Rest Day - Moncton

Rest day in Monkey-town.

Nice sunny day, not too hot.

A good day to relax and do a few errands. First on the list – fix the dish on the wheel. That turned out quite well. I guessed by how much I had to shift it over, and it turned out excellent when I tried the wheel at home. Lucky. I did get a chance to see a bit of the Tour at the bike shop.

Afterwards, Paul-Rene and I went to a few spots to see what can be done about a broken part on his mast. He also took me to his sailboat – nice little “beaut”, a twenty-footer.

Lunch was at the bottling part of The Pump House brewery. Moncton's oldest micro-brewery (circa 1999), as it's the only one that basically got started here. Side note – Pizza Delight was started here. The owner of it now owns the chain of Mike's restaurants, and the Baton Rouge chain too. Impressive for this little town. On the menu for today: “The burger that ate Moncton”, which consists of a 6 oz beef patty, topped with chipotle rib meat, fried onions, cheese, and bacon. Very tasty. Sweet potato fries (huge) was my side dish. Paul had the “messed-up poutine”, which is a regular poutine (with two types of cheese), and the rib meat on top. It definitely looked “messed-up”. Pics don't look too appetizing. Yes, beer was the beverage of choice.

After a bit more running around for more parts for his boat, we then headed home for a little breather. Near 6 o'clock, we headed downtown to check out these tides. Since a ritzy part of the city built a lake, and had a sort-of damn put in years ago, it screwed up the tides. Now, only a foot of water comes in (compared to the 6-10 feet as before). So, for a period of 20 minutes, we watched maybe a foot or so of water rushing in. It's neat to see a small, slow wave coming in, but it wasn't what I was hoping for. I guess I'll have to see Hopewell Rock in the Bay of Fundy to see the World's biggest tides. Those puppies, I hear, are huge.

Afterwards, since I had too many things to do, I decided not to join Paul-Rene and Mel to a BBQ. This way, I could go to the Pump House downtown (again) for more brewskies and a meal, spend some time at the car show, spend some time at their place to get “pretty” (hair cut, pluck the mono-brow), laundry, drink more beer, pack, and maybe go to bed early. The latter didn't happen. It is currently a quarter to 1, and I am almost done my work (just blog stuff to do, and upload the pics).

Since I am in NB, and it's my last day, I had to sample the big beers from here. I went to the liquor store to get two specific beers – Moosehead, and Alpine. I've never had the latter. Let's just say that Moosehead is the “good stuff”, and Alpine (also made by Moosehead) is the “ok stuff”. The teenagers drink Alpine, and the adults drink Moosehead. So, I purchased them both, plus another one I wasn't aware – Picaroon's blonde ale, from Fredericton. After coming home from the Pump House and sampling good beer, tasting the Alpine wasn't good. I didn't know if I could drink more than a few “tastes”, but I was a trooper and “got the t-shirt”. I decided not to tap into the Moosehead (500ml), and just go for the Blonde Ale. Oh, that was nice. Mmmmm.

Oh, Pump House. I almost forgot. Every beer is tasty, but I preferred the SOB (special old bitter, I believe it is called), and the Scotch Whiskey Ale. The Cadian Cream Ale (name is a mix of Canadian and Acadian) was quite good, and so was the blueberry ale (with blueberries in it). The stout was quite light. IPA and Wheat are good, they get a passing grade. Meal: the chipotle burger (includes cheese, ranch dressing) with a Caesar salad. Starters were Pepperoni poppers (fried pepperoni chunks with a honey/plum dipping sauce). On top of the tasters, I had another Scotch Whiskey Ale. Desert – I decided to do it again. The white-chocolate blueberry cheesecake was the choice. Very very good.

Alright, that was basically my day. Not a lot of things done, but somehow I still manage to use many words to describe my day. Tomorrow, I have a guide to lead me out of NB – Marcel. He resides in Ottawa, but originates from Dieppe (Moncton). He will ride with me to the Confederaton Bridge (an engineer masterpiece), where I will take the shuttle (can't ride on the 13 km bridge, except for on Canada Day). I should be in Charlottetown at night, the town where our confederation was created (thus tbasically the start of our country).

So, signing off. Poca.

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(updated from Charlottetown, PEI, on the 12th of July).