Skynet

Day 19

Shediac, NB

Distance traveled: 482.6 km

Cumulative distance: 2,509.6 km

Temperature range: 19 - 21

Top speed: 126 kph

We had decided to stay two nights in Shediac to be close to Nan's beach, amongst other things. At the time, I was thinking that we could have an easy day today then get back to the hard riding tomorrow. We had had a long day yesterday, which made it easier to plan for relaxed day.

What we had abandoned was a night on PEI. Even though there was lots of availability, many places have already shut down for the season, or perhaps permanently, as they looked really closed. However, my thinking was that we could ride around the west end of the island then tomorrow ride over the east end then take the ferry on our way to our next destination.

Well, we achieved half of that plan today but there will be no further half tomorrow as we rode two days worth today. At least, for us. It is not like the olden days when we didn't really think that much about riding a 500 km day; we considered a 450 km day the "sweet spot" when touring. However, by the time we were done today, we were really done. Tired, sore and cranky. Tomorrow, we will omit the second half of the PEI ride and make a more leisurely pace to Antigonish. Not to say we will ride straight there, we will look for the interesting roads after 2 1/2 hours of slab today but we will not be riding over the bridge or back on the ferry.

There is nothing close to our motel for breakfast except the gas station across the street so we just drank our motel coffee. I was trying to use ChatGPT, the forerunner to Skynet, to plan a route for the day. I made a few attempts and while I think it has promise, we were ultimately a little disappointed with the results. On my first attempt, it looked pretty good. I asked for: "a motorcycle trip of six hours starting and ending at {our location} to Prince Edward Island west of Charlottetown emphasizing areas of natural beauty or historical significance". We got a plan that guided us to some nature parks, lighthouses, places to take pictures and even included a timed (30 minute) stop for lunch. What I failed to ask for was route guidance on Google Maps so as I tried to transpose that data into Google Maps, I lost it. Ok, so I re-entered the exact same information and got a confused trip, with a link to copy into Google Maps, that included a trip to see an old house in Charlettetown, the farm that inspiried Anne of Green Gables, a warning that six hours might not be enough and that we should leave early. No suggested break for lunch. So I asked it to remove Charlottetown, the Green farm and add some stops on the coast. When I entered the link into Google Maps, at first glance, it looked pretty good. Nan said "lets just go and do what we usually do" which is basically figure it out as we go on faith that we will see something interesting if we just pick "interesting looking" roads.

We were on the bike by about 9:40 am with only a single coffee to sustain us. Even though it looks on the map like PEI is pretty close to Shediac, It was all of an hour and a quarter by the time we had crossed the Confederation Bridge and an hour and a half before we found a decent spot to get another coffee and something to eat, which was in Sumerside. Plus, even though it was 19 degrees, it felt much colder and we had a chill when we sat down for breakfast. We both held our hands around our coffee cups.

Back on the road, I noticed that Stop 1 was going to require us to double back to hit Stop 2 and we were already closer to Stop 2 than Stop 1 so I just decided to hit Stop 2 first. In hindsight, that was probably a mistake. If you don't use Google Maps, you might not know that it doesn't take kindly to doing things out of order. It always wants you to go to the next location as it appears on the list so even though we were at Spot 2, a dramatic lighthouse on the south shore, seen at 12:33 on the route tracker, Google Maps was doing everything it could to steer us away from that spot and get us to Stop 1 and the route continued to show us due to return to this spot. It somehow just didn't occur to me to follow the instructions. We got going again, and I was able to cancel Stop 1 so I have no idea what we missed. We went on to Stop 3, which was quite a pretty ride and off the industrial superhighway that bisects northern PEI from sourthern PEI. We get to what I think is a provincial park but is really just a campground. We rode all the way around expecting to see something interesting but the only thing we saw that we liked was a wild fox. Pretty disappointing, not counting the fox. The next spot was further up the coast but it too was a campground, though not quite as interesting as the last one so we were only there for a minute. Even though not on the plan, we rode all the way to the northern tip of the island to North Cape, the location of a fairly large wind turbine farm, complete with an interpretive centre, a restaurant that did not open in 2025, a gift shop, a 150 year old lighthouse and some displays outside of the main building. One display described the attempted rescue by two U-boats of German naval officers planning to escape from a POW camp near Fredeicton, NB. One sub was lost and the other waited for days at North Cape for the escapees however, none showed. On the display, the plan was described as "Operation Elster" however, Wikipedia disputs the display. However, i did find this story online, which corroborates the facts as displayed at North Cape. Click here for the story. Another post described the Ghost Ship of Northumberland Strait, a three masted schooner eternally sailing while on fire north of PEI.

We had a walk around the facilities but it was 3:30 by this time and it was going to be a 2 1/2 hour ride back to the motel so we omitted the interesting side of the north part of the island and just bee-lined back. We both whined that it was too much riding for one day but i think we could have alleviated some of our problems by getting off the bike more.

In any event, I don't foresee Skynet becomine "self aware" anytime soon since it can't even guide us in a logical order. I wouldn't worry too much about missles, at least, from Skynet at this point.

We made one more stop on the way back: Parlee Beach. Even though we were dog tired and hungry, we really wanted to get over to the beach because of the name significance. Even though Nan's family did originate from the Maritimes, at this stage there is no evidence that the beach was named after a relative of Nan's. However, it was interesting to be there nonetheless.

Turbine blades, waiting after crossing the bridge to PEI.

I presume they were headed to North Cape but there are other wind turbines on the island.

The Confederation Bridge is really a marvel of engineering. 12.9 km long, it is the world's longest bridge where the water turns to ice in winter. Piles are up to 35 metres water depth and are buried to bedrock.