Biking

Well, it's been a while, but since I'm heading out on a cross-Canada, 4500km bike trip in about 7 days, I figured it'd be a good time to dust off the old travel blog.

For anyone who hasn't talked to me lately, here's the gist: Andrew Pasco (a friend from here in Kingston) and I had a conversation last December in which he mentioned how awesome it would be to bike across Canada. Despite the slight disadvantage of not owning a bike, I agreed on the spot to train for a bike trip from Vancouver to Kingston this summer. Beer may have been involved.

Shockingly enough, it's now almost June and we've managed to stick to our guns and not back down from the idea. Training has been fairly steady, and near-daily trips to Cyclepath and MEC have drained my bank account and filled my room with wicked awesome cycling gear.

We're scheduled to head out to Vancouver next Wednesday (June 6), and start biking on Friday, after spending a day or two checking out the city and visiting some west coast friends. Our first leg is tentatively going to be Vancouver -> Agassiz, BC (about 120km) along the Highway 7. From there, we'll follow the 7 to the Highway 5, and head up the 5 to Kamloops. From there, we'll be heading east to Banff, and from there we'll head through Calgary and eventually to Medicine Hat, where we'll join up with the Trans-Canada Highway and follow it across the prairies. It's all pretty tentative right now, and we're more than open to suggestions if anyone knows of any great shortcuts and/or bike-friendly highways (paved shoulders = gold).

I'll update this blog as often as I can along the way, though we're planning on camping as much as possible to save money. I also managed to score a secondhand Blackberry to bring on the trip too (thanks Steve!), so I'll post my trip e-mail contact info on here as soon as I have it!