I made it my Dad and Betty’s place yesterday safe and sound. I decided to forgo camping in Penticton and ride hard to Kelowna. here I will spend a few days recouperating as my muscles are aching.
On Tuesday I headed off anyway despite the bike issues figuing I could get them fixed somewhere along the way. The night before JR and I went though all the gear and trimmed out alot of it. Renee is going to ship it to Victor’s for me. The SAS survival guide and Lonely planet went as well as some clothes. I did keep my camera though now I wish I had just picked up a digital. The extra weight really hasn’t been worth it since I am not really in the mood to snap photos when I am riding, let alone change lenses.
So Tuesday morning Renee rode with me out to the ferries. It was really sweet of her since the trail could be better marked in places and I’m sure I would have lost time. Plus she had hurt her back doing squats or something so it couldn’t have been easy. The ferry rde was simple and relatively easy. You walk the bike on and off and then veer off from traffic to start. Eventually you need to join them again but there really isn’t much traffic once the boat is unloaded.
Once in Delta I zig-zagged across country roads to avoid the major routes only needing to get on the main drag (Hwy #10) at Surrey. While out there I came a cross an older couple painting “en plein aire” so of course I stopped and chatted with them a bit about paint. I gave them business cards and told them to check out the site. I should have offered them a special discount or something. While I was stopped Zuimei called which was really neat because I doubt I would have heard him if I was still riding. He is fine but misses me. Which is good because the feeling is mutual.
I had marked a bike shop on my map in my search for the rigid fork I needed. No one had it (but everyone could order it). I figured I would go in and see what they could do for me. It was a good thing I did. Rocky cycle in Surrey is a great shop. In fact one of the best I have ever been in. They sold me Psylo Race for at a discount because it had been used and installed it for free. Which is no mean feat becuase you have to take off a bunch of stuff, like the front rack.
They also trued the rear wheel which had greatly out of rack and had apparently been built wrong. (I won’t say where in Toronto I had it done but lets just say I’m not having much luck with bike shops there.) So these guys got me back on my way but now it was about 4:30 so I needed to look for a place for the night. Luckily the first place was full. I say luckily because it was really an RV park on a busy road. They sent me along down the road to the next site which was called Tynehead. It was a real camp ground with a park and grass and everything! A bit expensive though at $22/night.
It was nicely situated though near the Fraser highway which made it easy to get going in the morning.
Statistics
Distance: 81km
Average speed: 19.3km
Top speed 52km
More later…