Day 5

After having taken a rest day in Penticton to visit family and recover, the 70km to Kelowna was a nice route to ease back in to riding. The shoulders were wide and well maintained, the weather was nice, and the only thing stopping it from being a perfect day was the wind going to wrong way. It's never fun having to keep pedaling to maintain speed downhill. As I starting to realize, getting to a town is not the same as getting to where you need to be; after getting to downtown kelowna I still had to bike straight uphill for 40mins to get to his house. A shower and some food quickly set me right though, and it was rad to get to go out and visit some friends before calling it a night. LPCs represent.

Day 6

Slow morning, starting off with watching a Vice documentary on Scopolomine with my friends roommate, followed by a lengthy breakfast at Timmy Hos before leaving K-town. I'm nearly done my first book (Children of Dune), and putting it away is becoming increasingly difficult. The ride of of Kelowna is familiar but still crazy beautiful, passing by numerous lakes. I found a broken iPhone along the side of the road, which is hopefully not foreshadowing or some sort of omen. It was the first techno road kill so far, with actual road kill being significantly more prevalent. There are also all sorts of roadside attractions, with these aerial goats being my favorite so far. Crazy goats and their climbing! Not a lot of wildlife today outside of numerous circling hawks, but at least there were goats.

Since they flooding in Sicamous has apparently obliterated the road, I had to reroute through to Salmon Arm. As it was getting late, I finally passed a campsite (they're everywhere until you're ready for one), where I was promptly up sold to a little cabin. Rejoicing came in the form of showers and laundry.

Day 4

I've already managed to lose track of what day it is, which I am taking as a good sign. Today was my defining ride so far, rife with adventure, intrigue, bears, and fatigue. The day started off on a good foot with a resupply of Pop Tarts, and meeting my first fellow cyclist. He was Quebecois and I relished the opportunity to bust of my very rusty French to chat about the route and where we were headed. Turns out he was a total beast and had just done what took me three days in one and a half, and he was planning on ending the second in Princeton. He then took off before I could ask if he wanted to ride together. Leaving the Lodge started with some very enjoyable downhill, followed by a second climbing section. I have eaten through most of my original 15lbs of food by now, and was feeling pretty good about going uphill at this point. Sure enough, it went by in no time, and due to an accident I got to pass all the cars that had passed me earlier as I reached the second summit. This also let me catch up to my fellow cyclist, who was once again forced to exchange small talk and then ride with me for a while. Since we had rolled to the front of the line, the flagger let us through first, and we got to bomb all the way down to Princeton ahead of the traffic, which was awesome. I gave up on pedaling and just tucked down low on my handlebars and got up to around 65km/hr, which was pretty exhilarating, especially considering we had the whole road to ourselves. Upon reaching Princeton, I pulled in for lunch, and my cycling companion bombed onward without so much as a wave, never to be seen again.

After lunch, I decided to keep going as far as I could go, rather than camping out early and relaxing. I have family in Penticton that I was looking forward to seeing, and I figured I would try to make it by nightfall, or just camp out and make it the next day if I pooped out. So on I go, stopping along the way to check out a young buck eyeing down a Jeep before taking off into the woods with its silly four legged bouncy jump, and then again in Keremeos to munch on some gas station food. At this point it's around 6pm, I'm starting to feel a bit tired, and Penticton's still 45km away. Figuring the plan is still sound, I carry on, leaning towards camping soon as my legs are pretty dead after 135km of riding. But that all changes about 8km down the road from Keremeos, when a black bear bounds out in to the middle of the highway about 200m in front of me and stops to check me and a car on the other side of it out. I stop as quickly as possible, and start wondering about what my best course of action is. Do I turn around and bike away? I'm pretty tired and frankly am too slow at this point, so thats no good. Do I take a picture? Well that would look good on the blog, but I can't upload it if it eats me. Oh! The bear spray, good thinking exhausted James! Thankfully by the time I reach a decision the bear has bounded back in to the woods. And then a minute later sprints back across to the spot it emerged from. After waiting a few minutes to see if it was all a ruse, I pedal past, timing my run with some other traffic. No sign, but camping has just been taken off the table. Onwards, to Penticton!

As luck would have it, yet another climb begins within a kilometer of the bear sighting, so I am now back to biking 8km/hr, with no energy, while constantly scanning the woods for any imminent bear attacks. After a few Pop Tart breaks, and what felt like forever riding uphill (more like an hour and a half), I reached the summit and got to enjoy the ride downhill in to Penticton. Of course, it was now dark, and storm clouds were gathering, but downhill, don't care. As I blast downhill, really hoping there aren't potholes since I straight up can't see them coming, I start wondering why my little blinky light it making suck bright flashes off the reflective signs. After it happens a few times, I realize that it isn't; what I'm seeing is actually lightning, and a thunderstorm has decided it was a good time to get started. Oh well, not much I can do about that, and it isn't raining so just pedal faster and get to Grandma's ASAP. Finally I reach the bottom of the hill, cross Penticton with a nice wind at my back while following a police car (my imagined escort since I am totally a VIP), and sure enough the heavens open with five minutes to go. I blast up the last hill and roll in to an open door, a relieved Grandma, and three meals worth of food, which I promptly wolfed down before settling in to bed for a 13 hour nap. I managed to reset my little computer deelie with my crotch several times when I took breaks, but I rode somewhere around 180-190km with two major climbs. I took the following day off as a well deserved rest day to ease cramped muscles, spend time with family, and catch up on the blog. Tomorrow, on to Kelowna!

No picture today because bears.

Day 3

Today was the day I decided I chose the right bike. The book makes it very clear that Manning Park, with Allison Pass in particular, is the most difficult stretch of the trip, going on the say that if you can make it through today, you can make it through anything. After waking up at noon, and being packed and ready to go by two, I now had to make it through in half a day or less. The road started getting steep almost right away, and it stayed that way for the next several hours. Thankfully my beauty of a bike has crazy low gearing, and I was able to just sit back and spin away using my 26/32 granny gear. I wasn't going fast (7-8km/hr), but it wasn't any harder than spinning on flat. It was just a lot slower. I had polished off my supply of tasty goo snacks yesterday, so today was fueled entirely by peanut butter, which I ate out of a jar with a spoon.  I think I ate about 300g, along with breakfast, lunch, and ultimately dinner. Long story short peanut butter is amazing and it is looking like it will be a staple calorie source for this trip. Outside of being straight uphill all day, the ride was entirely uneventful except for a few people leaning out windows to holler encouraging things at me, which was great. For reference: yelling/cheering/thumbs up = encouraging, honking your horn = surely I'm about to get hit by a car. Thankfully no one honked today.

After climbing and climbing, I finally saw the "Allison Pass Summit" sign in the distance. Success! After this is was a nice downhill cruise all the way to the Manning Park Lodge, where I decided to stay in the hostel to take advantage of the beds/showers/laundry/kitchen/pool/hot tub/not bears. There were bear signs everywhere, and I felt very good about this decision. Also there was snow on the ground. And bears.

Day 2

Setting up is way easier than packing up. After having my alarm go off early on, I foolishly pawed it off and rolled back to sleep. The extra hour and a half of sleep I gained cost me the shade of the tree I was under, and I woke up again in a steaming hot tent. This also meant I got to cook breakfast and pack up in direct sunlight, which was more uncomfortable than I would have assumed. Once again, lesson learned. After some tasty oatmeal, I got to work packing everything up and rinsing off in the stream before taking off again. Today I made it out a little past Hope, and it was pretty uneventful. Have yet to see any other cyclists, and am learning the importance of frequent breaks and frequent snacks. The water filter has made it ridiculously easy to fill up water bottles, and as a result I've only had to stop in at a gas station once so far despite draining all three once every two or so hours. I decided to call it quits a few kilometers outside of Hope right before the climb up Allison Pass begins, since the book forewarns that it's one of the most difficult stretches of the ride, and I'm not feeling ambitious enough to go at it after a decent days ride and a poor nights sleep. Tonight I have a much better selection of discrete camp sites, and I ended up choosing a pre-loved campsite up a little dirt road along the edge of Nicolum river. This time I was set up in the full shade, and after a big dinner I crawled into bed and slept for 13 hours. No regrets.

When I woke up the water bottle that I use for Gatorade had the edges of the mouthpieces chewed off by some little critter that was willing to eat some rubber to enjoy the tasty red residue left over. From now on waterbottles come in the tent. Food continues to go up a tree so hopefully bears don't smell it in the tent. I have been told this is what to do, but remain skeptical.

Day 1

True to form, I still managed to leave several hours late despite having taken a (second) full extra day to prepare for departure. With banking, work, blogging, and packing now all properly taken care of, I had run out of things to check off of my to-do list and was ready to take off. Also true to form I manage to get lost well within an hour of leaving, missing the turn off from the road up to SFU down Gaglardi, which let me enjoy a lovely loop around the SFU campus before arriving back at the turn off. Thankfully the detour was a short one, and after consulting the book a bit more closely I was back on my way in no time, laughing at my ineptitude with road signage. I managed to make it a whole 'nother 30km before making the exact same mistake, missing a turn off (Haney's bypass) which provided a more cycle friendly route, and then turning down the other end of the bypass where it reconnected with Highway 7 again. This made for another confusing loop that left me recognizing landmarks that I was pretty sure I had already passed. It was the look of confusion on the face of a passing another cyclist that I had seen half an hour before that really drove home how poor my sense of direction is. Thankfully both screw ups ended up being loops and put me back on track without any course adjustments needed. This further drove home how desperately I need to check the routebook, which I then proceeded to do way more than "continue down Highway 7 for two days" required.

I spent the rest of the day pedaling through farmland, which was really nice, albeit somewhat smelly. The road had ample shoulderroom so I wasn't having to worry about passing traffic, and there were plenty of cows to moo at. Farmers also seem very friendly and are quick to wave hello. I passed the camp ground the book recommends pretty early on, and have decided that I'm going to camp in the woods as much as possible to avoid paying camp site fees, as I would much prefer to spend that money on food, or hostels that cost roughly the same but include a bed, a roof, and bear-proof walls. After about an hour of riding past the site, I was starting to worry that I wouldn't find somewhere to stay. I didn't want to trespass on private property, and there was nothing but farms as far as I could see. Finally after passing through Dewdney and crossing the Fraser river I found a little turn off that was flat and had a run-off stream for water and I figured it was good enough. I didn't really put two and two together about that train tracks though, and sure enough I woke up to the rumbling of a train 20ft away from where I was sleeping several times through the night. Lesson learned. On the bright side, equipment survived the first test admirably. I cooked up some dehydrated food (courtesy of my wonderful mother) on my little stove, filled up my waterbottles via the hand-pumped filter from the otherwise sketchy stream, slept comfortably (in intervals) on the air mattress, in a bug free environment thanks to the tent. Overall a success, although it left me pretty sleepy the next day.

Day -1 & 0

Hello and welcome!

I figure documenting this trip will be a good first foray into the presumably exciting world of blogging, so here it goes. I'm planning on biking across Canada over the next three months, and I will be updating this as I go so that everyone can confirm I am having fun/haven't been eaten by bears.

After a few months of half-assed planning, a few weeks of more rigorous planning, and a final few days of intense preparation, I finally took off on my maiden test run to Victoria. The plan was to take off on Friday, but sure enough getting everything packed took about four times longer than expected and I ended up leaving on Saturday after one last lovely night in my soon-to-be-missed bed. Obviously since I  missed leaving on a nice day it poured all Saturday, so I got my first test ride in crummy weather in as well. I got totally soaked, but the waterproof panniers held strong and all my gear stayed nice and dry. Great success!

After a short but lovely visit with a friend in Victoria, I turned around and headed back home. This time the weather was much more agreeable. Really looking forward to getting away from the Coast and all its attendant rainfall. The ride home was pretty uneventful, but highlights included seeing a rogue chicken wandering through an industrial district, several deer grazing in fields, and roughly one hundred bunnies. Also got to meet several other cyclists off on adventures while waiting for the ferry, and their overwhelming friendliness really helped ease my worries about not knowing anyone on this solo journey.

Anyways, now I'm heading off for the first official leg of the journey. Looking forward to getting to put all my camping gear to its first proper test!

If you want to check out the route I'm taking, you can find it at www.canadabybicycle.com

More to come soon,

James