.

After this we headed back into St.John's and finally got to try out Nook and Cannery, a restaurant we had tried to visit two days earlier but it had been closed.  It was a relaxed diner setting in a comfortable space with a menu clearly designed by the chef.  Every dish was as well presented as it was prepared and nothing disappointed.  I enjoyed every minute we spent there!

From there we made our way back home and had another quiet evening.

Monday

This was a quiet day.  I spent most of the morning packing up my gear into boxes to have them shipped back to Quebec.  After dropping the boxes off at the post office, Kate and I went to a chocolate shop - Newfoundland Chocolate Company - where we enjoyed some excellent locally made chocolate and gelato!  In the afternoon we took a walk around Quidi Vidi Lake which is about 1.6km long and home to the Royal St. John's Regatta.  If you have never heard about it, the Regatta is a big deal in St. John's!  In fact, it's most likely the oldest annual sporting event in North America!  The weekend of the Regatta is basically a holiday weekend in St. John's.

We had a wonderful home cooked meal that night, and again stayed in and enjoyed one another's company.

Tuesday

This was a slightly busier day.  It started with breakfast and then I biked to Canary Cycles - a local bike shop - where they offer a service to box up bikes for people who need to fly with them.

I was pretty happy to avail myself of this service, as I had no idea what needed to be done to box a bike up.  I dropped the bike off with them on the promise of picking it up the next day, and walked over to another bakery I wanted to try out....but it was closed.  Just randomly, it happened to be closed that day.

And so I found another nearby that I had also been planning to try and made sure it was open before walking there.  The Postmaster's Bakery was without question the best bakery I tried in St. John's.  

I ate and it was incredible.  Everything under the case looked superb and it is a strong contender for best bakery of the trip.  Except...the person working the till made sure that I understood how unhappy he was serving me.  And I usually wouldn't remark about this, except that Kate later came in and had an interaction with him and had the same experience.  One of the reasons it was so noteworthy is that he had his back turned to the counter and was talking to the bakers.  He seemed genuinely happy and energetic when doing this, but when they pointed out to him that someone was waiting he turned around and it was like my presence drained all the happiness from his life.  The contrast was actually funny.  But when he kept that mood up for our entire interaction I felt like I had just ruined his entire day.  He then turned around and went back to being a happy human being.  So yeah....excellent bakery.  Unhappiest guy in St. John's working the till!

From here I went back to Kate's house.  Terry and I then walked to Memorial University where he is a professor of Computer Science.  The walk took us along some scenic pathways in St. John's.

He had meetings so I broke off and took the opportunity to check out the university library.  Memorial University - better known as "MUN" - looks to have largely been built in the 1960s because the brutalist influence is strong there.  And the Queen Elizabeth II Library was no exception.  Lots of exposed concrete!  The building looks like a giant set of stairs: flat on one side and climbing steps on the other.  The section with the "steps" shape is actually a giant reading room and silent work area.  It's all open with large windows to the outside and it was really wonderful.  The tradeoff is that the rest of the library gets very little light and so feels like a dark bunker (which is kinda is).  I spent some time in the bright and scenic open area working on blog posts while I waited for Terry's class.

I walked over and got to sit in on his lecture and relive the experience of learning some of the most difficult parts of computer science over again.  Kudos to Terry though, because he actually cares about teaching and it shows.  His lecture was well thought out and explained.  A lot of what he talked about required some background into how computer memory is used, and the students had a difficult time getting past this part.  It wasn't supposed to be the focus of the lecture, but they were nevertheless incredulous at how computers use memory.  It was funny to watch because I too remember a lot of those feelings and questions when I learned the topic.

From here Kate came to pick me up and we went for a walk in one of St. John's larger city parks: Bowring Park.  Kate directed me to a war memorial that she thought I might enjoy checking out, and sure enough she was right!  What I found was a creation of the monument at Beaumont-Hamel in France.  I've talked about it before, but Newfoundland was not a part of Canada in WWI or WWII and so has its own memorials for those wars.  It's most well known is in Beaumont-Hamel in France, the site of a battle in which 710 Newfoundlanders were killed or injured on the first day of the Battle of the Somme.  The statue of a caribou on a rock is iconic in Canadian history.  It turns out that this statue is rather recent, after it was realized that though there was a memorial in France...there was no equivilent in Newfoundland for the families to visit.  So this one was created and the names of the dead commemorated in bronze.  I still have no been to the memorial in France, but this definitely gave me a sense of it and it was beautiful.

From here Kate and I walked the park.

We went back to MUN to pick up Terry and went for dinner at a pub in St.John's.  We then went home and turned in for the night.

Wednesday

I haven't talked about it very much so far, but Terry is an excellent cook!  He runs the kitchen in their house and everything he makes is wonderful.  This morning he woke and baked scones for us, and they were really impressive!  I still think about them sometimes.  A big thank you to Terry for keeping me well fed the entire time I was there!

After breakfast I headed back over to Canary Cycles to pick up my bike.  Now all boxed up and ready to fly with me back to Quebec, I was JUST able to fit it in the trunk and get it back to Kate and Terry's place.

In the afternoon we headed out again for one last dinner before I was due to fly out the next day.  In a rather funny twist, it turned out that while the pub we were going to was open...the road to get there was closed.  So we ended up taking the long way but got to see some more of the area surrounding St. John's while we drove there.

I'm so happy we decided to go the long way and not turn around and go somewhere else.  The Post Taphouse sits on a bluff overlooking Torbay Bight which feeds out into the Atlantic Ocean.  As the sun set we were treated to golden hour overlooking the bay and watched as the waves pounded against the shore sending up thunderous sprays of white.  Just before us on the bluff were two horses grazing on grass.  The entire time I was there I just kept wondering what I'd done to deserve such a spectacular view and in such wonderful company.  It was so picturesque that it was difficult to believe it was really happening at times.

After dinner we drove up to Signal Hill where we just caught the sunset.  Twilight settled in as we stood on that historic outlook with the city on one side and the Atlantic Ocean on the other.  It was a beautiful scene and I was happy we made it up there.  The views this evening were second to none!

We then went back home and I packed and prepared to leave the next morning.

Thursday

My flight was early.  And Kate and Terry being the wonderful people they are...they drove me to the airport.  I said my goodbyes.  The final goodbyes of the trip.  The last time I would be parting from friends on this ride.  And it was another tough one...not knowing when I'll be back or see them again!

I can't thank Kate and Terry enough for hosting me for an entire week.  I was so happy to spend time with them again and look forward to seeing them again (hopefully soon!).

My bike was checked just like you would a piece of luggage.  My destination was Montreal but - paradoxically - this required I fly first to Toronto...which meant I flew over Montreal!  When the plane came out of the clouds over Toronto the reality of what was happening hit me.  I was back in Ontario.  Back in Toronto.  I could see Lake Ontario below me.  I had been here two months previous.  In only three hours I had returned.  Not only the speed, but the sensation of having gone backwards!  Since June 1st I had only gone in one direction: East.  To have traveled a great such a great distance in so little time was definitely mind boggling...but to be BACK in a place I'd visited once in the trip was jaring!

I caught my connection to Montreal a few hours later and waited at the baggage check for my boxed up bicycle.  When it arrived, I found my sister and mother who had driven into the city to pick me up.  We hugged and then drove from Montreal back to Magog - a distance that had taken Skipper and I and entire day to cover - in just over one hour.  Again it was the feeling of being cheated.

I found myself back at my parents home that evening.  And the trip was finally over.  After just over four months...I was home.