Moose Jaw

We've put in two days of biking since Swift Current, and they have been doozies. If the Rockies were the most physically demanding days of the trip, the prairies have turned out to be the most mentally demanding. An example:

Today, we were biking 82km from Chaplin, Saskatchewan, to Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan. The entire trip was more or less in a straight line, directly into yet another 40km/h headwind. We made the trip in about 5 1/2 hours, with an average speed of somewhere around 16km/h (4km/h lower than our average over Kicking Horse Pass).

To put that into perspective, it took us 5 1/2 hours of grinding away at the pedals, eyes squinted against an onslaught of dust and grit, burning through thousands of calories of gas station mayo, and struggling to stay out of the ditch to make it safely to our destination. A tumbleweed, travelling in the opposite direction, would've made the trip in about half the time. And it probably wouldn't have even broken a sweat.

Ah well, what are challenges for if not making you stronger? We are now going to be ten times as appreciative of tailwinds, and the hills of northern Ontario will be no problem at all! That is, of course, as long as we're not biking into a hurricane.

Also, as a side note: the Trans-Canada through Saskatchewan has been pretty solid for biking. The traffic's significant, but not super heavy, and the shoulders are (for the most part) nice and wide, and relatively well maintained.

Tomorrow, Regina!

Mighty winds and mediocre food

We're taking a rest day in Swift Current, which means internet access courtesy of the town library!

"But Bryce," you might ask, "didn't you have TWO rest days in Calgary less than a week ago? Surely you're not that out of shape." Well yes, we have only put in 5 days, and about 600km of riding since our last rest day in Calgary, which is not quite as much distance as I was hoping to have in between rest days across the prairie flats, but for the past 3 days, we have been stalked by an extremely treacherous wind. The worst day was on our way from Dinosaur Provincial Park (dinosaur skeletons and crazy badlands topography, definitely worth the detour!) to Medicine Hat, where we biked directly into a south wind for 60km, then turned a full 90 degrees to head east to Medicine Hat. Within about 60 seconds of making the turn, the wind executed an identical shift, staying directly in our face for the remainder of the ride.

We've had a few hours of tailwinds since then on our path from Medicine Hat to Maple Creek, then Maple Creek to Swift Current, but most of the riding has been done leaning about 20 degrees into insane crosswinds that threatened to dump us in the ditch on more than one occasion. I'd estimate windspeeds at somewhere between 30 and 50km/h (confirmed, courtesy of the Weather Network).

This morning, when we woke up to yet another 25km/h headwind, we decided maybe it was time for a rest. Who'd have thought the prairies would be slower going than the Rockies?

Onto the second topic of this post: food. Our dinners have been reasonably good on this trip, and usually consist of either a footlong sub or some sort of pasta dish (if we treat ourselves to restaurant food) or a couple bowls of soup heated on our uber-tiny camp stove (if we're being budget conscious). My favourite new "camp cooking" trick is to buy a can of Chunky soup and a can of black beans and mix the two together. It's cheaper than 2 cans of soup, and the beans add a whole whack of carbs and protein to the mix.

Unfortunately, lunches have been another matter altogether. We have hit (and will continue to hit) huge expanses between civilization where there's really nowhere to stop but the occasional gas station, and so our lunches have tended to be premade sandwiches and granola bars, and let me tell you this: gas station sandwiches SUCK.

I know that's probably a fairly obvious statement, no one really goes to gas stations for an epicurean fix, but I'm absolutely mystified by the composition of gas station sandwiches. The mediocre bun, mystery meat and absence of veggies I can all understand from a pure business economics point of view... why waste money on fancy ingredients when someone buying a sandwich at a gas station will clearly eat anything non-toxic you put in front of their face? But that argument makes the next fact all the more puzzling... ALL gas station sandwiches, without exception, are covered with roughly half a gallon of mayonnaise. Always mayonnaise (never mustard, except on the rarest of occasions when it is also accompanied by mayo) and always a ridiculous quantity. If you're trying to cut corners on all the other ingredients, why not cut back a bit on the river of mayo while you're at it? Maybe then I'd be able to eat a gas station sandwich without being able to consciously feel my heart slowing down.

So here's my open inquiry to anyone reading this. Does anyone have any ideas for easy on-the-road meals that can be packed into a small volume and don't involve much assembly? We can usually hit up a grocery store at least once a day, or once every day in the more remote areas, so anything you can find at a small to mid-sized grocery store is fair game. Bonus points for being high in calories without also oozing saturated fat. If you have some great ideas, e-mail them to my Blackberry (brycedaigle(AT)bell.blackberry.net).

Now I'm off to go research how to sew. I got a bit careless changing into my only pair of pants last night, and turned a minor tear into a 5-inch long gash that's threatening to turn my only pair of jeans into a scandalously short pair of cut-offs if I don't do something about it.

Canada's Capitals!

One more post before I forget!

We've passed through quite a few towns so far, and it turns out that just about every town in Canada is "The *insert activity/thing here* Capital of Canada!". Here are a few notable ones we've hit so far:

Merritt, BC ("The Country Music Capital of Canada!")

Hope, BC ("The Chainsaw Carving Capital of Canada!")

Sicamous, BC ("The Houseboat Capital of Canada!")

Kamloops, BC ("The Tournament Capital of Canada!")

What exactly earns one the title of "Tournament Capital of Canada"? Seems a bit wishy washy to me. Kamloops should just pick one specific thing to specialize in (for example, houseboats) and leave it at that.

First Major Fork Up

Only a few days after my last post celebrating our crossing of the Rockies without major equipment failure, we've experienced our first bit of serious equipment failure. No injuries to speak of, luckily!

Andrew's bike (a Giant OCR-1 aluminum frame with a carbon aerodynamic front fork... more of a race bike than a touring bike) had been outfitted with front and rear panniers to get his weight nice and distributed, but it turns out the carbon fork was no match for the weight of the front panniers, and the tabs with the rack mounting holes right near the bottom of the fork cracked after about 1100km. Unfortunately, carbon fibre (or, as the nerd in me insists on clarifying... carbon fibre-reinforced polymers) is structurally unsound once cracked, so it was unsafe to keep travelling on his broken fork.

Alas, we discovered the cracks in Cluny, Alberta, about 125km outside of Calgary. Much to our surprise, Cluny (population, 200 - and I suspect that's including pets) didn't have a bike shop with replacement forks. Well, they didn't have a bike shop at all. Luckily for us, we knew a few people in Calgary who were awesome enough to help us out of our jam. Specifically, Chris Wong took 2 1/2 hours out of his time to drive down and pick us up in Cluny, then drive us back to Calgary, then drive us to a bike shop to get a new fork. If I had a generous friend rating scale, I would give Chris five stars.

Unfortunately, we had to find a place to stay in Cluny for the night, since Chris (being one of those people I hear about from time to time with "real jobs") couldn't come get us until the next day. Yet another stroke of total-stranger generosity saw us get invited to throw our tent on the lawn of a local couple who owned the restaurant we had dinner in. Even more generously, they invited us inside for a beer after getting our tent set up! Of course, he invited us inside while holding a giant plastic bag filled with what looked like bloody body parts. That's where things got a bit strange.

As soon as we walked into the house, he dumped the contents of the bag on his living room floor (carpet). Turns out the contents of the bag was more or less exactly what it looked like: cow femurs. Two gigantic, bloody cow femurs. He bought him for his two dogs, who immediately reverted to a feral, wolf-like state and savagely tore into the bones. As a guy who experienced a fairly cushy, cow-slaughter-free upbringing, I wasn't quite sure what to think, but after 20 minutes of sitting across the living room from our hosts and their savage wolf-dogs, I eventually tuned out the sound of canine-gnawing-on-cow-leg and had a very pleasant conversation with our extremely gracious hosts.

To summarize: we spent 2 days waiting around for rides and repairs, and tomorrow we'll be re-biking our route from a few days ago (aiming for Bassano), so all told we took 3 days to get everything dealt with. Not a bad price to pay for some good stories and an extra rest day!

Bonus dorky civil engineering rant (proceed at your own risk): Giant used single-direction fibres oriented vertically around the pannier rack mounting hole, which is a pretty questionable strategy from a structural analysis point of view. Why in the world would you put single-direction fibres oriented in the same direction as the shear forces which you'd expect to develop from hanging a pannier from a screw bearing on the hole? It doesn't use any of the strength of the carbon fibres, meaning they might as well have made the mounting tab out of plastic!

Rest day!

After 9 days and almost 1000km of biking, we are through the Rockies! We made it over Rogers Pass a few days ago, and set a new 1 day personal distance record of 150km to Golden, BC the same day! Needless to say, we were hurting the next day. We'd planned to make it from Golden to Calgary in 2 days, but after our climb over the pass, we decided it might be a bit more reasonable to make it 3 days instead.

We stayed at a hostel in Lake Louise after leaving Golden, and then headed on to Canmore from there (all on the Trans-Canada... noisy as usual, but with nice wide shoulders and good pavement). We crossed Kicking Horse Pass without any equipment malfunctions more serious than a flat tire (spokes all intact!). It was a pretty significant uphill, but not quite as punishing as the Coquihalla Pass. There was some great scenery near the top, but we were a bit disappointed by the lack of sign at the top. Without photographic proof, we have a few friends back in Kingston who will probably suspect we did the whole thing by Greyhound.

Upon arriving in Canmore, we decided we couldn't justify the expense of a hotel, seeing as how it was gorgeous outside (at 5pm), and we'd only biked 80km that day, and weren't feeling too in need of luxurious accomodations. Little did we know what the weather had in store for that night...

About 10 minutes after setting up camp at the Bow River Campground (just east of Canmore), the skies blackened, and we were hit with a torrential downpour (to the point that a park ranger came and advised us of a "heavy rainfall advisory", and told us to keep an eye on the level of the river 50m away from our campsite). We were dug in by then, so all we could do was tough it out. Unfortunately, the storm was unrelenting for the entire night (and the entirety of the next day), which gave us the opportunity to find all of the not-so-waterproof spots in our tent... there were several.

We woke up the next morning soaked and freezing, with ice on the tent and bikes, and a thermostat reading 3 degrees celsius. My sleeping bag is rated to 5 degrees, so I guess it's a good thing I slept in my jeans! We dismantled the tent with numb fingers and attempted to get on the road to make it to Calgary, but after 5km it became apparent that we'd be risking life and limb by staying outside in that weather for very long.

We pulled over in the fantastically-named Dead Man's Flats to inquire about cabs ($140 to Calgary, and no bikes allowed) and hotels (not terribly useful since the cold and rain were projected to last for days). Despite a very helpful attendant at the Husky gas station (thanks Mike!) it appeared we were up the creek. However, after about 20 minutes of sitting around being bummed out by the weather and drying/thawing out, we were spotted by Chris and Debora, a couple heading to Calgary in an RV. They (VERY generously) offered to let us toss our gear in the RV and hitch a ride to Calgary, thus keeping us on schedule and ensuring that we retained our full complement of fingers and toes. Once again, thanks Chris and Debbie!

It should be noted here that we're not being sticklers about biking every kilometre of the trip. It's more of a trip across Canada with bikes, as opposed to a bike ride from coast to coast.

Now we're here in Calgary staying with Lindsay Lackner (a friend from working at Clark Hall Pub back in Kingston), who has very generously agreed to let us stay in her fantastic new apartment while we rest up and prepare for the prairies! They're not quite as daunting as the mountains, but I think I speak for Andrew and myself when I say we're both ready for some flat roads and some summer weather.

More from the road as access allows!

Day 5 Update

I wasn't expecting to be able to post so soon, but it turns out our campsite for the night has free high speed internet access! There's nothing quite like the rustic camping experience.

Since my last post, we've biked 124km from Merritt to Kamloops along the 5A highway, which featured absolutely stunning scenery, very little traffic, and a fierce tailwind. All in all, it was pretty much a perfect day of cycling. I highly recommend the 5A over the Coquihalla (the #5) from Merritt to Kamloops.

Today, on the other hand, was 100km from Kamloops to Salmon Arm along the Trans-Canada directly into a stiff headwind that kept our average speeds pretty slow. The highway has nice wide shoulders, and was relatively flat (meaning about 10 times as hilly as the Kingston-area terrain I'm used to), but was much noisier than yesterday's ride.

Tomorrow, we're off to Revelstoke, which is apparently mostly flat, except for a climb at the end. After that, the second serious climbing leg of the trip begins as we cross over Rogers Pass and Kicking Horse Pass on our way to Golden and Banff, respectively.

Aside from the biking, the trip's been going well! We spend all of our non-biking time either eating, sleeping, or getting ready to eat or sleep. Also, today was the first day of the trip with mosquitoes, which does not bode well for the next month or so.

Time to hit the sack!

Day 4 Update

We're about to start the fourth day of our trip, and so far we've made it from Vancouver to Maple Ridge (where we stopped early on the first day due to having to change our first few flats), Maple Ridge to Hope (where we stayed at a hotel with some friends of ours who met up with us for that leg of the trip), and from Hope to Merritt, for a total of about 320km of very hilly terrain.

A note for any other cyclists attempting routes similar to ours: There's lots of camping around Maple Ridge, but it's not very far from Vancouver. There's plenty more if you can make it further to Harrison Mills, but if you're attempting the Coquihala Highway, I'd recommend staying the night in Hope so you can start as close to the highway as possible the next morning.

The Coquihala Highway (#5) is a route well suited to the very fit or the very foolish. I'll let you guess which category we fall into. It's 123km from Hope to Merritt with absolutely no civilization in between aside from a few rest stations to fill up your water bottles. The distance alone isn't too terrible, but there's a 1200m climb about 30km into the trip that is absolutely savage. 3km of the climb is at 8%, which was enough to make me question my sanity about halfway up. Getting to the top is pretty satisfying though, and the reward is an awesome 30km downhill stretch afterward, followed by a few more big-ish hills before Merritt. Just make sure you bring lunch if you're attempting it in one day.

I've been thinking about which items have been the most useful so far on the trip, and I think the awards go to my rain equipment and my lowest climbing gear. Packing rain gear is sort of like gambling. It's big and bulky, and fenders add weight and drag to your bike, and there's always this little voice in your head saying "you know, it could be sunny for the entire trip!". However, as soon as it rains, fenders and a rain jacket become the greatest inventions in the history of mankind, and we have been dealing with a LOT of rain.

Actually, yesterday at the top of Coquihala Pass (when we were looking DOWN on snow), it started to rain/snow, and then my thermal sleeves and leggings became the best things I packed, but I'm hoping I won't have to rely on them too much more.

It's about time for Andrew and I to hit the road and head for Kamloops. My initial estimate for Kamloops had been 5 days, but it looks like we'll make it in 4 right now, which is pretty surprising! Let's hope the next few days go as smoothly as the last few!

Our next guaranteed internet access is in Banff, where we're hitting up some old Clark Hall Pub connections for a place to crash. I might be able to update again before then, but we're running on a pretty loose itinerary right now, so you never know!

One more thing, I should put a big thank you on here to all the people who have helped us out so far, including total strangers stopping their cars in the rain to give us updates on highway conditions, and local cyclists giving great trave advice (thanks Al!).

Time to get back on the bike!

On your marks, get set...

It's just about time for us to get on the road and start making some progress. We've revised our first few days' schedule to accomodate some extra riders after Andrew and I somehow managed to convince Donna to come on the first leg of the trip with us (as far as Hope, about 160km). So our plan right now is to get far enough out of Vancouver today to set up our tent and camp, and then get to Hope by tomorrow. Immediately after Hope is one of the single worst climbs on our trip, which is why Donna has very rationally decided to turn back at that point. Unfortunately, we don't have that option, so Sunday will be our first major physical challenge of the trip. I'll try to post from the other side of the climb to let you know how it went.

For a graphical representation of terror, see below.

Mountains: Imposing

Andrew and I are now in Vancouver, BC after two uneventful flights and the successful pickup of our bikes. We've got free accomodation for the next day or two courtesy of the incomparably generous Donna Dupuis. Our plan's a bit flexible for the next few days while we stock up, keep an eye on the weather (current conditions: intimidating clouds), and visit with some friends who've moved out this way.

More updates as plans get firmed up!

P.S. For some reason, it seems like I can respond from my Blackberry, but not send messages out first. So if you want to get in touch, send me a message at the address listed in the post below and I'll get back to you!

Blackberriffic

My bike is going to get boxed up in an hour, and I went out on Saturday for my last training run before the trip (100 very hot, very humid kilometres), and our flights are officially booked and confirmed! We're leaving Toronto at noon on Wednesday, switching planes in Calgary, and heading to Vancouver from there for a 3:00ish arrival.

As of tomorrow night, I'll be unreachable by cell phone, since I'm not bringing mine on the trip. However, I DO have a Blackberry with an e-mail service plan, so feel free to send me messages over the next month! My mobile e-mail is brycedaigleATbell.blackberry.net (just replace the AT with an @). Just please DO NOT SEND ATTACHMENTS! I only get 4mb of data per month, and if I go over I'll pay through the nose.

My next post will probably be from somewhere on the road... wish me luck!