Get your heads out of the gutter…this is not that kind of post. It’s a description of life without sunshine on a bike tour. Well, at least the first week of it.

Before we move on, here are some acronyms needed for this post! PEI stands for Prince Edward Island. It’s a Canadian Province that is about 250 miles North and East of Maine. It’s so far East that we changed time zones into Atlantic Daylight time. And AIT stands for Adventures In Tandem. It’s Caren and Mike’s tandem-specific touring company that travels the world with ten couples at a time.

So, that being said, we just toured PEI for ten days with AIT. To say the weather was not fabulous would be an understatement. When it’s rainy and cool the pictures aren’t great for a few reasons – everything looks gray and I’m not having a good time (on the bike) so I don’t take the camera out to document my misery!

Our tour was like two distinct trips. The rainy, cold and gray (long and painful) part and the sunny and much warmer (way too short) thoroughly fun last two and a half days!

In a situation where you are on a tour, my good friend Mitzi would say “you just have to buck it up buttercup”. And so we did. We didn’t always do all the miles, but we did do all the rides, and of course we also ate all of the meals!

For the first wet week the average temps at ride times were probably just under fifty degrees, and at ride completions the temps were probably just over fifty degrees.

Here we are before our very first ride. Trying to represent but freezing and on the way to get some more layers on. Our jerseys won’t be seen again for a week as they will be underneath vests, wind jackets and rain jackets most of the time.

So here we are just six paragraphs into this post and you are tired of hearing me talk about the cold, and rain and blah, blah, blah. I’ll tone it down and get to more important stuff like the world famous PEI mussels and oysters!

About a third of our cycling was supposed to be on the Confederation trail. Its hardpacked gravel and riding on it in the rain (there I go again) turned into a slow, energy-sucking slog. Mike did end up reworking his routes so we could ride on the road with the very polite and considerate Canadian drivers.

PEI has a few things (other than seafood) in abundance. Lumber and potatoes (more on the taters a little later).

Happily, our planned beachside lobster bake was moved indoors as those blue skies didn’t last! There were people on this tour who never have eaten a whole lobster.

I’ll bet you didn’t know that PEI, Canada’s smallest province, produces one third of all the potatoes grown in country! We learned all about production at the Canadian Potato Museum of course!

PEI new potatoes are featured with our clams (local) and scallops (local and delish)!

One of the things we really liked about this tour was staying two nights in each of the hotels along the way. Loop rides on the second day could be easily modified (shortened) depending on moisture and temps. But now we were on the move again, heading to Dalvay By The Sea. It’s not a pretty day and I need emergency cheering up on the road…ICE CREAM!

According to Cows, they are the best ice cream in the world. They have a top-10 list of ice cream places of all time and we are pleased to find that we have been to three of them. My mood is lifted, and on this day we discover that Ross and Victoria ride our speed and are fun companions on the road. We go shopping at the Great Canadian Soap Company, spending $50 Canadian on good-smelling souvenirs. We are good for the Canadian economy.

About 10 miles later, our soap has hitched a ride to the beach on the north end of the island. Hurricane Fiona went through here last fall and there are still a lot of trees to clean up.

There were some delectable eats while staying at the Dalvay by the Sea.

On the left is a take on a seafood pot pie and on the right honey chicken with carrots and asparagus.

Coming up in our next post…spoiler alert: the sun WILL come out to end the tour and we will revel in it!

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