DAY ONE  Parc Olympic, Montreal, Quebec to Essex Junction, VT (109 miles)

Police escorts lead us out of the city through the crisp dawn. The sun was just starting to peek through as we owned the streets of old Montreal, taking all the lanes. It could've had a Critical Mass feeling, if it were not so early.

Once we cleared Montreal, the sunrise greets us as we wait for and cross over many bridges. The St Lawrence was a nice site…I'll have to visit this area again.

After we got out of the Montreal area, it was smooth riding southbound through Canada's heartland of wheat fields and monarch butterflies. The weather was comfortably cool with very clear skies. Canadian farmlands filled the landscape until we hit the US border.

I'm not sure where this outpost really is, but I would have to say that this is the most lax border patrol in the country. Notice the bike laying in the lane marked for automobiles. I'm not even sure if the border guards were packing any heat. I would tell you where this is, but that's confidential as a matter of national security (wouldn't want any terrorists to come through there).

Inside Vermont! The skies were still clear and kept that way for the whole five days of the ride. It certainly made finishing the first Century (nine miles over the 100-mark, actually) more pleasurable. Although… judging from the elevation map, today looked rather easy and flat, especially after training up in the hilly Marin and Petaluma areas.

I must confess that there were a couple of pesky stretches of road. It wasn't like in Marin where the hill is obvious and the mindset is ready for a rough climb. But out here, whew! I call them mystery hills. I would see on the map that an uphill slope was coming, but from my perspective on the bike I was on level countryside. Eventually I would notice that I was pedaling a lot harder than I should be on what seemed to be a flat road. Then I would start to realize that I was going up a hill.

Camp was set up at the farm with mobile shower trucks pumping out warm water. Dinner was eaten under a big tent with old friends and new friends that I had just met at the table.