A Siege in Huron County
"People asked how I could possibly ride that much distance in a week. The answer is: I don’t. No one does. You ride one pedal stroke at a time."
A field report from the Eurotrip 400
June 19, 2025
Somewhere after Paris but before Brussels, I lost feeling in my hands. This wasn’t alarming. Everything else had already gone: feeling in my toes, sense of humor, basic reasoning skills. I stopped pretending my shell was waterproof. It wasn’t. The wind was howling like it had a personal vendetta against cyclists, and I was rationing optimism as if it were my last Clif bar.
Welcome to the Eurotrip 400.
Fred had designed the route by stitching together a patchwork of southwestern Ontario towns named after European capitals: Paris, Lisbon, Dublin, Brussels, Zurich, and London. A tour of Europe by way of Huron County. Our mission was to ride 400 kilometers, take photos at each town sign, and ideally do it before our bodies filed a formal complaint.
The first 100 kilometers were glorious. We had a tailwind that could have pushed a toddler uphill on a tricycle. Spirits were high. Paris was calling. I posted my best 100K time ever, which had less to do with personal fitness than meteorological luck. Everyone’s a hero with a tailwind.
A dozen of us arrived at the Paris control grinning and giddy, then promptly descended on a small convenience shop and cleaned them out of their Gatorade. The owner stood behind the counter blinking, surrounded by polite strangers dressed like traffic cones, inhaling snack bars like it was a coping strategy.
Then we turned north for the long climb to Brussels into the wind.
Now, I’ve ridden in headwinds before. What randonneur hasn’t? But this was biblical. Sustained 40 km/h with gusts to 75. That’s not a weather report. That’s a siege.
That’s when Tim, Fred, and Brenda proposed we ride audax style.
Audax (noun)
/ˈɔː.daks/
- A form of group cycling where riders maintain a steady pace together, rotating briefly through the front to share the wind.
- A noble and doomed attempt to form a peloton out of people who avoid pelotons.
To everyone’s credit, we tried to ride audax. But randonneurs are a bit like cats on bikes. Kind, considerate cats, but still: cats. Some weren’t familiar with group rotation in a paceline or were out of practice. And every time we started to get the hang of it, wind gusts would punch through the peloton like a toddler through a Lego tower.
Then came the rain.
Not dramatic, cinematic rain. Not even satisfying rain. Just steady, sulking rain, the kind that slowly seeps into your will to live. I hadn’t packed proper rain gear (again). Just a glorified shell, which by kilometer 140 was clinging to me like a damp regret.
The temperature dropped to nine degrees, and for six hours we soldiered on: soaked, frozen, tired, and slightly demoralized. It was, if I’m honest, some of the hardest riding I’ve ever done. But also some of the best.
People asked me before Devil’s Week how I could possibly ride that much distance in a week. The answer is: I don’t. No one does. You ride one pedal stroke at a time. You plan ahead, sure. Pack rain gear (or don’t). Study forecasts. Build an audax paceline fantasy in your head. But when the wind comes, or the rain, or the existential dread at kilometer 237, what matters is being in the moment. Not anticipating the pain. Not rehashing the forecast. Just riding.
Tim said it best, early in the day: “Watch, we’re making all these plans for the segment to Brussels, and it probably won’t even be a big deal.”
He was, of course, wrong. Catastrophically wrong.
But he could have been right. And that’s the point.
By the time we rolled into Brussels, damp, depleted, and slightly delirious, the storm was spent. The rain stopped. The wind faded. Somewhere beyond the control point, the road tipped gently downward, and the stars came out. We still had nearly 100 kilometers to go, but something had changed. The ride felt possible again.
And for the final stretch, we glided silently toward London, tired but intact. There is a special kind of grace in surviving a ride that should have broken you. It doesn’t make you stronger, necessarily. But it gives you stories.
And sometimes, that’s enough.