Ever had a great idea? The one you get
at two am just as you're drifting off to sleep. Usually when you wake
up the idea seems too hard or too impossible. In the cold light of
dawn the idea seems unreasonable. So you file it away at the back of
your head to dream on when you're at a staff meeting or a boring
class.
In my case I woke up and told everyone
I knew that I was going to cycle to California.....from Whistler
BC......on a bicycle.
I told them with conviction and
certainty. As if I'd thought it through.
I hadn't.
I started to think about it fairly
intently two nights ago. It was cold, wet and lonely at the Shannon
Falls camp ground. My sleeping bag wasn't warm enough. My $20 tent
from Walmart which I could only fit in if I slept diagonally, began
to leak.
First night on the road and I shivered
in and out of sleep, getting up to wee every two hours because
presumably my body was trying to get back at me.
It rained all night.
Then all the next day.
I woke up at six am on Friday shivering
like a dildo. And when you're vibrating at that frequency there is no
point in trying to go back to sleep. I got up and after packing up
began to slowly pedal down the road.
Google maps assures me that I should
be able to average 17.5kph. Google maps is overly optimistic. It was
52ks to Vancouver. It took me four and a half hours.
These are my excuses:
1: I hadn't got any sleep.
2: I'm not very fit.....yet
3: my gear weighs lots
and most importantly the road is called
'The Sea to Sky Highway' and that means it goes up, then goes down
and then goes straight back up again...all the freakin' time! I
stopped looking at my cycle computer after awhile, seeing it on 6kph
all the time got demoralising.
Yep those are my excuses and I'm
sticking to them.
My plan had been to have lunch at
Horseshoe bay. The problem was Horseshoe bay was at the bottom of the
mountain and highway 99 was most of the way up the mountain. I looked
down at the town that was no more than a few boats and buildings
glimpsed between the trees and clouds. On occasion I can see the
future. Just like a seer. And what I saw as I looked down at
Horseshoe Bay was a horrible hard slog back up the mountain after
lunch. Thus forewarned I ate my bread beside the road and stared at
the rain staring out over the cloud filled bay. It was pretty in a
grey sort of way.
You may be getting the picture by now.
I'm not a that stalwart adventurer who spits in the eye of adversary
and laughs in the face of certain exhaustion. When times get tough I
don't get going. I'm more likely to have a little cry, start
screaming insults at inanimate objects or sit down and stare
despondently at a wall for forty-five minutes. But that's one of the
reasons I'm attempting this trip....to gain more courage. After all,
if it wasn't a challenge then what would the point.
The highway wove it's way into the city
moving from mountain and bay views with a wide smooth verge, to
rubbish strewn suburbs and narrow unpredictable shoulder. I love
cities.
Ah but the romance of cycling. Open to
everything. Exposed to the environment. Feeling, hearing and smelling
every shift of the world as you drift along in an unassuming bubble.
The creak of road signs in the wind, the whiff of marijuana, the
lungful of diesel fumes, the rush of trucks whooshing by with inches
to spare.
I misplaced North Vancouver. It wasn't
where I remember leaving it. I turned off too early and had a
discussion with a girl at a bus stop about where I'd left it.
Together we figured out that I'd dumped the highway nine exits too
soon. With a sigh I turned and retraced my.....wheel treads[footsteps
on a bike]. I don't like that type of highway, too busy. I've often
thought the road would be much better if there wasn't any cars on it.
There was a certain coffee shop I
recalled down at the Lonsdale quay market. I'd been dreaming about it
for the past two hours in between wondering why I sold my car.
I made a bee line for it, dumped my
bike outside, grabbed the biggest hot chocolate I could buy. A ham
and cheese croissant. Inhaled and tried to dry out and thaw out.
Some time later, feeling less like a
wet piece of newspaper I drifted over to the sea cat. Got yelled at
by the loading team.
“Last door on your left. Last door on
your left! LAST DOOR ON YOUR LEFT.”
I'd gone into the third door on my
left, because I was intimidated by all the people screaming at me and
just wanted to get on the ferry and away from them, and wasn't sure
if they were yelling because I was at the wrong door, or had gone
right instead of left. This happens to me frequently.
At the other end at Waterfront I
disembarked, and frowned at the escalator. The other cyclists picked
their bikes up and wandered up the moving staircase easy as pie. The
other cyclists were muscular men with lite bikes and no gear.
Swearing and looking far less cool, I dragged the Delinquent Caribou
[my bike's name....cause it is a Kona Dew City....DC.....Delinquent
Caribou] over to the escalator and got aboard. I got off with a
inelegant heave.
I walked out of the station up the
first street I saw and three blocks later, into the first hostel I
encountered. Hostels are fabulous. In that they are dry and warm and
have other travelling people in them. Life was good.
