Big Agnes

Top Five Things I Learned While Biking Across Canada

2008-04-29T13:55:00.000-07:00

I woke up today and realized it was Tuesday and that--hey!--I have a job and I AM ON DEADLINE in a very serious way. So, uh, I'm here to procrastinate! I kinda forgot about my writing job because there was a pause in the action, so I did a week of cushy temping instead (my hours were noon to five(!) and all I did was play Scrabulous while babysitting a phone that rarely rang) and somehow my brain preferred to believe the cushy reality was my permanent reality and, thus, deleted my inconvenient deadline from memory. Anyway, I remembered that it's Tuesday and realized I haven't done a Top Five Tuesday in a while. And, because I've been tinkering around with the Big Agnes blog lately, this week's theme is bike trip related.

5. Carbs are your friend. Period. They're even better when you wash them down with gravy. Oh, go on. Diet this, diet that, blah, blah, blah it's all nonsense anyway. Eat what you want, girlfriend. Only Jessica Alba can look like Jessica Alba and, fortunately for the rest of us, wearing a bikini and waving our fannies at the paparazzi is not in our job description.

4. Although, if you don't get enough fresh fruits and vegetables, you will start to feel a little funny. In the head. Your body needs fruits and vegetables. So does your brain. There was a day, at the height of the Vegetable Crisis, where I woke up, started weeping, and then was unable to stop crying (or explain why I was crying), so I spent several hours grimly pedaling while silent, persistent tears streamed down my face. It was bizarre. And pathetic. I was just...LOW. Low and vague and cloudy. And low. We hit a salad bar the next day and I was all "Whee! I'm fine now!" and went skipping down the street, all high on folic acid. Causality was typically pretty apparent during the trip. ME HUNGRY. ME SLEEPY. ME WANT STEAK. If you're biking over 100 kilometres a day, your body/mind is pushed to its outer limits anyway, so crises evolving from nutritional deficiencies will became obvious very quickly. For us, within about a week or so of poor nutrition, we were howling at the moon.

However, I think this same process of mental/physical erosion happens even if you're not engaged in extreme physical activity; it's just more vague and slow when you're physical expenditures are limited to shifting your weight from one ass cheek to the other or using your index finger to dial a mouse wheel. The erosion is there, but you're less inclined to notice it consciously. If you feel a little down, a little low, and also happen to be one of those people who has to count the catsup on their fries as a serving of veggies, that might be a big part of your problem.

3. Your body likes to move. Your body was made to move. Before we left, we didn't train all that much, considering we were embarking on a 7000 km bike trip. That started in the Rockies. Oh, sure, we worked out, we were active, etc. But, we also worked full time. So, we spent maybe an hour or so working out (almost but not really) every day (which actually isn't all that different from what we do normally). On the bike trip, we typically got in about seven to eight hours of cycling every day, while carrying about 30–50 pounds of gear. And did I mention the Rockies? Because they were really big. And mountainous. I wasn't sure if two moderately fit, not-all-that-young people could really pull it off without some physical repercussions. But, in fact, we were fine. We were more than fine; we were fantastic! Our bodies adapted so quickly and readily to the increased activity. In fact, our bodies gobbled it up and asked for more. No strains or pains. No back pain, no neck pain, no migraines. Sit at a desk for eight hours and you'll feel it. You'll be creaky and sore and your body will complain and get all tangled up and angry. Get up and move and your body will perk up, do a little dance, and then give you an impulsive hug before taking off in a gallop.

It was more than that, more than just feeling surprisingly great considering how hard we were working. The other thing that happens when your body is happy is that you're happy. Happy body, happy brain. Apart from the vitamin deficiency episode, we both marveled at how...solidly great and clear-headed we felt. In fact, I was so clear-headed that I—okay, you better sit down for this. Are you ready? I was so clear-headed that I even started to understand math. Yes. I no longer believe it's possible to be happy unless you get at least an hour a day of exercise. I don't care who you are or what you say, I won't believe you. You wanna feel better than you thought possible? Go outside. Move around. It doesn't matter what you do—walk, bike, stroll, roll over 75 times—just give your body what it wants. It'll thank you. As a bonus, you can eat gravy and still be a hottie.

2. When you're going through some ups and downs, hills will look much worse from a distance than they actually are. It's an optical illusion. Partway down one hill, the hill ahead of you will look steep and tall and daunting; get to its base, and it's actually not so bad. In fact, you'll zip over the base and be partway up before you know it. Typically, your dread will far outweigh the actual effort required of you to tackle a climb (procrastinating editors take note).

There is an exception to this rule: the mountain pass. If you can't see the top of a hill (because it's 50 km away!), your mind will play another trick on you and will make impossibly large uphill grinds look like they're slanted downhill. I could never figure out this optical illusion, although certainly it could just be straight up denial (Ha! There's no WAY I can't see the top of this mountain. That would mean...no. NO.) So, sometimes just when you think you're going to get to sit back and coast, you're actually about to go through an extended period of hell. And when you're going through hell? Too bad, suckah. There ain't nothin' you can do about it but keep on going. Amen.

As for coasting? I never once encountered the free downhill ride my mind sometimes expected. The only time life will let you coast is after you've earned it.

1. The world is full of good people. People you don't know will slow their trucks down to a near stop to protect you from bears, they will pull over on a hot day to offer you cold water, they will lean out their windows to cheer you on when you're struggling up a hill, they will give two strangers the keys to the town hall so that they have a place to stay, and no matter where you are, there is always somebody who will crack a beer for you and invite you to join them around the campfire. People love to laugh and tell stories and will welcome you into their lives if you let them. People are good. Life is good.

The Maritimes--Intro

2008-04-24T15:14:00.000-07:00

It's been seven months. SEVEN MONTHS! Which means it's been niggling in the back of my mind that I never really finished this blog for seven months. (I have a tendency to put things off and then pick them up again long after someone normal would have let it go.) So, I'm gonna give poor Big Agnes her dues. Here we go...

The Maritimes. We entered the Maritimes via the Trans-Canada trail, which runs through a strip of forest and farmland from Rivière du Loup, Québec to Edmunston, Brunswick. Our arrival in New Brunswick collided with Labour Day Weekend and, right on time, the onset of fall. Our last night in Big Agnes was in the tiny town of Cabano, Québec and it was a very chilly last night. By the time we crossed the border into New Brunswick it was definitely fall. As in cold and rainy, with no end in sight.

The Maritimes, then, signified a shift in how the trip went. Not only did the cold, damp (wet!) weather make camping unappealing, camping also became less accessible. The Maritimes, well, they're sparsely populated. And we could no longer rely on a campground being within a reasonable biking distance on any given day. In fact, sometimes we were grateful to come upon any form of accommodation at all!

Something else happened too: we started to get tired. Really, really tired. Road weary, bleary, fatigued...as though at any given moment a nine day nap would be nice. When researching and planning the trip, we'd read that the fatigue borne of several months of riding is one of the reasons why it's best to start in the Rockies--get 'em over with while your legs are still fresh. I have to assert that this turned out to be very, very true. I can't imagine facing the Rockies at that point in the trip. What's weird about the fatigue is that we were, in fact, in fantastic condition and we easily gobbled up the steep climbs of New Brunswick without a second thought. But, all the same, we often found ourselves counting down the kilometres until the next stop. Our sudden reliance on motels was costing us a mint, but we were secretly grateful for the incredible luxury of dozing off to Law and Order while curled up in a real(!) bed.

So, in general, the Maritimes had a real feeling of winding down, the trip and us.

So, How Does It Feel To Be Done?

2007-09-26T16:14:00.000-07:00

The first question everyone asks us. Well...It doesn't feel all that good, to be frank. Everyone, including us at some point, I'm sure, had an expectation that we'd be pumped up and proud of what we'd achieved. But really? On our last ride, we were both just quiet and sad and a little tearful.

And then it was just over.

It's not that we're not proud of ourselves, it's just not that "WHOO!" kind of proud. What we did took months and it was neither easy nor hard. And, more than anything, what we did was quiet. One day of ever evolving countryside slipping into another while we rode with the tacit understanding of mutual support. And, really, that's all there was to it.

What amazed me on a daily basis was not what I could achieve with my body, not how far I could ride or what hills I could grind out, but the easygoing peace of mind I was able to step into while my body occupied itself with getting strong, being strong, and, in that world of fresh air and sunshine and birdsong, I had nothing left to focus on but the surprising landscape of my own uninterrupted thoughts.

And then we found ourselves at the top of Signal Hill gazing out over the Atlantic and there was nowhere left to go but home.

So, how does it feel to be done? I think it feels like we're not quite ready yet for all the noise.

Believe it, Baby!!!

2007-09-24T00:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, we dipped our tires in the Atlantic Ocean in "The Gut" in Quidi Vidi, Newfoundland!

Our quizzical, non-celebratory expressions are more of an "Is that camera timer working? Was that a beep? Did you hear a beep?!?" look than an "I'm wrestling with an existential crisis because I just finished biking across Canada and now there's nothing left to do but pack up and fly home."

While there's so much to say yet, I'm still on Newfoundland time, which means that I've woken up on the West Coast at 6:30 in the morning to discover that my body is outraged that it hasn't had its coffee yet.

A Final Word on La Route Verte

2007-09-20T15:06:00.000-07:00

I know I've raved about what a fantastic experience La Route Verte is already, but really, I (we) just can't rave enough about how much fun we had cycling in Québec. I think the one detail I forgot to mention about La Route is that it provided us with numerous opportunities to meet other cyclists. We made friends with Benjamin, who was training for a triathlon and who lead us on a reckless whirlwind ride through Montréal, and Ken and Adrian, who were biking from the Yukon and Victoria respectively and with whom we passed a fun afternoon biking and chatting on the way to Rivière du Loup, and Anton who had biked across Asia--ALL of Asia--then flew from Japan to Vancouver and biked home to Québec, a trip that had taken him over two years. Anton's legs? Were like grain silos. It was just great fun to have other cyclists zipping in and out of our days and sharing a piece of our adventure with us.

The other great thing about La Route Verte is that is takes you right from Rivière du Loup to Edmundston, New Brunswick on a tree-lined trail. It was two of the best days of riding we had on the trip, with lush scenery, lakes, and rivers and even a few wheat crops! I could go on, but I think the pictures speak for themselves (and I have a ridiculous 20 minute time limit at this Internet cafe!).

No Detail Left Behind

2007-09-08T08:19:00.000-07:00

Yet another disturbingly detailed sign in Québec.

I would like to know if this sign would be any less effective if the injured child's sock wasn't half off, or if there wasn't the dramatic pause created by the ellipsis before "le vôtre."

Pas de Ca-ca

2007-09-08T08:06:00.000-07:00

I think perhaps this sign suffers from too much detail. Imagine being the graphic designer working for the city of Montréal and getting your original design back with a note along the lines of: "While we liked how realistic your silhouette of a Great Dane looked, what we want is a steaming loaf of crap somewhere on the sign. Just so there's no confusion."

Elvis Sighting!!

2007-09-08T07:28:00.000-07:00

The King's disembodied head was seen presiding over the hostel bar in Québec.

Ed note: Apologies for the grainy quality of the shot. We had to use the camera phone because, as we all know, The King is elusive and fanatical about remaining underground, so we didn't have time to go back up to the room to get our camera.

Fell Down a Hole

2007-09-08T03:28:00.000-07:00

After Québec City, I fell down a hole. That may sound like I'm trying to craft some metaphor for my morale, perhaps using a loose Alice in Wonderland allusion for just how fantastical my morale tumble was. But, no, my morale is perfectly intact. I'm being literal. We stopped at a campground about halfway between Québec and Rivière du Loup, and I fell down a hole. One second I was walking towards the fire to put another log on and the next second, FOOMPH! Fell down a hole.

Specifically, my left leg fell down a hole, its rapid progress to the underworld slowed only by the friction created between my flesh and the craggy rocks lining the hole, while the rest of me stayed above ground wondering what the hell had happened. It was so thoroughly dark out that my brain had very little sense data to go on and I spent a couple of seconds mentally grasping to put the pieces together: in many ways it felt as though I'd fallen...yet in many ways it didn't. And, wait...my left leg really kinda hurt.

At this point, I realized that I was very crooked and that straightening myself would involve a certain amount of careening towards the fire, so I grabbed Kieran's arm rather firmly. Kieran gallantly responded to my panic by barking, "Hey! What are you doing?!?"

Once I extracted myself from the hole, I sulked over my lack of a knight in shining armor for a few minutes. That is, until Kieran pointed out that when he tripped and fell into a tree in Ottawa, I had laughed out loud at him all the way to the Museum of Civilization.*

So, long story short, it's been a long time since I've been able to write, but it's been business as usual for us.

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*In my defense, I asked him if he was okay before braying with laughter.

Our Return to Montréal

2007-08-25T08:01:00.000-07:00

I don't know if either of us knew what to expect when we returned to Montréal. It seemed a bit weird to visit a city where we used to live but where we no longer have any friends, as they have also moved away. So we weren't sure what we were going to do with ourselves, as we had no need or desire to see the sites nor did we have anyone to visit.

We also made a rather inauspicious entrance into the city, starting things off with--what else?--a bilingual screaming match as we waited on the train platform. Of course someone tried to steal our stuff at the train station. Of course. I would have been more surprised if no one had at least tried to nick our bike gear. It's Montréal. And, while thieves and large cities go together like bread and butter, I think Montréal can count itself among the small handful of cities where, if you catch someone trying to steal your stuff and have the gall to take it back from them, your thieves will get mad at YOU and offended that you have retrieved what they have rightfully stolen. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that Montréal is the only place on Earth where the ensuing screaming match would be conducted in two different languages, each party understanding the other perfectly well but sticking to their native language simply because that's where their favourite insults and cuss words reside. Naturally, the classic response to being on the receiving end of a French/English insult is to switch to your non-native language to reply in perfect scathing French/English, "I don't understand what you're saying, [insult]; I don't speak French/English," before reverting back to your native tongue to hurl more insults: "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, you don't understand. Understand this: FUCK. YOU. Yeah? Understood that, yeah? THOUGHT SO."

Obligatory bilingual scuffle out of the way, Kieran and I managed to have a perfectly lovely time. The hostel ended up being three blocks away from our old apartment, so we had no problem finding it and had the luxury of knowing all the best places to eat and hang out. And, perhaps for the first time in Montréal, Kieran and I had the even sweeter luxury of spending the entire day together. I think--no, I know-- that you could count on one hand the number of times one or both of us didn't have to work on any given day during our time in Montréal, so it was wonderful to spend a day poking around all our old haunts without deadlines or upcoming shifts or research papers hanging over our heads. As a result, we got to roll all our favourite stolen pleasures into one day: We went for brunch, we went for coffee and lingered over the crossword, we went to a matinee, we went window shopping along Ste. Catherine's and Sherbrooke, we poked around the second hand book stores, and we went for dinner. Also nice to see is that the gentrification seeds planted by Kieran and Louis' Starbucks have taken root and our old neighbourhood is significantly nicer. Far fewer sex shops and "danse contact" joints, with funky little restaurants in their place, flower pots along the sidewalks, and it appears that some effort is being made to minimize the, uh, ca-ca and other bodily fluids that used to litter the sidewalks. It's really an incredible difference and the whole area seems brighter and fresher. (Our old building still looks like a total mung hole though.)

Nous Aimons Beaucoup La Route Verte! C'est Magnifique!

2007-08-25T07:31:00.000-07:00

That's French for La Route Verte is da shit! A network of bike paths that cover the entire province of Québec. In cities and on bridges, we have our own lane, our own traffic signals...in the country, we have quiet roads, parks, riverside riding. It's a dream. The route is clearly marked by signs and, along the way, there are hotels and campgrounds that are approved as cyclist friendly, which means there's safe storage for our bikes and there's food that has enough carbs, protein, and fresh fruits and vegetables to meet our needs. I'm not kidding. These places can't get approved by the government unless they're gonna feed us properly. Did I mention how much we love this? BECAUSE WE LOVE THIS.

This could also be easily called the House Envy Route. The Québec countryside seems to be populated almost exclusively by lovely little stone houses with freshly painted trim and terraces. The villages are equally charming, each with a Catholic church that's at least a couple hundred year's old at its heart, surrounded by, of course, more stone houses with freshly painted trim and a handful of pubs and bistros. I would give a cycling tour on La Route a heartfelt endorsement for anyone looking for a fun vacation.

Dana! Dana! Dana! Wait for It...

2007-08-17T18:28:00.000-07:00

Elvis sighting! Elvis sighting! Elvis sighting!

The King, in all his gold lamé suited glory in Quyon, Québec.

More Tidbits

2007-08-17T16:50:00.000-07:00

Kieran is uploading photos RIGHT NOW! We've found a place that accepts our USB cable and it is, of all places, an Internet cafe/karaoke bar, so there's some drunk kids warbling their way through some Usher songs right now, which is pretty hilarious and oddly not annoying (yet). Anyhoo, until the photos are ready, allow me to divulge the minutiae of our lives for your amusement.

The fact that I am a mouth breather is not only unfortunate for me in that it's rather inelegant, it's also inconvenient and unpleasant to be reminded of this bad habit by way of inhaling a sizable number of bugs on any given day. According to my dentist, my mouth breathing has to do with my historical atrocious overbite. Truthfully, I think I only fall back on mouth breathing when I sleep or when I exercise (I guess when I'm breathing deeply, then), so it's not like I'm Napoleon Dynamite or something. Or I hope I'm not. Bugs don't zing into my mouth at high speeds and hit my teeth with a faint thwack to notify me of my gaping maw when I'm, like, buying groceries or something, so perhaps I'm walking around slack jawed half the time without realizing it. When this trip first started, I used to pause to give my mouth a swish with water followed by a dainty spit after a bug flew in, but now I just swallow and keep going. Just goes to show you you can pretty much get used to anything. (Aside: Once when I was jogging, I had a BEE fly into my mouth and start crawling around my tongue and I had to stop dead in the sidewalk with my tongue sticking out and heavy ropes of drool hanging out of the corners of my mouth until the bee decided it was done exploring the surface of my tongue and flew away. For everyone's sake, let's hope that THAT never happens again.)

Speaking of the surprising things that one can become accustomed to, it didn't take long at all for our lives to rearrange themselves into a series of ironic new relativities. Okay, I totally made up that word. What I mean is, things we now accept as Normal Life are pretty darn ironic relative to Actual Normal Life. Here are some examples: On days when we do what we call a "Half Day" (it's become an official term for us), which amounts to doing between 50-75 kilometres or about three or four hours of riding, I find I end up admonishing myself not to get dessert or reminding myself to get salad instead of fries*. I've only had three and a half hours of vigorous exercise, after all, and I don't want to get crazy here. Of course, there was a time not that long ago where if I'd done a three hour workout, I would have heartily patted myself on the back before tying into a piece of cheesecake. "Oh, go on," I'd say smugly while my fork pushed its way through the cool, dense mass of cheese and sugar, "you've earned it."

Along with what we currently both consider to be inconsequential amounts of exercise, there's also the whole "Enh, you can only smell this shirt from four feet away, so it's good for another day" thing, the daily "This knife is dirty; I will wipe it...heeeeerrree on this patch of grass to clean it," and the classic "Ooooh! A grassy camp spot! What unimaginable luxury a night's sleep HERE will be!"

And now, an impromptu reader poll: Do you find this picture creepy?

Notice how the world behind me is all streaming and bent? Notice how there's blurry shapes superimposed over different parts of the shot? Yeah. We took that in the schoolhouse in Delia. The one we thought was haunted (before we knew how the pics turned out).

Anyway, just to prove that I'm not completely hysterical when it comes to sleeping in creepy old buildings, we ended up spending the night in another old one room schoolhouse in Dyment, Ontario and I slept like a log.** I also successfully managed to sleep in the old jail in Ottawa (now the HI hostel), even though it was once featured on "Haunted Canada" and, indeed, there's daily ghost tours with a guide telling a rapt group of people things I would force myself not to hear. Despite my best efforts not to give my avid imagination any more fodder than is naturally provided by a 145 year-old jail (that was closed down due to inhumane conditions), I was unable to avoid learning that the hostel used to have the eighth floor--the floor that used to be death row--open to guests. But too many times guests staying on this floor ran screaming down the stairs in the middle of the night, waking up and terrifying the entire building, because a man holding a bible sat on their bed, so the hostel eventually shut that floor down. This did not happen to us in our cell, thank GODDESS, because I would NOT survive if the ghost of Patrick Whelan sat on my bed.

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*Uh-oh. I think a ripple of anxiety has just gone through all the family members who read this. Believe me, I'm as healthy and strong as an ox right now. I pretty much mean that literally. I think me, my arse, and I could pull a plow up a hill right now.

**That is, AFTER I convinced myself that the fugitive who was on the loose in Ontario was not what was making the creaking noises on the deck. It did take a certain amount of Creak Analysis before I was able to reach that conclusion. Weirdly enough, when we spent the night in Portage du Fort in Quebec, it was just after they'd caught that same fugitive of whom I'd been scared in Dyment, five minutes from where we were staying.

Yup. Still Alive.

2007-08-17T08:53:00.000-07:00

Ontario tried, but it didn't kill us. By "tried to kill us," I mean "threw us in front of speeding trucks." Literally. Ontario's homicidal tendencies towards cyclists could very well have gotten the better of us at any time, so you can go ahead and call us lucky or blessed or whatever else fits into your world view for having survived. We survived the province with absolutely no shoulders on its highways, highways that are populated almost exclusively by caravans of speeding semi-trailers, and highways to which there are no alternatives. There's just the one route, the Trans-Canada, so if things get dangerously busy or rough or generally begins to resemble a giant steaming loaf of crap, you gotta just keep going.

So, I guess you could say cycling in Ontario is a lot like life: When life dishes out a big steaming pile of crap, you gotta just be bold, mark out the space you need to keep going, and then inhabit that space with your held held high (and your left hand at the ready to flip the bird to people invading your little survival bubble, delivered along with a complementary daisy chain of obscenities of course).

Seriously, though. Cycling in Ontario is hella dangerous. It's quite simply a tightrope act of keeping your bike upright in a rough, all but non-existent shoulder on a very busy highway with a LOT of truck traffic. If you're planning a cycling tour for anywhere, don't go to Ontario. And if you're planning to cycle across Canada, get yourself a plan for Ontario. We cycled only at certain times of the day, packing it in shortly after 3:00 when the truck traffic really picked up. And, in the middle of it all, we had to throw in the towel and admit temporary defeat. We hit the reputedly worst and most dangerous stretch of highway (the 700 km ride around Lake Superior, from Thunder Bay to Sault Ste. Marie) right at the start of ~~Drunk Driving Fest 2007~~ the long weekend. In fact, coming into Thunder Bay the traffic was already getting out of control, and I was literally blown off the road three separate times by trucks that came too close to me. Literally a matter of a couple centimetres more and the trucks would have hit me. As much as we hated to do it, we had to admit that our timing was off with the long weekend and it was too dangerous to continue at that point, so we took the Greyhound to Sault Ste. Marie to where there's less truck traffic (most of it takes the northern route that branches off at Nippigon) and to wait out the long weekend in order for traffic to thin out some.

Anyway, there was little to no joy to be had with the cycling part of our day. It was noisy and stressful at best. We did very much enjoy the places we stopped, though. Lakes and rivers and forests and quiet evenings steeped in moonlight. And now we're done! We're in Ottawa and simply have to cross the bridge and we'll be in Quebec. In fact, we've been zig zagging back and forth between Quebec and Ontario for the last couple of days and it's been lovely, lovely riding along the Ottawa River and The Joy is back. Indeed, things are lookin' up!

Some quick housekeeping items, which funnily enough is all I meant this post to be until I heard the pleasing and comforting clack of my own typing (what can I say, writing is home to me): Kieran left the cell phone in a motel in Northern Ontario and it's now on a cellphone version of The Incredible Journey, trying to catch up to us, so we've not been getting any messages or texts y'all may have been sending and we're sorry about that; although it's likely only our parents who have noticed, we've not been able to upload photos since Manitoba, which is becoming something of a gathering crisis at the same time as being annoying, as we don't have another memory card for our camera (nor can we buy one since it's outdated technology or something), so we're sorry about that too for all the people who have boring office jobs for whom we've not been providing sufficient distraction; on a related note, I find I can't blog about various anecdotes and spaces and places without their accompanying photos to jog my memory and, hence, the radio silence these last few weeks. Coming soon, though.

Until then, love to all!

You'll Be Glad This One Has No Accompanying Photo

2007-08-17T07:06:00.000-07:00

While the girth, smoothness, texture and overall quality of the highways' shoulders changes from province to province, the detritus borne of thousands of passing cars--sometimes the only reminder that highways are, in fact, human landscapes--has remained both constant and consistent across the nation. Take a peek at the shoulder of the highway anywhere in Canada and you will find: Tim Hortons cups; brown plastic lids that have become disembodied from their Tim Hortons cups; empty beer bottles (great, so we're drinking and driving AND littering); small crescent shaped pieces of metal missing two bolts at the top (for the life of me I can't figure out what these pieces of metal are, but they are ubiquitous); empty water bottles sporting claims of various and sundry origins and pedigrees; the rubber shards that indicate a tire's violent death; and, yes, weirdly enough, dental floss (the kind that's threaded onto a little plastic pick with two points so that, presumably, you can floss with one hand while driving). Aside from the dental floss and the apparently disposable pieces of mystery metal, I could probably have predicted what Canadians are throwing out their car windows. With one other notable exception.

I noticed almost immediately, way back in BC, that people throw out a surprising number of half-finished bottles of apple juice. Sure, none of these bottles actually bore apple juice labels and were more often than not Pepsi or Coke bottles with faded, peeling labels. But what do I know? Hell, I even half-envisioned parents lovingly pouring apple juice into an old water bottle (in an effort to reduce and reuse even!) so that their toddler could have a drink on their long road trip (only to have their toddler throw the bottle out the window in a Terrible Twos fit of temper, or...something like that).

It took me until Ontario. And even then I didn't quite get to it on my own. No, I went and said it out loud: "You notice people throw out a lot of apple juice?" And Kieran's face got a kind of squirmy look and then, finally, I knew.

It's PEE. People are PEEING IN BOTTLES AND THROWING THEM OUT THE WINDOW.

Now, sure, it was ridiculous for me to labour for so long under my apple juice delusion, but where I come from, well, you just don't do that. No, where I come from, you pull over and scoot behind a bush to drop trow LIKE A CIVILIZED HUMAN BEING.

Have we not already taken things far enough? I mean, we've all but moved into our cars as it is: eating, and listening to music, and talking on the phone, and watching DVDs, and, apparently, flossing our teeth while we drive. Now we're reaching under the seat to find an old Diet Coke bottle to act as an impromptu toilet? And, uh, while you're, erm, using your Coke bottle,WHAT IF YOU HIT A BUMP?!?

Hello from Thunder Bay, Ontario!

2007-08-02T11:51:00.000-07:00

We're in a little Internet gamers' den, which turns out to be not at all conducive to writing because I'm surrounded by teenage boys who are all yelling at each other about who's cheating and you're a cheater and stop cheating you cheater and there's a couple of other kids playing some game that involves learning to play a virtual electric guitar. I'm sure their parents actually PAY them to come here just to get this noise out of the house.

Normally, I have a couple of posts to upload but I've not been writing this week because...WE MADE FRIENDS! Alex and Veronique. Friends who we would hang out with at night and we would talk and they'd say funny things and then we'd say funny things and we'd all laugh and then we'd go to bed and talk about all the funny things our New Friends Alex and Veronique said. We met them at the campground in Ignace when they pulled their bikes into the spot next to ours. They're biking from the Yukon to Quebec.

We have met other bikers on this trip but, uh, they've all been assholes. There seems to be this unspoken element of competition for a lot of people and they ask you questions not because they're interested in you, but because they want to brag about how much faster they are, better their gear choices are, or how clever they are at choosing a superior route. It's always poor Kieran that these dorks will corner while I'm off brushing my teeth somewhere, and either it's against the dorks' Code of Honour for Socially Inept Conversations to try to one-up a female, or a female presence is simply too overwhelming, but my returning to Kieran's side is the only thing that seems to shut these guys up.

Anyway, Our New Friends Alex and Veronique were not like that. They had me at "The headwinds in Saskatchewan were terrible." When they admitted to one day being crushed enough by the wind to give up after thirty kilometres and hitchhike, I all but hugged them. So we had new friends to exchange stories with and compare notes with and to generally hang out with and it's been a long time since we had any company other than our own and I neglected the blog.

So, in lieu of having a proper post, being able to compose a proper post, or having the capacity to upload our pictures to Flickr, I present to you a long overdue map update:

Greetings from Kenora, Ontario!

2007-07-27T07:58:00.000-07:00

We made it to cottage country! We are at a lovely campground overlooking The Lake of the Woods, which comes complete with loons calling and a low slung moon. This morning, we dragged our feet and made only half-hearted attempts to pack up the tent before we both conceded that we really wanted to stay here for a day. It's hot and there's beaches. And we loves the hot!

So we languished about the lake all day, soaking in the sun. Nothing feels as much like summer as jumping off the end of a pier into a cool lake on a hot day. And we saw the most amazing thing: A deer picked her way down the rocks to the lake and, without hesitation, slipped into the water and swam across the lake! She was smooth and graceful in the water and glided across rather effortlessly, her big sweet ears moving back and forth the whole time.

We're off to Dryden tomorrow. Today's posts are sans pictures and links because I'm doing this from the phone. I had hoped I would have a chance to talk about the highlights of Saskatchewan (the groovy little town of Craik and the amazing exhibits at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, but I would prefer to do both when I can provide the accompanying photos. So, until the next time we find a proper Internet cafe,I suppose. We've appreciated very much all the positive comments and emails we've received (from around the world!) and wish that we had time to respond. Thank you to all, though, for the words of support and encouragement.

We Heart Winnipeg Too!

2007-07-27T07:55:00.000-07:00

We had the most fun in Winnipeg. First of all, we were absolutely spoiled by Kieran's Aunt Olive and Uncle Russ. Aunt Olive cooked for us at all hours of the day and Uncle Russ chauffered us around the city.

Second of all, Winnipeg is cool! It has so much history and you can feel all 10,000 years of it, especially at The Forks. I loved the idea that 10,000 years ago people gathered at The Forks in the summer and here we are today, doing just that.

Our first day, we wandered around The Forks and took it all in then had lunch at the Marketplace before exploring Saint Boniface. In Saint Boniface, we found a lovely little cafe. After, we explored the old cathedral and found Louis Riel's tomb.

On our second day, we went to the Manitoba Museum, had lunch at a fancy restaurant that specialized in regional foods (bison steak and wild rice and little mini squash things!), and then took in a play at the Fringe Festival. The play was an absolute blast: Giant Killer Shark the Musical. It's just silly. Wonderfully silly. And I've got a penchance for silly. (Aside: I also think silly is the key to world peace. If only facist megalomaniacs were more silly, maybe they wouldn't take themselves and their manifestos so seriously, you know?)

We Heart Manitoba

2007-07-27T07:53:00.000-07:00

They say a change is as good as a rest. Indeed. Manitoba, humble little Manitoba, provided us with both.

I don't know that either of us had high expectations for Manitoba. In terms of biking, many of the Web sites we'd read in preparing for our trip spoke poorly of Manitoba as a place to bike. Almost universally, people complained about the roads and the fact that the shoulders aren't paved and about the bugs. And, indeed, the shoulders aren't paved. Anywhere. Even in many parts of Winnipeg. And the bugs! The bugs are something terrible. Whatever your worst bug experience is? It's like that, only worse.

All the same, we found Manitoba to be just lovely. We stuck to the secondary highways and people were respectful and cautious around us and the roads were blessedly quiet and it really didn't matter that we couldn't ride in the shoulder. And the bugs? Well, everything else was so lovely that it's okay that we had to sacrifice large hunks of flesh to their rabid maneating mosquitoes.

The difference between Manitoba and Saskatchewan/Alberta was apparent almost immediately after crossing the border. The towns are older and they have lovely Victorian buildings and parks and majestic old elm trees and oak trees lining the streets. And the campgrounds were equally lovely, many of them built in 1970 for the Manitoba centennial, which means they're all treed in nicely.

And, yes, the food is better. Our first night in Manitoba we stopped in Virden and wandered into a restaurant on Main Street that really didn't look all that promising, just more promising than all the other restaurants. But then, in talking up her turkey special (which I had no intention of getting as I'd once made the mistake of getting a ham special and was served Spam and mashed potatotes made from a powder), the owner leaned in and said, "I'm not like those other places. I use real meat. I bought it from a farmer this morning. And I make my own gravy." Uh, SOLD!

Kieran still talks about that turkey. I mean, you can't go wrong with anything soaked in homemade gravy, but you really can't go wrong with fresh turkey packed between two slabs of bread soaked in homemade gravy. Seriously, peeps, you simply can't revere the true meaning of the phrase "two slabs of bread soaked in homemade gravy" until you bike for eight hours first. Gravy is not food. It's God Goo oozed straight from the heavens into the open pores of your fluffy, fluffy simple carbohydrates..

It is incredible how much better we felt after that meal. That gravy seemed to simply washed away all our troubles. (The next time you're feeling down or demoralized, I would prescribe tucking into some turkey sandwiches soaked in God Goo. It's like a small injection of Prozac.) Turkey endorphins and longlost vitamins coursing through our veins, we both kept remarking, "I LIKE Virden. It's NICE here. Don't you think it's NICE here?" as we rambled about town after our meal.

But the food crisis met its official demise in Winnipeg, thanks to Kieran's Great-aunt Olive. Olive stuffed us with homemade bread dripping in homemade butter, raspberries and beans from the garden, fried chicken, and grilled salmon. It's impossible to maintain any semblance of low morale when you have a sweet aunt who scratches your back every morning while you sip your fresh coffee and wait for your hashbrowns.

Some Tidbits

2007-07-27T07:50:00.002-07:00

I have a new appreciation for the Lions Clubs. Thanks to the Lions Clubs across the nation, we can pretty much count on even the tiniest of towns having a campground. No, better yet: a campground with a shower. Until we took this trip, I didn't realize how much the Lions/Kinsmen, etc. did for their communities.

I know, I know. It's a bit odd to have grown up in a small town whose only campground was the Lions' Campground and not realize that Lions do that kind of thing for their communities. Honestly, I didn't really put together that the Lions Campground in town was developed by, uh, the Lions Club. I think when I was a kid I just kinda thought that was the NAME of the campground (possibly having something to do with mountain lions). But then again, it was odd for me to be shocked by the quality of food served in small town diners. In my defense, we never ate at those diners (and now I know why!) because we always just ate my mom's cooking from the garden. Anyhoo, I can see how all the Lions parks and campgrounds and info centres can really boost these little towns and think it's pretty cool that the Lions give back to their communities so much. It all got me to wondering: Is there a similar women's group common to small towns? If not, I'm going to start a Cougars' Club (har!) if/when we have a town to call home.

Yes. We've certainly gotten to experience a big slice of life in a small town. Including witnessing first hand the gossip for which small towns are notorious. And, no. It's not the women who sit around clucking and cooing about the various misfortunes and misdeeds of their neighbours. (At least not publicly; perhaps women prefer to gossip by phone.) No, it's the men. Walk into a diner anywhere in the prairies and you'll find an ever growing cluster of men, ball caps perched on their heads, coffee cups in hand, and a river of gossip flowing between them.

Here's a transcript of a conversation overheard at the cafe in Delia, Alberta:
Farmer 1: I was kinda surprised how Tracey stood up to Ben there.
Farmer 2: Yeah? Naahhh. I wasn't.
F1: No?
F2: Nah. [Waves hand] You seen the way she is with them kids.
F1: [Chuckles] You got me there. You got me there.
F2: I heard he's staying up there on Griswold's couch now. [Chuckles] I guess the other gal he took up with there won't have him back neither! [Both laugh.]

And because I made a big deal about it last time, I feel obliged to provide some follow-up. The headwinds continue unabated. In fact, they've worsened. (Our ability to cope with them has markedly improved, however, thanks to some good hearty meals.)

In manner of true Canadians, we've taken on an attitude of a perversely healthy learned helplessness towards the horrible weather pattern by which we're plagued. A sort of "Sure, this is really terrible and absolutely everything would be easier and more pleasant if only the weather was different or if I lived somewhere more hospitable to human life, but I can be miserable and be happy and have fun at the same time!" attitude.

And, just as every March it seems that this this year might actually be the year that winter doesn't end and you resign yourself to that possibility since it's been so long since you felt the sun on your skin anyway and you've forgotten what you're missing, we've resigned ourselves to the idea that the headwinds might never end. It's been so long since we've been able to travel at speeds over 12 kilometres per hour or since biking wasn't a patella crushing grind that I think we'll be really surprised--pleasantly surprised--when one day we breeze along the road at a nice brisk clip with minimal effort thanks to the tailwind that's decided to show its face. (Are you listening Universe? If you could arrange that, that would be GREAT.) In the meantime, the headwind has become as integral to biking as pedalling and although we occassionally suffer from anxiety due to our slowed timelines, we don't fuss much over it anymore.

On a somewhat related note, Mom said that after my (admittedly) somewhat disheartened posts about Saskatchewan, folks were concerened that we weren't enjoying ourselves (such is inevitably the case when you have an extended network of concerned aunts and uncles reading your blog). Indeed we are. This trip is not easy--nor was it expected to be--and I don't think fun is quite the right word, but we feel alive. We're working our bodies hard and we're outside in the sun and the wind and the rain and there's deer and ducks and bird calls and dangling our feet off of docks and, all in all, we feel pretty much the opposite of what it feels like to sit in a cubicle rotting in front of a computer. In fact, in many ways this whole trip may have been an elaborate scheme to ensure we didn't spend another summer cooped up in an office. (For the record, I am currently in the market for a scheme that will prevent me from ever returning to an office job. I DON'T WANT TO GO DEAD INSIDE EVER AGAIN. I'm just saying.)

Batch Update!

2007-07-18T10:47:00.000-07:00

Yup! We're in Manitoba! Reunited with the Internet!

There's been a huge batch update, so I believe if you scroll down to the post titled "A Mighty Headwind" you'll be at the start. Talk to yous soon!

Alberta in a Nutshell: II

2007-07-18T10:01:00.000-07:00

After Calgary, we were headed to Drumheller, where we planned to check out the new exhibit at the Royal Tyrrell Museum. The museum and a visit with our friends in Calgary was the whole point of the route we'd chosen, which jagged us back up north a little out of our way before we went south again.

Yeah. The museum never happened. We hit vicious headwinds and some nasty road construction and we just didn't make it in time. We still got to enjoy the beautiful scenery in the Badlands, though.

We ended up spending the night in the teeny little village of Delia. Delia is at the base of an ancient mountain range that was never covered by the glaciers, so the old mountain peak, Mother Mountain, sticks up over the prairie. You can see the peak as soon as you come back out of the base of Drumheller.

Delia turned out to be something of an adventure because the water services at the little campground were broken. A local man who saw us pulling our bikes in came over to explain the situation and, not wanting us to go without a place to stay, he GAVE us the keys to the town's old one-room schoolhouse, which now serves as a place for dance classes, and invited us to stay there. It had a washroom and running water and lots of room for us to set up our beds on the floor.

This was a pretty cool arrangement all in all. Until the lights went out. There's a reason people don't typically spend the night in creepy old buildings and that's because they're creepy. Creepy as in, "Uh, Honey? Was that you? No? That's...interesting." There were...noises. Thumping, creaking noises. The sound of the chairs lined up along the wall creaking. And then a thump over at the table. And then a thump right next to my head, a thump I actually FELT. At that point, I made Kieran go turn the washroom light on and the thumping died down shortly after that.

After Delia, we were off to Oyen, where we met my parents who had driven the five hours from Millet to visit with us. We all stayed in a B&B in an old Eaton's catalogue house and spent a day exploring the area, including a visit to a restored grain elevator. In the end, leaving Alberta was a little hard because it meant all our visits with friends and family were over for a number of weeks. We were a little down as we said our goodbyes and headed towards the Saskatchewan border.

Yes, yes, yes!

2007-07-18T09:59:00.000-07:00

A head-in-the-hole picture from Calgary!

For My Great Aunt Margaret

2007-07-18T09:53:00.001-07:00

How cool is it that my great-aunt not only reads my blog, she checks out our Flickr account? Hi Auntie! I took these pictures just for you.

The General Store in Irricana.

Big Sky on the outskirts of Irricana.

My great-grandparents were some of the original settlers in Irricana. In fact, Kieran and I stopped by the park, where my great-grandpa had helped to plant the trees. It was a pretty cool moment.

I really just...

2007-07-18T09:49:00.000-07:00

I just don't KNOW what this means.

A cryptic message about recycling?

Alberta in a Nutshell

2007-07-18T09:15:00.000-07:00

Our first stop after BC was in Pincher Creek, which happens to be one of my favourite spots. The view changes every time you look up. This was the night the freaky weather hit BC, causing everyone to worry about us. In fact, had we been a day behind schedule, we would have been hit with those storms. Instead, we got to watch the clouds and lightning engulf the mountains from our vantage point in the east. The wind was so strong in Pincher Creek that night we actually saw the windows of the restaurant warping and bending inwards and then springing back.

Our next stop was in Nanton, a tiny town just south of Calgary. Nanton turned out to be another pleasant surprise, with lovely little cafes, tea houses, and antique shops.

We wandered up to the local tavern, which doesn't appear to have been redecorated in the last 100 years. The walls were decorated with antique guns and animal skins, including a buffalo hide, and all manner of ancient farming equipment, including an old leather yolk for oxen. I wanted to take more pictures, but felt a little sheepish in front of the locals ("Oh, hi! Your little tavern is just so QUAINT! Can you BELIEVE how QUAINT everything is? Pose there by the deer head, will you? Now act QUAINT!")

I did sneak in a picture of one of the pieces of lobby furniture, which was made from old whiskey(?) barrels and upholstered with patched buffalo hide. There was also a matching chair and footstool to this piece, but I did, indeed, catch a glare from the locals when I snapped this shot.

And then we were off to Calgary! The ride into Calgary was something of an unmitigated disaster with a flat tire (mine) and a fainting spell (Kieran's)* and our stress was compounded by the fact that we had friends waiting for us. But we finally got there and we enjoyed a couple of nights of sleeping in a real bed and eating great food and getting tipsy and giggling until the wee hours of the morning. Thanks to my Karla Bean and Jonny P. for their amazing hospitality and, as always, for their friendship!

Unfortunately, I didn't take a single picture in Calgary. I guess I've been there so many times, it just didn't occur to me. You would think I would at least think to get a picture of the four of us together at some point. But no.

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*Yes. Kieran fainted. On the C-Train. FAINTED ON THE C-TRAIN. I didn't realize because he was still standing. With his eyes open. So I got OFF the C-Train. And then had to force the doors back open to figure out what was wrong with Kieran that he was just looking at me blankly and not getting off with me. And then I had to pull the emergency stop button and get the driver to stop the train and the only person who would help me was a teenage boy while all the adults just stared and one person even got all snotty and mean to me. But anyway, the fainting. It was reeeaaaaaalllly stuffy on the train and Kieran was hungry. Kieran came to and me and the kid ushered him off and he ate a banana and had some water and then he was fine and we got back on the next train.

The World's Largest Truck

2007-07-18T08:55:00.000-07:00

Yup! Our final stop in BC was to the World's Largest Truck! 700 gallons of diesel per working hour.

Oh, Hummer drivers. How can you sleep at night knowing your ridiculous lifestyle choices could be this much more wasteful and damaging to the environment? Don't worry. I'm sure if the oil executives have their way, it's just a matter of time until you'll be able to taxi a commercial jet for your daily commute to work.

And can you believe there was a head-in-the-hole picture opportunity here and we FORGOT?!? We got too wrapped up in buying an Alberta map.

The Food Crisis

2007-07-18T08:36:00.000-07:00

A number of people have asked us what we eat (and how much do you need to eat) while we're biking. Our strategy on this front was pretty basic: We'll eat food. When we're hungry. No fancy protein shakes or whey powder concoctions or energy gels or goos. Largely because those things are, well, gross. They taste gross and they're highly processed and usually packed with sugar and salt. And while I like sugar and salt and will happily eat copious amounts of either, it must be be presented to me in a way that is palatable before I'm willing to belly up. And since we're not competing in a race and have no schedule to adhere to and, therefore, have no need to gulp down something that will rapidly metabolize while we're still madly pedalling, we figured we'd be better off just to eat, you know, food when we're hungry,

We obviously can't carry around a raw roasting chicken and a five pound bag of Yukon Golds, but we can carry some fresh fruit and nuts and good old sesame snaps (that do just as good of a job as Power Bars, only without all the fake processed crap). And, hey, bread weighs, like, nothing. So that's good. And then when we're done for the day, we hit the local grocery store and do up a fresh meal. Simple and healthy, right?

This strategy worked beautifully and got us to Calgary in good spirits. In fact, we had some awesome meals made with fresh local food (fresh asparagus picked THAT DAY seared in butter with grilled salmon steaks vs. whey protein powder--hmmm). I mean, fresh air, sunshine, exercise, and good fresh food. Yeah. We felt good.

And then we headed deep into the heart of the prairie. These towns, they're SMALL, people. And they're remote. I mean, I was born and raised in a small prairie town and even I couldn't get over how small and in the middle of nowhere these places were. Many of these towns don't really have a proper grocery store and the produce is just...sad. Freckled bananas, some apples, and some wrinkled up oranges. And that's about it. (I also noted that a lot of people have gardens, in case you're wondering how they get by.) So it's slim pickin's at the confectioneries and to make matters worse, it's even slimmer pickin's at the local restaurants. These places, the food is just...bad. I'm not entirely sure it technically qualifies as food. Meats that come in gelatinous loafs. (As far as I'm concerned, meat should never shimmy.) Or meats that have an unnatural iridescent sheen. And other things-- anything--that comes breaded and frozen and can be dropped into a deep fryer. Salads are very rarely an option and even more rarely an appetizing one.

Unable to stomach the "meats" in their most unnatural incarnations, we went on a flapjack bender. There's very little you can do to mess up or overprocess a pancake. For a while, it was fun. There's something rather homey and comforting about melting butter on a stack of pancakes that mingles with a sort of childish delight at getting to pour syrup on your meal.

And then after about a week on the Flapjack Diet, I started to feel funny. Sluggish. Tired. Not so great. My skin started to do that thing where it's dry yet breaking out.

After another week where a serving of fruits or vegetables in a day was a triumph, I started to feel downright sad. Nothing was fun anymore. Nothing. Biking was hard. Camping was hard. (There were other things at play, like the headwinds that have dogged us and a general lack of sleep, so I suppose it was something of a perfect storm--malnutrition meets extra demands on body.) Getting up and doing it all over again and again and again was hard. I didn't want to quit, but I also didn't want to go on.

The day we were heading into Regina (also the day we found the injured duck, so, you know, generally a shite day), I realized how far things had gotten when I lost three hours. I simply couldn't believe we'd gone 75 km because I'd been so absorbed in daydreaming about vegetables. I'm not kidding. First, I planted an imaginary vegetable garden, carefully selecting imaginary plants (well, you have to have peas, and carrots, and Oh! beets! don't forget the beets!). Then I made an imaginary vegetable stock with my imaginary vegetables, lingering over images of coarsely chopped celery and carrots and bunches of fresh herbs. I then used my imaginary broth to make a variety of imaginary soups including, and not limited to, Ukranian style borscht with fresh dill, curried spinach and potato soup, and a chilled pea soup with a hint of mint. I even paired each of my imaginary soups with imaginary salads.

While I've had the occasional chocolate craving that's run amok in my day, I've simply never obsessed about food. And certainly never about vegetables! Vegetables!!

It was a sign and I knew it was a sign. Obsessing about food in disturbingly thorough and precise detail is, in fact, a VERY CLEAR SIGN that your vitamin deficiency is STARTING TO AFFECT YOUR MENTAL HEALTH.

So Regina couldn't have come at a better time. We actually went to the buffet at the Hotel Saskatchewan* so we could not only eat a variety of salads, we could eat multiple helpings of those salads. Washed down with platefuls of fruit. I then went back to the hostel and ate a bag of cherries, which was utterly fantastic, despite the predictable results of having consumed intense amounts of fibre in one sitting.

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*If you want to get your money's worth out of a $14 buffet, I suggest going for a 120 km bike ride into a headwind first. You'll be amazed.

A Mighty Headwind

2007-07-18T08:32:00.000-07:00

Yeaaaahh. So Saskatchewan didn't exactly go well. Considering we thought that it would take us about four days to get to Manitoba and it actually took us ten. What happened? I'll tell you what happened. WIND happened.

We just couldn't catch a break. Whether we were biking north, south, southeast or east, we were biking straight into a powerful headwind.

In fact, our headwind woes started much earlier than Saskatchewan and, without exaggeration, I can say that save for about two days of riding, we've either been in a headwind or a nasty crosswind since Fernie. In other words, for about 1000 clicks.

So, it's not that the headwinds were isolated to Saskatchewan, it's just that the headwinds culminated into a distinct source of misery and despair in Saskatchewan.

The trouble with a headwind, obviously, is that it slows you down. A lot. Those panniers sticking out from the sides of your bike? You might as well be trailing a parachute behind you. You know, like those race cars that release a parachute to act as a brake. So, yes, it's like riding with your brakes on. And it's hard to really get anywhere when you've got the brakes on. It's, like, slow.

Take, for example the one day in Saskatchewan when we weren't contending with headwinds: We went 160 km from Kindersley to Outlook in about seven hours. A long day, yes, but it was also a very productive day. On the other hand, when we were fighting vicious headwinds between Glenavon to Wawota we were able to do 103 km also in about seven hours.

It's painful. Not just painfully slow. Literally painful. Those 103 km were damn exhausting. Worse than the mountains, because while the passes were a hard few hours, there was also the hour or two where you got to come down the other side. Riding into a headwind for seven hours is just seven hours of unrelenting grunt work. (And it's curiously hard on the knees too, although I don't know why. You just suddenly start to feel rather arthritic and you get all freaked out that you're developing a knee problem, but then it goes away as soon as the wind dies down.)

So, needless to say, the headwind situation was already wearing thin by the time we hit the Saskatchewan border (especially since it robbed us of the Tyrrell Museum!). And, at the same time, the food crisis was developing from a situation into a full blown crisis. Combined with the fact that, after the mountains, one not only expects but needs the prairies to be a bit of a break and lo, we had a morale problem brewing. A morale problem and a corresponding fatigue problem that, given equal portions of poor nutrition and grunt work, boiled over into a just being physically ill problem.

While there were certainly lovely days and lovely moments, the synergy between the Food Crisis and the Headwinds Crisis amounted to what seemed like a drawn out Groundhog Day where we'd get up, grimly soldier through a plateful of processed foods, grunt out a day of riding with both our knees and the wind howling (all the while sliding into a malnourished fugue state), give up after seven hours and realize with alarm and despair that you are nowhere near where you should be if you're going to get out of the province anytime within a reasonable schedule. Repeat.

And, just like all things do when they're spiralling out of control*, one bad situation feeds the other and the longer we were stranded in rural Saskatchewan in the wind, the more we desperately needed quality food and the longer we went without eating properly, the harder it was to ride far enough to get out quicker. And, inevitably, we got kinda ill and we were forced to take an extra day and a half off.

Anyway, it got to the point where at least once a day, Kieran would say with grim determination, "We can't let Saskatchewan win." And I would imagine that, after we left whichever teeny village we'd stopped in, the townspeople would gather around a cauldron in the town square and start chanting some spell that turned the winds from west to east, until eventually we'd be forced to relent and buy real estate and round out the workforce.**

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* Did anyone else have to do those Daisyworld computer simulations in university? Where if you didn't find the perfect balance of daisies and soil, Daisyworld's positive feedback loops would cause its climate to overheat?

**Seriously, some of these places had that kind of creepy feel to them. Made me think of that short story, The Lottery, where the people would stone to death someone every year in order to ensure good crops. Not to mention how the people would descend upon us to tell us how they're trying to attract young families and would bleat things like "The water here is excellent!"

Hey Yous!

2007-07-13T17:59:00.000-07:00

Yup! We're in Saskatchewan! Where people actually say "yous." (And where, as you may have guessed there's simply no Internet cafes. In fact, I'm typing this on our fancy phone. Which is kinda hard, so this'll be on the shorter side.) Anyway people say "yous" and it's folksy and friendly, which kinda sums up what our week's been like.

I've been dying to post about our visit in Calgary and the trip to Drumheller that wasn't and the related issue of headwinds that have slowed us down in a serious, alarming way. Oh and we spent the night in an old one room school house that was haunted (even Kieran concedes that now) and visited my parents and stayed in a non-haunted old Eatons catalogue house.

But at the moment, it's all overshadowed by something that happened yesterday. We found a duck who had just been hit by a truck. She was stunned and sitting in the shoulder, unable to move. One of her eyes was filled with blood and her bill was cracked and bleeding and she just looked at us helplessly when we approached. It was heartbreaking to see. We put our bikes down and Kieran picked her up and carried her as gently as possible to where there were some reeds and a small pond. She was so stunned she didn't even struggle at all. We just wanted to get her off the side of the road so could be in the shade and away from all the traffic. She stood up on her own once she was in the reeds, but she was too dizzy to walk yet. We decided to just leave her in peace so that we wouldn't cause her any more stress. I really don't know if she could have survived. Her wings were fine but she obviously had a head injury. It made us both deeply heartsick, all the more so because we've been so delighted by all the ducks and ducklings we've seen on the trip.

Okay. That's all for now. We're off to catch a play at the Regina Fringe Festival. Let's hope the rest of the nation is slightly better conected than the bald prairie.

What is There To Do in Midway, BC?

2007-07-04T09:08:00.001-07:00

Midway turned out to be the surprise hit of British Columbia despite the fact that neither of us had ever heard of the village until we found ourselves rolling onto its Main Street. The surprise hit to the point where, at least once daily since our stop there, Kieran brings up a ranch we saw for sale and details all the ways in which we could make a life in Midway work (yes, family, that one can go to print in the Family Gossip Weekly).

So what is there to do in Midway? Why, go to the Kettle River Inn and Saloon, of course! The saloon was situated across the street from the town's campground (and the campground is just lovely, I must add, as it's right on the Kettle River). The potential for nuisance in this arrangement was quickly swept aside by a fantastic guitar riff that caused both of us to look up sharply from pounding in our tent pegs and consider the saloon anew. It seemed as though there was live bluegrass music coming from the saloon. We decided to check it out.

I have to say, the band was fantastic. A motley crew of cowboys, aging hippies, and a couple of stay-at-home moms and...damn, they were good. Even Kieran wanted to get up and dance. Dance as in two-step. Kieran. (Of course, one needs to know how to two-step in order to two-step and even though I've tried to teach him more than a few times, we've both conceded that the two-step dream is a lost cause for this Alberta-Girl-BC-Boy couple.)

And then there was the food.

First, Kieran went up to the bar to see what was on tap.

"Kokanee or dark beer."

"...Dark beer. Uh, what kind of dark beer?"

"Dunno. Just dark beer. Two bucks a glass."

So we got the Dark Beer (I mean, two dollars a pop!). And it turns out that Dark Beer is good. Like, really, really good. Kinda like Trad, but...crisper. More refreshing. Satisfied with the Dark Beer, we asked for menus.

"There is no menu. We only serve chicken wings. It's Wednesday."

"...Alright, we'll have chicken wings then."

"No, no. You have to sit down and I'll bring you the list."

"Okaaaaaay."

The "list" turned out to be a list of chicken wing varieties. Forty in all. Ranging from classic Buffalo wings to rum pineapple and tequila lime. Along with the list, you're provided a notepad and complimentary pen with which you're expected to provide a running tally of all the wings you want to sample, the idea being you can sample different varieties of wings all night and keep a running tab. Only being a few months off of the vegetarian wagon, an all night chicken wing bender seemed a little extreme to us. We went for a relatively moderate order of Jamaican spice rub wings, Cajun spice rub wings, and some Indian butter chicken wings.

The wings were prepared and served up by a man who looked for all the world like Nick Nolte in his notorious mugshot photo, complete with long greasy hair that screamed out of his head at awkward angles and an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt. This dude would appear from the back with paper plates overflowing with wings, dump them on the bar, scan the room with his glassy half-lidded eyes, refill his mug with Dark Beer, and stumble back into the kitchen in a drunken haze to make more wings.

I was a little nervous about the chicken wings.

I'll tell you right now, if they would have brought me a bowl of the Indian butter chicken sauce, I would have stuck my face in it to blow bubbles. And not just because we were ravished from having biked The Anarchist or because we were slightly buzzed on Dark Beer. But because Nick Nolte's long lost Canadian cousin, despite his drunken stupor, knows how to make wings. We all have our gifts and that dude's gift is surviving fatal doses of Dark Beer and a real flair for making chicken wings.

All told, it was a night of great music and great food with friendly relaxed locals.

By Popular Demand....

2007-07-03T23:43:00.000-07:00

Our map:

We've also linked to the map in the sidebar, for future reference. Although it was a hassle to draw those blue lines and it put me off a little, so I will likely only update it when I'm having a good hair day AND have Internet access.

The Anarchist

2007-07-03T14:21:00.000-07:00

It never bodes especially well when the mountain pass you're about to scale has been dubbed with an intimidating moniker. And, truth be told, whoever decided to name the climb out of Osoyoos "The Anarchist" pretty much hit the nail on the head, aptly capturing the mountain's personality. Adding to the Anarchist's intimidation factor is the fact that the mountain looms over the east side of the lake and you can't help but watch a grim parade of toy-sized looking trucks winding their way up through the various switchbacks before becoming tiny and disappearing into the ether.

Every now and again during our rest day, I would find Kieran tracking a truck's ascent in silence and he would turn to me and ask rhetorical questions in a tone that was at once resigned and determined. "Oh, so are those SWITCHBACKS?" he would ask and sigh when I nodded. (I once descended The Anarchist while driving a heavy moving truck with shoddy brakes and possess a rather vivid recollection of its various features.)

Was The Anarchist worse than the 1-2-3 kicks to the teeth that constitute the climb(s) out of Hope? I don't know. It's not as high or as long, but it certainly has more...personality. You're under the blazing desert sun, for one thing, and it was over 30C by mid-morning. It's steep for another thing, and you often feel like your bike is teetering on the precipice of a deadly plunge over a cliff's edge.

Since I've gone into some detail on what the climb out of Hope was like and, in the end, the climbs are basically all the same (in a word: HARD), I've decided instead to post our pictures from the climb. They kinda capture the essence of The Anarchist a little better than I can without actually writing a novel.

Ah, camping on the lake, where the water is warm and the evenings are pleasant.

Naturally, the lake is at the BOTTOM. And one must go UP from the bottom, as demonstrated here, where we are an hour into the climb (or a quarter of the way up) and already the town is starting to look quite tiny.

And here we are two hours later, about halfway up but believing ourselves to be very nearly done. In fact, the mountain messes with your head that way (ah, yes, the Anarchist) because you hit something of a plateau not long after this and then find yourself grinding up for another hour yet.

A glimpse of the switchbacks to the north:

And south:

And then, at last, your 1233 metre/30 kilometre flirtation with anarchy is done.

Stats: Osoyoos to Midway: 73 km; Anarchist Summit: 1233m/30 km; Number of times we ran out of water under desert sun: 1; Number of RVers we accosted at rest stop to ask for some of their water: 4

First, There Was the Desert

2007-07-03T08:55:00.000-07:00

Now, you KNOW you're harbingers of bad weather when the rain clouds you've got tethered to your bike seat follow you into the DESERT. Such was the case when we started the descent into Osoyoos.

But in the morning, a great golden orb appeared in the sky. When we emerged from our tent, wary and frightened by the surreal bright light that had surrounded us, we noticed that the orb's penetrating rays warmed our skin and that, once one was accustomed to the strange stillness that came with not shivering, it was more pleasant than frightening. We looked at each other in wonder. Perhaps this was the Sun Star our elders had told us about? We had heard great legends about how, before the Rain Times had descended on Earth, the Sun Star had bathed the Earth in its golden light, coaxing food from the lands and our peoples from their homes. Once, our people would travel the world in order to prostrate their bodies in the warm ultraviolet rays of the Sun Star. Now, only a dwindling population of elders can remember the days of basking on beaches or laying beside small pools of water designed to cool your body after the rays of the Sun Star became too strong and your body became uncomfortably warm (can you imagine?!?).

We did not know how brief the appearance of the Sun Star would be and felt it would be a disgrace to our ancestors if we did not pay our respects to the great star our people had once worshiped. We decided to prolong our stay in the desert by a day so that we could lay our bodies before the Sun Star and, knowingly risking cell mutation*, watch in fascination as our skin first warmed, then browned, then cooked, just as our ancestors' once did.

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*Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, YEAH. We're wearing sunscreen.

Stats: Princeton to Keremeos: 72 km; Keremeos to Osoyoos: 68 km (140 km total); Terrible climbs: 0; Almost terrible climbs: Several between Keremeos and Osoyoos; Bags of fresh picked cherries consumed: 1; Bunches of fresh picked asparagus consumed: 1; Number of roadside produce stands selling fresh picked cherries and asparagus: Approx. 92, 000.

So.

2007-07-03T08:36:00.000-07:00

We've been busy. (Check out those stats!)

We also took a long ramble through a whole lot of nowhere. Well, not nowhere. Charming little somewheres. But little. Little somewheres. And now I've got some catching up to do.

Manning Park to Princeton: The Manning Park Ordeal, Denoument

2007-06-23T10:31:00.000-07:00

Can things get worse than getting lost in the dark on a mountainside in bear country and ascending a near interminable mountain pass with no water? Well, yes. Sort of.

Hypothetically speaking, one might have to descend said mountain. In the dark. Unable to see the road ahead of you while you gather speed beyond your control, unable to use the shoulder because it's grated and, therefore, biking on the road and simply praying that motorists also gathering speed possibly beyond their control will see you in time. (Thank you Scotchbright. I think you might have literally saved our lives.) Hypothetically, of course. Uh, Mom, this totally NEVER happened.

And then, blessedly, halfway down the mountain, you might finally see the campground that was supposed to be 50 kilometres back and think that your ordeal is finally over. Unbeknownst to you, however, is that this campsite is infested with Pterodactyl sized mosquitoes. Oh, and? It's COLD. Cold as in next-to-a-spring-damp-air cold. Cold as in above-the-snowline cold. The kind of damp cold that makes it impossible to start a fire. Wet cold that infiltrated our gear and dampened all our bedding. The kind of cold that even with wool socks, long underwear under full clothing, a fleece, toque, and gloves we shivered violently throughout the night instead of sleeping.

By morning, things were beyond bleak. We were exhausted and stiff. We ate our oatmeal in bleary-eyed silence and then a drop. And another drop. And then the heavens opened up and DUMPED. And dumped. And dumped. Lashing after lashing of wind and rain that persisted throughout our 70 kilometre ride to Princeton.

And it should be noted that somewhere in that ride, somewhere near the start of our ascent to Sunday Summit, I hit a wall. I rounded a corner and there was another damn hill. I stopped to collect my thoughts, trying to rally myself, but that damn hill just yawned ahead of us through the sheets of rain, no end in sight. (It should also be noted that there is nothing, NOTHING, that will cause my morale to nosedive more quickly and effectively than being cold without respite. I simply can't stand it.) I looked at the hill and the hill looked at me.

"Fuck it."

I got off and walked. I walked for two full kilometres just to spite the hill. And ridiculously, I felt much better after that. If there was something I could have done to spite the rain, I would have done that too.

And then, finally, Princeton. We were back in civilization and it couldn't have come a minute too soon. In town, we ran into a man coming out of the hardware store and asked him about the local campground. He took one look at us, drenched and bedraggled, and suggested that we get a motel. We did. And we stayed for two nights because that's how long it took to warm up and sleep off the Park.

Stats: 70 km; Sunday Summit 1280m; 1 very much needed rest day

[Ed note: No time to spel cheque. Please forgive.]

Oh, thank God!

2007-06-21T10:30:00.000-07:00

It looks like we're going the right way!

In Princeton, BC

2007-06-21T10:25:00.000-07:00

Wait...

Hope to Manning Park: When You're Going Through Hell...

2007-06-21T08:55:00.000-07:00

Keep going. (I think Winston Churchill said that.)

This was a leg of the journey we'd been dreading and, not to ruin the suspense, it not only lived up to our expectations, it exceeded them. There's just nowhere but up from Hope. A whole lotta up.

First, there's the climb to the Hope Slide, which according to Wiki, is a 7% grade. Or, simply put, bloody steep. We couldn't get our bikes up over five kilometres per hour, so it was slow going. Slow and...grinding. There just aren't enough spinning classes in the world to make that kind of climb any easier. For a while, I would set my sights on something about 400 metres ahead and make it my goal to just make it to that object ("I'm going to keep peddling to that big tree, just keep going until you get to the big tree, you're almost at the big tree, come on big tree, bigtreebigtreebigtreebigtree..."). This technique tricked my psyche into not sabotaging my determination for a good hour. As we moved into hour two of grinding up the hill, my psyche caught on to me ("I'm going to keep peddling to that hubcap on the side of the road, just keep peddling until--Oh sod it! This SUCKS. This hill SUCKS. Suckssuckssuckssuckssuckssucks...").

All told, the climb took almost three hours. We were tired. And lunch overlooking a devastating landslide that killed a number of people wasn't quite what we needed to hearten our flogging spirits.

We checked the map and came up with a plan. There was no way we were up to the challenge of the notorious Allison Pass, but according to our map, we had a nice long descent into the Sunshine Valley, another shorter climb out of the valley and then a descent into a campground at the base of Allison Pass. We decided to aim for that campground and to tackle Allison Pass in the morning when we had fresh legs.

The Sunshine Valley came and went and the second climb and its descent came and went and there was no campground. We were tired, daylight was flattening into dusk, and we were out of water. We reasoned that the second descent must have just been a dip and that we would have to climb up a bit further before coming down to the campground we were looking for, so we started up the next climb. In any case, there was nothing else to be done, as we were on the side of a mountain in the middle of nowhere.

An hour later, we were still climbing and the more we climbed, the steeper it got. At some point, a car crossed over the centre line and the driver rolled down his window to inform us that about halfway up the hill there was a big bear. This news was alarming in two ways: first there was a bear, a big bear at that and second, we had been climbing for an hour and we weren't yet halfway up the hill.

There was, indeed, a bear further up the hill. And he was big. But not Grizzly big, thank God (I'm more scared of Grizzlies, but perhaps only because I haven't encountered as many). (No, seriously, aren't Grizzlies more menacing?) The bear--a Brown Bear, I think--was on the shoulder on the opposite side of the road. Which is to say, much closer than I ever care to come to a bear. Kieran dug out the bear spray and had it ready in his handlebar bag and we start ringing our bike bells and talking while we approached. The bear didn't get scared off, but instead became curious and turned to take us in, sniffing the air in our direction. When we were close enough to make eye contact (ungerrrt!), the bear would turn his head sideways to avoid direct eye contact (not confrontational--PHEW!) and then look back (ungerrrt!). We did the same, and I'm sure it was for the same reasons as the bear, a kind of "I see you, but I do not want you to attack me. But I have to keep an eye on you, so I see you. But let's not fight." This dance of eye contact and looking away continued for a few long, heavy moments and then, blessedly, a truck driver saw our predicament and pulled into the centre lane, slowed to our pace, and placed the length of his trailer between us and the bear and escorted us up the hill until we were a safe distance from the bear. I turned to look back at the bear and saw that he'd done the same, craning his neck around to get a good look at us (or likely to get a good whiff, as I'm not sure how well bears can see).

Post bear excitement, we had another three hours of climbing. Still convinced we were on the smaller hill, we kept expecting the hill to end at each turn and then another hour of uphill riding would follow. At one point, I felt a cold rush against my calves and realized I had just ridden past a snow bank. We were past the snow line and we were still going up!

The last of the daylight drained away and we pulled over to put our lights on and that's when we saw this:

We'd accidentally done Allison Pass. All 1342 metres of altitude (in a mere four hours! And with only one bear encounter! Oh, the FUN!).

Stats: 67 kms; 1342m altitude; 1 bear sighting; 2 broken spirits

And, for those who are interested, here's Manning Park on Google Maps.

Signs, signs, everywhere signs

2007-06-21T08:28:00.000-07:00

We've decided to create a new category for pictures of the crazy signs we keep seeing as we travel, largely inspired by this first sign that got us to giggling.

Tired of all those pretentious roadside motels? This is the place for you!

Agassiz to Hope: The Deluge

2007-06-19T14:59:00.000-07:00

The (first) day of torrential rains. Driving rain that hammered into the tent loud enough to wake us up with a start. We lay in bed for over an hour, hoping the rain would stop so that we could get out of the tent but instead the storm intensified with each passing minute. Kieran was the first to brave the rain and he dragged all our gear into a nearby gazebo where a number of picnic tables had been stacked and stored.

We spent the morning huddled in the gazebo, sitting on upturned picnic tables and watching the icy silver sheets of rain billowing of the roof. We spread out our gear on the picnic tables, feebly hoping it would dry out enough for us to re-pack it. Everything was wet, the tent, the bedding, our clothes and, most tragically, my wool socks.

Eventually, we accepted that the rain was not going to let up. We decided to do the short ride into Hope where we could get a room. A little rain would have been fine, but this was not a little rain. This was biblical.

Our outlook improved somewhat in Hope because we came across our first one of these photo opportunities:

We have since resolved that we will stop for every single one of these damn things that we come across. (Aside: Is there an official name for these stick-your-head-in-the-hole-and-take-a-picture things?)

Stats: 40 km travelled; 4 wet feet; 1 head-in-the-hole picture
Total distance: 184 km

Langley to Agassiz

2007-06-19T14:26:00.000-07:00

Our first successful day. Our first great day (and our last for a while). Both the weather and the scenery in the Fraser River Valley were ideal and right away I was struck by how different it is to cycle through an area than to drive through it. It seems like you see so much more or just...really take things in. There's birds calling back and forth and butterflies and eagles soaring and the smell of flowers blooming along fences and it's all happening at once. And then of course there's the cows. We never fail to arouse the curiosity of cows, which in turn never fails to crack us up.

The Dewdney area was the surprise highlight of the day for both us. It was sweet and pretty in a nostalgic pastoral kind of way, with the snow capped mountains in the distance and the pastures dotted by buttercups. I was also surprised to see vineyards in the area, as I didn't know grapes could grow in the Lower Mainland (wait, is Mission Hill wine from Mission?).

We ended our idyllic day of riding through rolling hills by setting up Big Agnes under a weeping willow in Agassiz and we both fell asleep relaxed and secure in the knowledge that things were going to be okay and the trip was going to be a success.

Stats: 84 km; 1 flat tire (mine of course); and we both achieved a new speed record of 56kph
Total distance travelled: 144km

The Epic Yet Anti-climatic First Day

2007-06-11T15:30:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, incredibly long yesterday, sent the strong message that planning and preparation is essential yet also an exercise in futility. The Festival of Unforeseen Pitfalls commenced with our family breakfast, as it turned out all the streets within a ten block radius of the restaurant we had chosen had been barricaded for a triathlon. As a result, Kieran's mom had to park about fifteen minutes away and my sister-in-law had to lie to the traffic police in order to get my parents a parking spot that was not on the other side of town. To top it all off, once my family arrived, Kieran had to run out and retrieve them from the opposite side of the street where they had become trapped by the metal barricades set up for the triathlon. All of this was underscored by the irony that we had chosen a restaurant downtown as opposed to somewhere near where we were staying in Richmond because we had wanted to dip our tires in English Bay, which was now inaccessible. (This irony was refreshed several times in the hour it took to ride our bikes BACK to Richmond.)

Over breakfast, we debated the merits of various backup beaches we could go to to dip our wheels in the Pacific and, in the end, reached a consensus on the beach on the opposite side of English Bay. Kieran and I biked over to the planetarium (via the Granville Street Bridge after a thwarted attempt to use the more direct Burrard Street Bridge), and it quickly became apparent that this beach was also inaccessible to bikes due to the enormous and inexplicable rubber pipe bisecting the park. We made our way over to where our families were waiting and, upon attempting to disembark, I promptly discovered that one of my SPD clips was malfunctioning and my leg appeared to be fused to my right pedal. With the help of three people who twisted my leg to and fro, I was able to detach my leg from my pedal's iron grip. This dramatic fight between man and machine was, in fact, a fight to the death, as several minutes later I discovered that our little wrestling match with my pedal had broken my SPD clip. And, hence, minutes before our official departure, I had already created the need for equipment repairs.

Having freed myself from my bike, we made our way down to remaining scrap of beach not barricaded by the Giant Pipe of Unknown Origins. It turned out to be a great spot, with a nice view of the Pacific and Stanley Park and it made for some great photos of our tire dipping ceremony (a moment nearly as well documented as our wedding), complete with a few sail boats slipping out to sea in the background. And then it was hugs and goodbyes all around and we were off on our great Canadian adventure!

Except, of course, we only went six blocks before stopping at the nearest bike store to buy me a new SPD clip. And then we were off on our great Canadian adventure!

What remained of the morning went relatively smoothly, except when we discovered that our BCAA road map is out of date by way of my biking into the industrial yard of a pulp mill and finding myself under a very noisy and rickety wood chipper. (Kieran was spared this fate due to a loose pannier holding him up while I went to find out the answer to "Where do you think that ramp goes?")

The worst of the day was on the Alex Fraser bridge, which I've always found to have an ominous and imposing vibe even in a car, so I was dreading going over it on our bikes. At the base of the bridge (yes base--the damn thing is STEEP), we found ourselves on the wrong side of the traffic/bike path divider and a cyclist on the other side had to help us lift our bikes over the cement barrier so that we could climb over to where we should be. We were then hit by torrential rains and vicious sugar crashes and the climb just...SUCKED. The view at the top was great, but I was cold and hungry and found the way the bridge shook every time a truck rumbled past to be disconcerting.

After some lunch and sunshine at Burns Bog, I was able to shake the feeling that the world was coming to an end. With our blood sugar stabilized, things went well again until Surrey when it suddenly started to feel harder to pedal and then I started to notice every pebble and grain of sand I rode over. I had a flat. A very flat flat. I seriously thought we'd be able to make it at least a week without a flat, but no. I couldn't even make it out of the GVRD. The culprit turned out to be a staple. A STAPLE. Never mind that earlier I couldn't avoid riding through a pile of GLASS and still nothing happened, but I get taken down by a STAPLE.

So, with all our setbacks and my numerous bathroom breaks resulting from my overzealous efforts to remain hydrated, we rolled into Kieran's mom's in Langley later than we expected. But she had a fantastic meal that involved prawns and FOUR CHEESE SAUCE (the woman knows her audience), Epsom salts for her soaker tub, and a king sized bed that was, wait for it, PRE-HEATED (yes). After our night of luxury and a sleep (in a pre-heated bed!) that was only slightly less restful than flat lining, we had to accept that we couldn't hit the road this morning. Too many little problems with our gear surfaced yesterday and they needed to be addressed before we left civilization. So, riding out to Kieran's mom's and then staying an extra day made it feel like our first day was something of a false start. But, tomorrow we'll be off and our great Canadian adventure will begin (again)!

Day 1 Final Tally: 60-65 kms; 1 flat tire. (Unfortunately, our distance stat is an approximate, as neither of our bike computers were working yesterday, just one of the little problems we've fixed today.)

The Family Photo

2007-06-10T01:06:00.001-07:00

Our camera lasted long enough to take one (1) photo last night, which fortunately was the family photo. We promised to post it so everyone could have a copy and we've miraculously remembered.

Those who want a copy can go here and click the link Download the Large size, which appears above the photo.

Thanks again to everyone for their support! xoxo

The Family Photo

2007-06-10T01:06:00.000-07:00

Our camera lasted long enough to take one (1) photo last night, which fortunately was the family photo. We promised to post it so everyone could have a copy and we've miraculously remembered. xoxo Jay and Kieran

Our First (Mis)Adventure

2007-06-09T15:18:00.000-07:00

Today was supposed to be our first day on the road and already we've had a mishap. In the middle of our big send-off party last night, Kieran grimly took me aside to tell me that our cat sitter (Kieran's sweet Aunt Tracey) had phoned to let him know that while she was at work, one of our cats had fallen out of the second story window of her office and was missing. We had no less than twenty-five guests waiting for us in the restaurant, so neither my instinct to drop everything and race to Maple Ridge to search for our kitty nor my instinct to curl up on the floor in the fetal position and sob listlessly seemed like appropriate options. Instead, we returned to the party and for about ten seconds it seemed like I might be able to maintain my composure. But then I did the thing where you do facial gymnastics in trying to suppress the Ugly Cry and then the Ugly Cry wins and you end up doing the Really Ugly Cry because of your efforts not to cry.

After the Ugly Cry incident, I think we both managed to enjoy the party through sheer will, although it did feel as though I had swallowed whole something the size and weight of a medicine ball. And my Stomach Medicine Ball had some kind of sinister anxiety time release mechanism, where every twenty minutes or so it would remind me of yet another reason why we would never find our cat again. "Logan doesn't know where he is, he's new to the province, and he'll wander off into the woods and get lost...forEVER," my Stomach Medicine Ball would hiss and then, through it's ability to generate more anxiety and then feed on it, my Stomach Medicine Ball would get bigger and heavier. So I did have fun, but I found the fifteen pounds of anxiety pressing against my internal organs physically uncomfortable.

After the party wound down, we drove out to Maple Ridge, literally catching the Albion Ferry on its last crossing, and began scouring Tracey's neighbourhood. I'm sure having two people waving around flashlights and repeatedly calling out "Looooooggggaaaannnnn" in voices several octaves higher than normal while creeping around yards and peering under cars at 1:30 in the morning didn't exactly impress Tracey's neighbours. But, just when it was starting to seem futile, I heard a familiar little meow and out popped Logan from under a fence. He was limping and hungry and covered in something smelly, but he was found. When Tracey opened her door and saw Kieran with Logan in his arms, she was so relieved she burst into tears and then the floodgates opened and I burst into tears and my Stomach Medicine Ball finally dissipated.

So, seeing as how we didn't get to bed until 3:00 in the morning, our 6:00 wakeup call didn't seem likely, so we put off the trip for a day. It all seems for the best, as it hasn't stopped raining once today. Tomorrow we'll get to leave well rested and, as a bonus, we won't have to spend our first day riding through apocalyptic rain storms.

Oh, look at our poor baaaaaaabbby who fell out of a window and has a sore paw and has to go to the vet's today and now his momma and daddy are GOING AWAY for THREE MONTHS. *sniff*

PS Because Tracey has been so kind and generous in offering to care for our three cats so we could go on this trip, we wanted to give her organization a shout out. Tracey works tirelessly for Katie's Place, a no-kill animal shelter that cares for cats and rabbits. What's so special about Katie's Place is that it takes on a lot of animals with special needs. If you're thinking about adopting, you might want to consider adopting one of their special needs kitties. Or, if you have the space, you might want to consider fostering a kitty or bunny. And, Tracey? MWAH! We heart you. Thank you for being you.