While the Confederation Trail provided a welcome respite from traffic, that freedom came at a tremendous cost. The Confederation Trail regularly crisscrosses roads and highways. At each crossing, barricades have been erected to keep cars and trucks from accessing the trail. A narrow gap remains open for pedestrians and cyclists to squeeze through. Unfortunately, the visionaries that established this wonderful corridor never accounted for what some cyclists would be lugging along with them. As a result, upwards of twenty times a day, we would engage in the task of dismantling our bicycle, lifting it over the barricade, carrying it across the road and reassembling it on the other side of the second barricade. We got to be pretty good at this. Occasionally we would time ourselves. Five minutes was typical. That certainly must have put us up there with the best of the voyageur moving companies of old. Wherever possible though, we would strive to avoid these dreaded portages. Sometimes it was simple. Sometimes we could just ride up onto a grassy lawn and skirt the gate. Other times, it was a little more sketchy. A trench or a small bush might cause us to stop and weigh our options. Unseen swamps and thorns would often make us regret our cavalier ways.
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