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.