the cross canada project

Well it has been 3 months since I’ve been back home from Halifax, and about 7 months since I originally left for Vancouver.

Halifax was a very interesting city and a great place to end the trip. The last night, I spent in Dartmouth with my friend Christina’s Mom. She was a cute little Spanish lady that cooked up this really good Chilean dish involving spicey meat with potatoes and such. In the morning, she dropped me off at the airport to head to Hamilton with a stop-off back in Montreal.

Once in Hamilton, my friend Sean came and picked me up. I stayed at his place for the night and then my cousin Stan and his girlfriend drive up from Windsor to come pick me. A few hours of driving on the 401 and I was back home.

I’ve never been away for that long before and it was quite strange returning home. After a few weeks, everything felt pretty much back to normal. I shaved the beard off, unpacked all my stuff and ordered a pair of 250GB harddrives to start dumping all of the video footage to. I also went and shot all of the extra footage I needed for the movie that I didn’t get before I left, including all the shots for the introduction to the movie. The original plan was to take a day and shoot all of the introduction in Stanley Park in Vancouver, but since I was 80% sure that the trip would fail anyways, I didn’t bother. I only ended up shooting one quick little thing of me riding up to the camera asking “well, can I do this?”.

Needless to say, I felt pretty silly going to some crappy local park with empty panniers strapped onto my bike and riding around trying to approximate the look and feel of the Stanley Park footage. That’s not to say that the footage looks bad or anything and seems to be working just fine.

As for the rest of the movie, I filled up the 13 tapes I brought with me with only about 20 minutes to spare! However in New Brunswick, I did buy an extra 3 tapes just incase. The footage is is taking up approximately 328 GB and I’ve reviewed all of it at least once. Editing it is turning out to be quite a challenge, but I’m happy to say that I have a fairly decent 20 minutes of movie already done. It starts out with a 10 minute segment, showing the preparation that I went through in the 9 months before I left.

I don’t know if I mentioned this before but some time out of Quebec, I ran out of money. Thankfully I had a credit card with me to get home and such. A lot of people helped me out and without them I wouldn’t have been able to do this. I spent every dollar I had, plus about 200 extra. Most definitely worth it though!

Being back home after something like this is really strange. When I was doing this trip, I felt like every day had a purpose. Now, everything seems like useless toil. I really miss not having to worry about things like food, shelter, weather, nature, bears. I had my first Asthma attack since I’ve been back. It was only mild, but it was caused by being in the same room as a smoker. During my trip, not once did I have any breathing problems. My dry skin is now back to being dry and flaky. During my trip, my skin was really smooth and such. It’s just strange how that all works, but it worked out exactly how I thought it would be.

I really miss being out there, in the middle of nowhere with legitimate concerns to be worried about. What am I going to do for shelter? which direction do I travel? what will the weather be like? What do I do if something breaks? What animals live here? Do I have enough food? Living outdoors completely agreed with my body, except for the strange rash that I had through Alberta (which still left scars on my arm). I’ve never breathed better, or been in better physical shape or felt more healthy. Even my brain seemed to be working better and I jotted down a lot of interesting ideas in my journal. I really, really think this is a lot closer to the way people are designed to be living.

Anyways, I’d just like to thank everyone that helped me out in any way during this trip.

Once the movie nears completion, I will be posting information about it here.

Peace

DONE! (the pedalling part of the project anyways)

I arrived here in Halifax on the 4th! It was a beautiful day, although the wind wasn’t cooperating that day, but that has been so typical of the trip that I was almost glad I had a headwind for the last day. I was camping that last night on the edge of a rest-stop basically in the middle of Nova SCotia along the Musquodoboit River. It was an interesting night, knowing it was my last night in the tent.

However, it was the second day on PEI, day 107 where I really realied it was ending. That day I changed into the yellow jersey that my mom shipped up to Gatineau for me to celebrate the end of my trip. For the past 3 months I was wearing an old cycling jersey given to me by one of the people I stayed with in Kamloops, BC. This yellow jersey was also given to me, by the guys at Joe’s Bike Shop back in Windsor. They gave it to me 10 years ago when I was volunteering there and getting into racing Cross Country. Since I was about 15 years old at the time, it was a size small and stopped fitting me a few years later. But I kept it in my closet and figured that I had lost so much weight on this trip that it would probably fit again. Sure enough, it fit great, except the collar was way too tight.

That day on PEI I spent a good hour on the side of a beautiful and completely empty road, 23. I setup the tripod and the digital still camera and took about 100 pictures of myself riding to possibly use as the DVD cover art. I had the camera on the 10 second timer and I would rde past it while it took 10 consecutive pictures. In almost all of PEI I was on a rail-trail (that is, converted railway track to be used by bicyclists/pedestrians) and it was beautiful! Taking the Confederation Bridge to the island was also interesting. It costs like $60 for a car to get across, but there is a free shuttle for pedestrians and bicyclists! They never give the times the shuttle leave, just that it may take 2 hours. Well, after completely missing the pickup area and almost going on the bridge with my bicycle by accident, I ended up at a tourist info booth at the base of the bridge who told me that the shuttle pickup/dropoff point is 3km back. So I rushed there just as the shuttle was leaving! When I say shuttle, I mean a guy in a pickup truck. He stopped and loaded all my stuff into the back and off we went.

The next day, getting off PEI was similar. This time I took a ferry to Nova Scotia. I misjudged where the ferry landing was, and ended up racing about 5km to get to the ferry just before it left. I always love riding my bike into the belly of these car ferries.

I probably spent 30 hours on PEI total, but I can’t get over how nice it was and how nice everyone was. I can say this about the whole trip actually, but the politeness of the Maritimes seems to be magnified. For example, when I was riding through Miramichi New Brunswick a few days earlier, I stopped off at Subway to treat myself to lunch. The guy waiting in line started asking me questions about my trip and when I went to pay for my footlong veggie combo, the guy working behind the counter refused my payment and paid for me. He also hit me up with a bunch of dollar-off VIP cards, which I actually used a few of along the way.

New Brunswick was great too, and the easiest to find places to stealth-camp in my opinion. You can’t go 100M along the roads without seeing it intersect with an ATV path. So I rode until I got tired, then just pulled off on one of these paths until I couldn’t hear the traffic much and then setup camp next to it. I think I’ve camped beside ATV/snowmobile paths maybe 10 times on this trip and only on the very last one did I actually see someone on an ATV using the path. He rode past and saw me cooking up some pasta.

I think on that same night I woke up with the feeling of something on my leg, so I unzipped the sleeping bag only to notice a big furry spider on me. Before this trip, I would have freaked. But this time, I calmly grabbed it and let it go outside of my tent.

I don’t know exactly how to feel about this trip being over. For now I am quite relieved, but once I actually get home to Windsor, it will take some time to sink in. I can’t even think about what I’ve done, the distances, etc. Maybe in a few weeks I will realize that I made my way from one ocean to the other with my own power.

But I am glad to be in Halifax, it is quite a nice city although it is fairly touristy. For several days before I arrived, I kept trying to call the person I’m stayig with but I kept getting no answer. Eventually I got some dude who had no clue what I was talking about. So when I got into Halifax, I went to Victors appartment and nobody was home. So I rode around Halifax for a while, tried calling again, etc. Nothing.

I wanted to find internet access to check my email, to see if he had emailed me about not being home. Some girls suggested I go to “the second cup”, so I went there only to find they only offer free wifi. So I went to Kinkos and had the employee girl outside watching my bicycle while I jumped on MSN and managed to catch his sister Christina online. she gave me the phone number again and then I realized I had the area code wrong. So I tried calling again, still with no answer. Just calling someone is a big production too, since I have to setup the video camera, the device to record the phone call, etc. So a lot of people on Spring Garden road looked pretty confused when I was using the payphones.

After not getting a hold of Victor, I found a Hostel and checked in for the night. I had no intentions of sleeping in the tent an extra night. Checking into a Hostel seems easy enough when you have a backpack full of stuff, but when you have a whole bicycle full of stuff, it is difficult. Thankfully a few of the people staying in the Hostel helped to carry all my bags and stuff into the basement to store for the nigh. Finally I got to takea shower, hang out with some people and then go to bed.

Woke up inthe morning, got ahold of Victor and rode 2KM to his place. Done! Later that day I went and checked out the free Joel Plaskett Emergency show, which was awesome. I met up with a few people from the Hostel there as well. After the show, I wandered around, tried to get into a big corprorate-y building with no luck, etc.

I have to keep this short because I’m going over to Christina/Victor’s Mothers house for Dinner in a few minutes! Tomorrow I will be flying to Hamilton and the next day my cousin Stan will be picking me up. So I will be back in Windsor on the 10th. I will write more then!

pointe-verte to halifax pictures

Warm and dry here in Pointe-Verte New Brunswick! I can smell the wood burning furnace behind me, I can see the rain coming down through the window. My belly is full of lobster, scallops, shrimp and rice!

The stay in Gatineau was great, especially visiting the Canadian War Museum. A gigantic building with an amazing exhibition going through Canadian history, with tons of artifacts everywhere. Huge airplanes hanging from the ceiling, tanks, guns, etc. The building itself is really interesting, and thankfully I was touring it with my Aunt and her boyfriend, who was the foreman for the construction company that built it. He showed me a lot of interesting details, including Morse Code in the windows and a Window placed to cast light on the gravestone of the Unknown Soldier exactly on the Eleventh Month, Eleventh Day, Eleventh Hour.

The night before, I decided to take a bicycle trip into Ottawa to see the Parliament buildings. I took a bike path the whole way, which ended up being completely dark since it was in the middle of bush area. I had my little head-light with me, so I used that just enough to illuminate the center line of the path to follow. Of course, this meant that I crashed into a metal post dividing the two lanes where they intersected a road. I was going slowly and almost fell, this was the first bike collision of the whole trip! I missed the cut off to cross into Ottawa, since I couldn’t see, but thankfully I met a few computer programmers who were getting high underneath the bridge. They offered me a job with the gov’t, which I declined and then showed me how to get onto the bridge. After the bridge, I took another bicycle path about 10KM straight to the Peace Tower, just in time for a huge sound/light show!

I got some nice video footage for the movie and met a lighting designer who explained the tech aspects of the show to me, which was really quite impressive and included surround sound.

When I left Gatineau, I took the same bike trail, which was quite nice in the day. Lots of cyclists on it, and all of them with Panniers. These arent the cyclists in Windsor, who are out for excercise. These are people heading to work, bringing home groceries, etc. I had planned to take a ferry back into Ontario to get onto highway 17, which I expected to have less traffic. 3KM into it, I turned around and headed back into Quebec. In Quebec, the traffic is mild and the shoulder is huge. There are signs to let motorists know that cyclists exist. In ontario, there is no shoulder and the traffic is insane. It was also neat seeing so many people on scooters in Quebec! Young people, boyfriends and girlfriends, old people, all on little 49CC scooters zipping around everywhere. That night in Fasset, I slept inside an outdoor hockey rink in a local park.

The next day I pushed into Montreal without problems. I had a good Wind and the sun was out, so I had my little shortwave radio blaring, listening to CBC. Riding into Montreal was interesting, and I found Magali’s place without problems. Magali is another person who offered me a place to stay through couchsurfing.com, a cool apartment in a nice quiet little part of Montreal just minutes from downtown. That night, we took a little walk around the neighborhood. The next day we climbed Mont Royal and went to the old part of montreal for Ice cream. The whole Old Montreal area is just filled with tourists and all of the old shops just sell tourist junk, it’s all pretty funny actually. The next day, a friend sent me the upcoming Neil Young album, which I got to listen to. When I get home, I will have to pick it up… there was like 5 references various places in Canada I have visited along this trip. I really wanted to visit where Magali works, where they make simulators for aircraft companies. However, she told me that since 9Eleven they are no longer allowed to have visitors. As though a terrorist is going to hijack the simulator and fly it into a simulated building…

Leaving Montreal was crap. I never knew that there is Oil Refineries on the island until now. About 10KM worth of ugly industry with really crappy roads. It started raining early during the day, and didn’t stop until it started to get dark and I found a place to put up my tent near the water, hidden from view behind a huge cement wall in Berthierville.

The rain stopped in the morning for just long enough for me to hit the road. Once it started again, it brought some really bad winds. At this time, I met another cyclist who was bicycling from Toronto to New Brunswick! He had limited mobility in his leg, because it was severely injured during a plane crash. The plane with about 40 passengers aborted a landing and stalled and crashed to the ground and hit a tree. When he regained conciousness, he had 3 rows of seats piled ontop of him and could feel that his leg was wet with his hand. It was in the middle of Winter and took a long time for anyone to get there, and they had to make a road through the snow to clear out survivors. They brought everyone to a kick ass hospital in Halifax and thankfully everyone survived.

He was supposed to be stealth-camping like I had been doing, but had been staying in Hotels along the way. So I offered to find us a place to camp for the night. At the edge of some town, I found a little place on a hiking trail and started setting up. Then I found out that the dude didnt have a tent, but sleeps under a tarp. He was also afraid of getting West Nile, so decided to find a better place without mosquitoes. It was getting late and starting to rain, so I stayed put. Unfortunately I never met up with him again to exchange contact information though.

The next day was rain, but it went away after an hour and the sun came out. So I made a clothesline at a rest stop and hung all my stuff out to dry and relaxed in the sun for a few hours. I only made it about 80KM that day, but it was worth it to get the stuff dry. Camped in a field.

Great wind in the morning, blew me almost past Quebec City and I missed my turn off. Had to navigate around to find the bridge, but found it okay. A huge rusty old metal bridge going across the St. Laurence with a small little area for bicycles and pedestrians to cross. I stopped and took lots of pictures and realized how neat it is crossing a huge bridge on a bicycle. Cyclists or pedestrians aren’t allowed on the Ambassador bridge to the USA in Windsor, and if you tried to stop to take a picture, you’d probably end up in Guantanimo Bay for the rest of your life.

Rained at night, and I woke up again when the rain stopped. It started once I hit the road and the wind was really bad. It got really calm and I stopped off at a rest stop to eat some food. Shortly after, I heard thunder and saw lightning. So I panicked and set up the tent as it started raining. Everything got really wet and I ended up setting the tent up under a tree and about 20 feet from the St. Laurence. After an hour of being in the tent, the rain stopped and I got out to notice that the St. Laurence was now 2 feet from my tent! I had to move all my stuff to higher ground and just stayed in the rest area the whole night. It was really really windy, so windy it was hard getting to sleep. I felt like I was in a life boat at sea, with the tent blowing around and the rain coming down and the waves crashing nearby, etc.

I woke up to realize the wind had blown the tent completely dry and it was going in the right direction! So I hopped on my bike and had an amazing ride through Quebec. The scenery was just amazing.. flat land with huge rocks sticking out and tiny colourful houses ontop. I found a gravel bicycle path and pushed my bike up a steep hill to a rest area to setup tent. I pulled a muscle in my left calf pushing the bike up. Listened to “off the hook” on the shortwave radio, although the reception was really bad. Woke up in the middle of the night to pee and ended up taking a lot of pictures of a pretty intense sky.

Constant rain the next day, really really cold too. This was one of the days where I felt like giving up. I thought about staying in a hotel that night, but decided I should keep the money and use it for something better. So I pulled into a field and an old man approached me and offered me his garage to sleep in. So I set up the tent in Hal’s garage while he worked one some scaffolding and sang songs in french to himself. I recharged my batteries, hung everything up to dry and formulated my plan on how to continue the trip.

I realized that the weather isn’t going to cooperate with me and that the clothes I started the trip with in the summer aren’t what will get me to Halifax. So the next day I stopped in Rimouski and bought neoprene cycling shoe covers at a sports store, a crappy jacket at a liquidation store for $30 that has yellow stains all over it, and some winter gloves and a touque at Zellers. I also made a waterproof bag to store my sleeping bag in out of an empty fertilizer bag I got from Hal’s garage. That night was so cold that I had to wear the jacket and gloves and touque while in the sleeping bag.

It rained all night but stopped in the morning. The road was amazing all day.. from Amqui all the way into New Brunswick. 120KM of downhill road following a river as it makes it’s way to the ocean. Found a little town inside of New Brunswick and setup the tent behind the community center, which looked like it hadnt been used in a while.

The next day I pushed into Pointe-Verte, New Brunswick where I am now staying with my grandma’s sister’s son, Rejean. He showed me all around town today, and I met a bunch of distant relatives and even explored the old house my grandmother grew up in. What a sight.. this small little house that a whole large family grew up in.

There are a lot more things I want to mention, but I’m getting tired. I already wrote all of this (and more) once, and accidentally deleted it all.

On Wednesday, I will leave here and head for PEI. Hopefully I will be able to get a shuttle across the Confederation bridge with my bicycle. From there, I will head to the Musquodoboit Harbour to dip my bicycle tire into the Atlantic Ocean. Then I’ll head up to Halifax to catch a free Joel Plaskett show on the 4th, then hop on a bus for the next 36 hours back to Windsor!

gatineau to pointe-verte pictures

It feels so nice to be in another province, I`m so happy!

I`m currently at the public library in Gatineau (Formerly Alymer) Quebec. Just trying to get used to this French keyboard which has a few things in different places. The operating system is also all in french, but I`m such a nerd I know what each button does just by the location.

I think I will be here until Monday taking some deserved rest. There`s a few things I want to go see, including the new War Museum and of course the Parliament buildings and all that. Today my aunt Linda drove me to MEC to get a few things, including new brake pads. The old ones still had a few millimeters left before the wear-line, but I figured I`d replace them now. I also picked up a new canister of bear-spray, since I lost mine over a week ago by accident. I don`t think I need it, since I`m just in black bear territory now. But since I lost my first canister I`ve seen twice as many bears in the last week as the whole trip previously combined. That is to say, I`ve seen 2 more bears this week. Both of them pretty darn close up too, but perfectly occupied eating stuff on the side of the road or trail.

I am also now off highway 17, which I had been travelling on since Thunder Bay. Boy am I glad to be off that thing!

Leaving Sault Ste. Marie was nice, although I think I may have over-stayed my welcome with couch-surfer Feleisha and her family although they were such nice people that they`d never tell me if I did over-stay my welcome. The extra day I decided to rest and avoid some thunder storms I also became part of a big family dinner. I felt bad, but everyone was super nice and made me feel at home. The lasagne was also amazing… The roads out the next day weren`t too bad actually and I made it to Iron Bridge as I hoped. Just before town, I saw a church just off the highway so I decided to setup camp right between it and a big old tree. Churches always have really nice grass and there never seems to be anyone around…

The next day I met up with a cyclist from the good ol` U.S. of A. He explained to me how where he lives, they don`t have electricity and he`s never touched a computer before. He also explained how weird it is that we can`t carry hand guns here in Canada. Then he started telling me about explosives he`s learned to make through his local militia and how the Oklahoma bombing couldn`t have just been a single fertilizer bomb, etc. This was actually sort of interesting, since I`ve read a few things about that same point several years ago. But either way, I decided to split ways with him and find a camp site on the side of the road as he pulled off to stay at a camp ground.

I found a dirt road that came off the highway and then went on a path through the bush to a perfect cleared area and slept there. The next morning I met up with the American dude again, this time he told me about how he lured a squirrel to him using some peanuts and then killed it and ate it last night. At least, I think that`s what he was trying to tell me. Southern accents I find hard to understand sometimes…

The shoulder disappeared and truck traffic got pretty heavy. Almost always, the trucks are good about passing me.. they`ll go right into the other lane and go around me when they can and some will wait behind me until they can. This time, I heard a truck honk behind me so I looked back. Usually the trucks that honk are the `Wide Load` trucks and they give me plenty of time to get off the road to avoid being hit by the side of a house that they are pulling. But this was just a normal truck and there was no traffic in the opposite lane and the line was dotted. So I didn`t move and just waved him around. He went around and then cut back into my lane really suddenly and the trailer he was carrying swung way over and into the gravel shoulder kicking up lots of crap. I saw it all happening and had plenty of time to casually slow down and avoid it all, but it was really stupid and sort of pissed me off for the next hour or so.

The next day I pushed into Sudbury and it was actually a pretty easy ride since the wind was with me for the first time since Thunder Bay! I kid you not, I`ve gone like 20 days against the wind… Whenever I change directions, it changes. So I got into Sudbury early and explored some Industrial areas. This city is the only city I`ve been in that is outwardly uglier than Windsor.

Huge smokestacks, including the largest in the hemisphere spewing out sulphur. Piles of `Slag` everywhere, etc. Eventually I showed up at Zach`s house, who offered me the place to stay with his parents and him. They fed me really great and gave me a nice bedroom to stay in. Then Zach drove me around and showed me all the sites in Sudbury and explained the basic city history to me, and why there`s no old trees in the city and why all the exposed rock looks burned black. Like I said.. uglier than Windsor! I wanted to go to Science North but they charge $15 to get in, so I refused. We went to Value Village and then went to play some pinball at a pretty cool bar downtown that reminded me of The Embassy in London… a dive-y place that would be cool to see bands at. The best part was of course, that nobody was smoking in there since unlike Windsor, they`ve gone along and passed the bylaw.

The next day I did about 112 KM out of Sudbury with the wind with me some of the time, and against me some of the time. I was amazed at how fast it got dark, and got caught off guard. I usually don`t start looking for a place to camp until 7:30 but it was getting dark around 6:30. There was nowhere to put up a tent, and the only place I saw was a gravel road that just went 10 meters into the woods and ended at a telephone junction box. So I setup there, and spent a lot of time covering my tent with branches to camoflauge it since I was so close to the road and visible.

The next day I pushed to Mattawa. I had to go through North Bay, where highway 17 turned into a separated express way, which means no bicycles allowed. So there were `no bike`signs, but no alternative route that I could see. So I rode it.. went past the walmart, staples, home depot and all the other usual big box stores. The route got really hilly and pretty steep and I camped really far away from the highway off the side of an ATV/snowmobile trail. Bad mosquitoes though..

Leaving Mattawa sucked.. the hills got worse and worse. Only did around 80KM but that`s all I had to do, leaving around 100KM to get to Pembroke the next day. I followed some trails through the town of Mackey and found a really great spot right next to a big pond. At night I got scared a few times by what sounded like someone throwing a huge rock into the water. I figured it was a fish or something, but now I`m pretty sure it was a Beaver! There were also some rabbits that ran around near my tent at night.

The next day was going into Pembroke, which was quite interesting. I passed a sign that explained that `2km east of here was the first canadian nuclear reactor`. I thought it was silly that the plaque wasn`t near the actual site, so I studied the overhead picture of the plant on the sign and then headed east for 2 km and found an old road off the highway with a big gate, which was open! So I took it down towards the Ottawa River.. it was grown in, as though it hadn`t been used for years.. exactly what I wanted to see! Then after a while I saw a huge smoke stack through the trees! There it was, the NPD reactor! I felt like a spy almost.. snapping some quick pictures through the trees of this huge place surrounded by a barbed wire fence with radiation signs on it and security cameras everywhere. Then I noticed a truck in the parking lot, so I got out of there… the whole place was boarded up.

I kept going and went to a little town and chatted with a cyclist there who offered to buy me lunch. He was a former worker at the NDP plant, and I showed him my pictures and he was delighted I got to see the place! I explained to him how I thought it was weird that all the old nuclear development stuff was here, in the middle of nowhere with a huge military base nearby… as though they were really working on a bomb or something. Then he explained that`s exactly what they were doing, working on the early technologies to use towards a bomb. The reason all the stuff is way out here is that if an accident happened, casualties would be minimal, it`s close enough to Ottawa and there`s tons of water (for cooling) in `deep river`and of course there`s a huge military base nearby.

Later that day, I rode through the military base on the road. Lots of warning signs everywhere, etc. Signs on snowmobile paths that say that vehicles are subject to search, etc. I saw lots of cool military vehicles driving around as well, and they had old tanks and guns displayed at the entrance too!

The email I received from Jason giving me directions to his house included a warning about the people in the town not being friendly to cyclists.. honking and yelling shit. I thought he was being sarcastic, but sure enough I got honked at by some inbreds driving a jeep and yelled at by some more people in a beat up tempo. After eating some awesome Chinese food prepared by Jason’s dad, we went to get groceries for me. Pembroke is weird… everyone seems to be typical white-trash, it’s really strange.

The next morning I had to wake up at 7am with Jason and his dad, but they made me some awesome bacon and eggs. I was glad to leave and crossed the bridge into Quebec and joined up with the P.P.J. Cyclopark trail just as Jason had suggested. It was hard packed limestone, similar to the trail that runs from Windsor to Leamington. It followed the perimeter of an island and then I took another bridge to the main land and then the trail continued on a reclaimed railroad. The bike ran fine on the hard packed surface and I was quite happy, since it meant I could avoid the main highway all day! The trail was just beautiful and had rest-stops every 10km or so with washrooms and picnic tables. I finished the whole trail that day and camped at the end of it, where it would conitnue all the way to Ottawa if some land owners weren’t dicks.

I asked for permission to camp on the land from the person that owned it and had a great night sleep. I also listened to “Off The Hook” radio show re-broadcast on shortwave radio that night on the new shortwave radio I treated myself to in Pembroke. It was well worth the $40 to be able to hear the familiar voices on the radio. Sure enough it rained that night as CBC radio weather had predicted. I stayed in the tent until 11am hoping it would pass, but it never did. So I got everything together and headed towards Gatineau. I had remembered where my aunt lived, since we stayed here last summer when we were in Montreal for the F1 race. So a quick stop off at a local library to check google maps verified the location and I got there at around 3PM. So perfect being able to stay at another person’s house since my tent is soaked from the rain the day before.

Today I put the tent out to dry, installed the new brake pads and cleaned and lubed the chain. In a few minutes we’ll be eating some yummy stew and I may take another bike trail right into Ottawa from here and maybe check out the Parliament buildings tonight.

Oh yeah, the Windsor Star did a short article about my trip a few days ago. Put it right next to a big picture of a cyclist getting seriously hit by an american driver on Riverside Dr. in an area where there is big wide bike lanes. Viewing the article on the Windsor Star’s site requires registering, but thankfully someone copied and pasted it here. My mom also mailed up a copy of an article that came out in the paper in Schreiber, about me visiting my grandma there which was a really cool article and even included a link to this website, unlike the Windsor Star article.

That’s all for now! I will be leaving Monday most likely and I’m going to try to take a bike trail to Montreal and then to Quebec City, which should be fun!

Sault Ste. Marie to gatineau Pictures

Sorry it has been so long since I’ve updated, but I’ve been busy trying to ride my bicycle across Canada

This stint has been different than the others because each day I had a certain city I had to get to. The North shore of lake Superior isn’t too populated and towns are very spread out, so I planned to just ride from town to town. Which meant having to do some pretty long rides (around 6 hours) in some pretty bad weather. But, I’m alive and can’t complain! Infact, I feel stronger now than I did a few weeks ago.

The ride out of Thunder Bay was absolutely terrible. Construction on the Highway 11/17 meant that I had to take a detour missing the Terry Fox monument I really wanted to see. Once I was back on Highway 11/17, it was just terrible. Drizzling rain and some of the worst road conditions of the whole trip. This is the ONLY road across Ontario in this section where both Highway 11 and Highway 17 combine, which means traffic gets a lot heavier. The shoulder was non existant at times. But I got into Nipigon as I had hoped and the asked the first person I saw if I could camp in her back yard. She was a healthy older woman who was going for a walk and she gave me her address and told me to setup in the backyard while she continued her walk. Later her husband got home from fishing and they invited me in for some “can toast”, which is toast made on the top of a tin can with holes drilled in it placed face-down on a gas stove. They called eachother “mom” and “dad” and seemed like they could have been grandparents out of a movie, they were so nice and down to earth. In the morning they invited me in for more can toast and eggs!

From there my goal was to ride to Schreiber Ontario, where my Nanny (grandma) lives. My mom has been there for over a month waiting for me to get there as well! I was about 20km away from Schreiber having a really hard day, since the hills were really steep and I was having some knee problems. I was pulling into a rest stop and noticed a car pulling in as well and it was my mom! We talked for a bit and she offered to take some of my bags but I refused, since I’m stubborn that way. She drove back to my Nanny’s and got her bicycle and met me 8KM before town near White River. My aunt and uncle were there as well which was really nice and then we rode into town! I hadn’t been there in about 11 years and I still remembered exactly how to get to Nanny’s house, a really cute white house next to the town post office.

I took a good 4 days of rest or so there and ate as much as I could since I noticed that my legs had really gotten smaller and I was losing muscle mass. Everyone came over to the house, including my uncle Ludger Comeau who really wanted his name mentioned on here. Even the town Priest came by, which was funny. The person from the local newspaper came by to ask me a few questions and take a picture of Nanny and I with the bicycle. On Monday my mom left in the morning and I left a while after. I stopped in Terrace Bay to check some email and then off I went heading to Marathon.

Before I had got there, I met a cyclist who was cycling from Halifax and had done well over 5000KM so far! He went all through Labrador and took a very interesting route and he was covering nearly 200KM a day. He had the wind at his back and I had it in my face all day. He suggested to look out for “May’s Gift Shop”, which offers free RV Camping behind the store. So when I got near Marathon I found the place and setup there. Good night’s sleep and of course the wind was exactly the wrong way in the morning.

100KM ride to White River, the home of Winnie the Pooh. They also claim to have recorded the coldest temperature ever of -72 degrees. But I think they’re lying. About a month ago someone suggested (and I forget who suggested it) that I ask Fire stations if I can camp on their property, so when I got to White River I asked the firemen outside of the station. They let me put up the tent right next to their building which was perfect.

The next day was another 100KM ride with the wind right in my face to Wawa. Lots of climbs this whole time, but the North Shore is so nice that it’s worth it. The road conditions this whole time were good.. not a lot of traffic and a nice shoulder I felt really comfortable on. In Wawa I rode through the downtown and asked a few people if I could put up a tent in their yard.. the first person said his lawn was full of dog shit and the second couple said “no no, we wouldn’t like that at all”. Ah well, I guess those 2 square meters of grass are really important to them or something.

So I kept riding near the lake front until I saw an old boarded up shop that used to sell Minnows to fishermen right on the riverfront. I setup my tent right there on the river and once the drunk teenagers who were swimming nearby left, I had a good night’s sleep. I spent a good hour photographing the northern lights which were barely visible over the hill.

Next day was supposed to be to Agawa Bay but the wind was bad and after 6 hours of riding I could only do 90KM so I just pulled off on some hiking trail in Superior Provincial Park. The problem is, I think just camping in the provincal park is illegal so I found a place in the bush pretty far out of the way. In the morning I had finished making breakfast and decided to go get some toilet paper from the bathrooms to dry my pot. When I got there, I completely suprised the park worker who was cleaning the bathrooms. She pulled in and saw no cars in the parking lot and figured she was alone until I come walking out of the bush with my big beard. I explained to her that I wasn’t some crazy bush-man and that I was just camping nearby… she was nice and then I left.

If the wind was good, I was going to push to Sault Ste. Marie in one day since I had approximately 150KM left. But of course the wind was directly against me, so I only rode around 60KM. At “Montreal Hill” I met a cyclist from London England who was also riding across Canada, but started in Halifax. He also had a video camera with him! I decided to take a really long break to sit and chat with him for a long time about everything. He had only covered 2500KM or so since Halifax, which made me realize how close to the end I really am! I felt a little concerned for him and his trip, since things seemed to be going a little rough for him. He was staying in campgrounds every day to charge his batteries and he already broke the laptop he had with him when he fell and had to go to the hospital. He also didn’t know much about bicycle maintenance and was really relying on bike shops and such. He was also hoping to get to B.C. before it was cold, but he still had about 3500KM to go and when I was in the mountains in July I still had to wear winter gloves on a few days. But, the guy obviously had the drive to want to do it and I’m sure he’ll learn a lot on the way. I’m no pro, I’ve just learned along the way and I’m sure he’ll do the same. I’ve read on his blog that he keeps all his food in his tent as well, which might cause some problems once he gets into bear territory. His blog is here. Great guy… I wish him the best! So glad I met him, because it made me feel more confident about myself and helped me to realize that the goal is actually feasable from here.

I was hoping to make it to “The indian carver”, a tourist stop that sells carvings and has huge teepees in the front of their store. The plan was to sleep inside one of the teepees, but I was tired and found a nice place right on the beach by just following a little trail through the trees. So I setup there and was woken up by some pretty bad rain!

I got all my crap together as best I could in the rain and on the sand, which meant the tent and everything got covered in wet sand but thankfully I knew I’d be in “the soo” the next day where I could wash all my stuff. About 15km into the ride I ended up at “the indian carver”, so I decided to stop for a hot dog. It was still pouring so I went and sat out of the rain with an employee who was on break. I finally realized it a few hours later (since I’m stupid like that), but she was actually flirting with me quite a bit… too bad I was sitting there eating a huge spicey sausage dog with mustard and onions.

This was the part where I had to contend with “The Mile Long Hill”. People had been talking about this bad-boy for days now.. warning me about it, etc. “I could never bike up it”, and I even read that there’s a rumour that a cyclist came all this way and took one look at it and turned around. Well, I got there… stopped to take a picture, rode up it, stopped to take a piss, rode down it. Yes, it’s a mile long (1.7KM actually) and it’s the steepest thing I’ve rode up in the last 60 days or so, but it’s no Coquihalla at all.

In Sault Ste. Marie I called the person I’m supposed to be staying with, who wasn’t home but I went to her house anyways. No answer, so I started setting up all my stuff in the backyard. Putting everything on the clothesline, etc. The the neighbor notices me and I explain it to him and he gets on the phone and calls the family at their Cabin. They tell me to just let myself in an unlocked door and make myself at home! I put on the weathernetwork and made some pasta and Feleisha came home a while later and suggested we go to the nearby hotel that has a health club inside. She’s a triathlete who has travelled more countries than I could even bother to list. When I first met her she even had a Turkish flag t-shirt which she wore in Turkey. We went to the health club and went in the sauna, whirlpool, pool and hottub in that order. I felt so relaxed until I went to bed and had a strange headache and some shivvers for an hour or so.

Today we went out to her cabin and I met her parents and had some really good food! if I wake up in time tomorrow I’ll be heading out towards Sudbury, but I think I may have to just sleep in and leave the next day.

Thunder Bay to Sault Ste. Marie Pictures

Another stint done!

I think it is fairly safe to assume that I’ve reached the half-way point of my trip. I never bothered to measure the actual distance of the trip, since I never had a route really planned. Even so, I don’t care to measure the exact distance but a rough estimate now would be 7500KM.

My stay in Winnipeg was good and much needed. Brought my bike to a local shop to have the bottom bracket looked at (it was making a noise). They charged me $15 and then I purchased new tires, which came to a little over $100. Leaving Winnipeg, I crossed the geographical center of Canada. There’s nothing there, just a metal sign.

Road conditions on Highway 1 leaving Winnipeg just got progressively worse and worse. Eventually the last 80KM or so was absolutely no shoulder, lots of traffic and a really bumpy road surface that I thought for sure was going to shake the bicycle apart. The first day I camped in a woman’s yard in Richer. She was the only person I saw outside and when I asked if I could put up a tent in her yard, she just said “yep” and kept watering the plants. She didn’t even look at me! Eventually after I set up my tent, she came over and talked for a few minutes and went in the house to get me paper so I could start a fire in the fire pit.

I gotta say, all these town people have amazing back yards that stretch out at least 100 meters back, with fire pits, tons of trees, etc. You can’t find camp grounds as nice as this! They even had cold, filtered and hot water taps on the outside of their house! In the morning, her husband woke me up and asked me to come in for breakfast. They were a french/polish family and he worked at a company making train wheels. They fed me eggs and toast and I was on my way!

That day, I finally decided to pull over and completely fix the shifting of the front derailleur on my bike. I guess the shop in Winnipeg took it upon themselves to try to adjust the front derailleur when I took my bike in. The problem was, they completely fucked it up… it wouldn’t shift into the smallest ring, and they had it going into the biggest ring when the shifter was in the position for the middle ring. I almost felt like calling them up and telling them what they did, but of course there was no phone around. So I fixed it and a few minutes later I was on my way.

I was hoping to stay at the Manitoba Tourist Info booth since the one I stayed at coming into the province was so nice (free filtered water, internet access, 24h bathrooms, lots of space, etc.). However this one didn’t have much space and was actually located within a provincal park, so the lady advised that “someone may come and kick you out”. So I pushed on a few more KM’s into Ontario to see what their tourist info area was like. This one was worse, with lots of big “No overnight camping” signs everywhere. So, I setup the tent in this little area that was well surrounded by tall grass and huge rocks (yes, I’m into the Canadian Sheild now and there’s lots and lots of huge rocks).

Had a good night sleep and only an easy ride into Kenora. Things started to get hilly, but Kenora was pretty close. Quite a nice town, although fairly touristy. I called Lori (who I met through couchsurfing.com) about crashing at her place, she said she would be home at 5PM so I killed an hour and a half at the public library in town. They were nice and let me bring my bicycle and all my stuff right in while I used the computer.

Lori had her parents over and they were ordering chinese food, so they ordered me some Curry Chicken! The same thing I had in Winnipeg! That was really good and then we all took a walk by the lake, which was really nice. Great town and Lori and her boyfriend Isaac have a great little place and are super nice people. In the morning I went to the college with Isaac and filled up my water bottles with filtered water and checked some weather reports, etc. I also checked a lot of websites to get advice on what route to take to Thunder Bay. Highway 17 (faster) or 71 to 11, which is suppsedly nicer and safer. Of course I took 71 to 11, especially after reading some good things about the roads on kenkifer.com and other’s sites.

That day I dedicated to Ken Kifer since I was on a road he had travelled before and what a beautiful road it was. Highway 71 south to Nestor Falls was just great. Twisty, rolling hills.. not a car in sight for the most part. It was also interesting to see parts of older highway nearby as well. That night, I setup tent behind a church in Nestor Falls that was right on a lake. The whole area is just a fishing place for americans sadly. Lots of H2 hummers towing huge fishing boats going out to the cabin and crap like that. But regardless, it was a beautiful area. The sleep behind the church was great… I think I will camp on church lots more often.. they have so much property and I think the buildings are just used one day a week for an hour or so. It’s only fair that I make use of the land in my own way. Oh yeah, I also saw my first bear that day! It was a little bear going through the garbage at a rest stop. I didn’t notice it until a trucker said “look at the bear!”. He was standing a few feet from it and then said “it’s a little one, must be a big one around somewhere”. So I went to the washroom, snapped a picture and then got out of there. Personally, I’m happiest when I don’t see a lot of wildlife. I’m not here to see wildlife.. I don’t want to disturb it.. I want it to go about doing it’s thing, and I’ll do mine.

The next day, I rode into Fort Frances. Exactly where I wanted to be and everything was on schedule as I had loosely planned it in Kenora. Right before getting to the “city center” of fort frances, I saw a person outside his house and it looked like he had a nice yard. I asked to put up the tent, and he said he had to clear it with his wife. He said yes and I got to pick my spot in a huge amazing back yard. While setting up, his wife rode over on an ATV with the dog and gave me $20 and said they were going into town if I wanted to go! I hitched a ride and got a nice tour of the town along the way.. it’s great to have a local guide through these towns and it helps me see a lot more. It’s also awesome meeting the locals, especially when they are this nice. After eating we started talking about “The war on terror” and Iraq and all that fun stuff. For an older couple they seemed very well educated and agreed that new security measures just keep taking away people’s freedoms. They seemed especially disturbed at how many people have died in Iraq and how useless the war is. This is such a welcome change from the majority of people I talked to in Alberta who really seemed pro-bush and who really support the war, thinking it still has something to do with 9/11 or WMD’s or something. I also got to take a warm shower, which was really nice!

The next day I left slowly since I had to stop for groceries and a good breakfast in the morning. While eating a bag-of-salad outside of Safeway in Fort Frances, a stranger I talked to about my trip gave me $10 which was really nice. About 30KM out of Fort Frances, which was a really nice ride over lots of bridges, I ran into a girl who was cycling from Thunder Bay to Winnipeg! Her name is Caroline and she is hoping to be in The Peg any day now. While driving to thunder bay, she said she passed me and waved at me and was hoping we’d meet up on the road. I’m glad we did, as it is great to stop and talk to anybody during this trip, especially cute girls with bicycles! This part of the country is so desolate at times and the great thing about being on a bicycle is that you can stop and have a great conversation with a complete stranger. You never see two cars travelling on the same road pulling over to talk, simply because they’re on the same road.

I had hoped to go farther, but just ended up in a town called Mine Centre. I was going to put up the tent in the school field but noticed a camp ground across the street. I went there and couldn’t find anybody, the place was completely empty. So I was going to setup.. then I noticed some log cabins on the campground. I went in the biggest one and made some pasta on the stove and slept in one of the 7 beds. I set my alarm for 7AM to wake up early incase anyone shows up in the morning. At around 8:30 I get woken up by the beeping of a truck backing up into the lot infront of my cabin! A family from Iowa with a big fishing boat gets out and tries to open the door which I locked. I jump out of bed, get clothes on and open the door and say “sorry about that, I thought check out wasnt until 10AM”. The guy said he was going to go to the store to check-in to the cabin. So I grabbed my bike and left…

I knew this was going to happen and 5 minutes later a big truck pulled up beside me and the person asked if I was going to pay for the cabin I slept in. I said “not unless I have to” and then he grabbed his cell phone and started threatening to call the cops. He was flipping out about how I stole from him, etc. I tried to explain my side of the story, which is that the cabin was sitting there empty and open anyways. So he says the cabin is $120.. I look into my bag and I only have $85, $20 of which is the $20 US that the couple on Vancouver Island gave me months ago. So I hand it to him, he yells some more and then drives off.

Thankfully once I got to Atikoken, they had an ATM machine and I was able to take out some cash. The ride to Atiokoken was good, hills started to get bigger and bigger. I even saw a fox for the first time, which I thought was just a crazy malnurished dog running around. In Atikoken I was going to setup tent on the Library’s lawn but decided to try to find a nice backyard to stay in. The only person I found infront of his house to ask was a crazy looking older guy and when I asked to put up a tent he replied “you aint’ one of them faggots is ya?”.

So I setup the tent and then left to get some shopping and phone-calling done. When I came back, him and his wife were getting pretty drunk while trying to renovate the house. From my tent I could hear all sorts of funny stuff, including the neighbor talking to his dog. In the morning I just got up and left.. I was planning on going to Thunder Bay in 3 days, but decided to try to push to make it 2.

I did about 121 KM even though I started late and had to stop because the sun was going down. I quickly found a place to put up the tent by following a trail that lead off the highway. I think it was a snowmobile trail and I took it about 150KM into the bush… found a nice clear spot, set everything up, cooked some pasta and then hung the food bag in a far away tree and went to sleep. Great night, everything was so dark.. so many noises and I still have no clue what 90% of them are.

The next day I only had about 80KM to get into Thunder Bay and it was downhill for the last 20KM, which made me realize how big the hills actually are around here! I called up the girl I was supposed to be staying with, but she wasn’t home. So I phoned up my cousin and she said I could stay there! Nice house right on the way out of town.. perfect!

Today was my rest day and I went to a local bike shop to get a new chain. The stock chain on the bike is pretty cheap and I usually replace my chains ocne a year, which means replacing it midway on the trip would be smart. Not a necessity or anything, but still. Got a really nice chain for $50 or so and then asked the shop if I could use a few of their tools. An hour and a half later, I left completely greasy but with both of the hubs rebuilt and regreased, whole drivetrain completely cleaned, derailleur pulleys rebuilt and the new chain on! Now that is a cool shop… The one in Winnipeg, I had asked them if I could use the tools to do it myself, but they said no. This shop was really cool and the guys working there were really nice to let me back there using all their stuff. Made me realize how much fun I have getting completely greasy and fixing bikes.

If I get to Halifax, I will go to a few of the bike shops and ask if they are hiring for a bike mechanic just for fun.

This stint was the first stint using the new digital still camera that I got! So far I’m happy with the Canon A510. The fuji was good for a cheap camera, but this one is only $100 more expensive and the build quality is really noticeable. The user interface and firmware are also miles ahead of Fuji’s as well. This has full manual controls which I’ve been using a lot, but I’m still getting used to the camera.

Anyways, it is past 11PM here. I’m back into the “regular” time zone. I crossed into it before getting into Thunder Bay, which means all the watches and internal clocks in my electronics are all now showing the right time again. So I’m going to try to get to sleep and try to rest up…

winnipeg to thunder bay pictures

Big thanks go out to Barry and Krista for giving me a place to stay here in Winnipeg Manitoba! I’m comfortable, well fed, rested and well prepared to leave tomorrow and head towards Ontario.

I left Regina in pretty good spirits, thanks to all the food and a bed to sleep in. Once I was on the road I noticed the rear tire could use some air, so I pulled into a town that had a gas station which turned out to be abandoned. So I used my hand pump, a mini frame pump made by blackburn. The pump is absolute crap and claims 110PSI or something but can only do about 40 and the handle has a really well designed pinch point to really torture your hand. While suffering to get air in the tire, the valve stem broke on the tire and all the air came leaking out. Then it started raining while I had to change the tire. This was the first time a tire had gone flat on the whole trip, and I was using Slime (a green goo inside the tires) but I never put any in my spare tubes so I was worried that it was the Slime that had been saving me from flats this whole time.

Sure enough, 10 minutes back onto the road, the rear tire goes flat. This time from a big chunk of glass that ripped right through the carcass of the tire. Had to change the tube in the rain and it wasn’t fun. It made such a bad hole that I had to use a tube patch to patch up the inside of the tire. So I used my last spare tube and off I went. That night I camped behind the “welcome to Wolseley” sign on the side of highway 1. The grass was nicely cleared and the sign hid me from traffic. While in the tent, I patched up the punctured tubes. At around 3AM, I woke up to take a piss.. when my eyes adjusted to the light I noticed I could see the northern lights! For the first time, I could see green shimmering in the sky, despite the fact that it was really cloudy. Then I noticed the stars.. so many of them! I went back in the tent to grab the digital camera, only to remember that the zoom-in button had broke a few days ago. Which means I couldn’t navigate any of the menus to adjust settings to even attempt to get a picture of the northern lights. The video camera also wasn’t sensitive enough.

The next day I rode to whitewood against the wind where the twin highway ended and it was just single lane, thankfully there was a shoulder. I stopped into Wolseley in the morning and everyone was nice, and I checked out the “swinging bridge” that everyone suggested I go see. Whitewood was also a very nice little town. I did have to ride around for a while to find a place to stay, since nobody seemed to be outside. The first woman I met said I could pitch a tent in her yard, and that she had buddies coming over to party. But then she assured me that there “would be no fighting”. I decided to decline and found an older couple who suggested I pitch the tent in the backyard of the other property they own that nobody is living in. So they drove the car ahead of me to show me the place, which was a really nice back yard surrounded by trees and completely out of view. It was also right behind the town hall and library.

The next day, I decided to wait for the library to open up so I could check weather forecasts before I left. The wind was already very bad and was predicted to be bad all day. I was lazy that day as well and decided to stay another day in the back yard. I walked around town and explored, and went into a nice little gift shop and met a really fascinating (and cute) girl who was working there. She was transcribing audio of interviews she has done with the older people in town so she can archive all the information. I thought that was pretty awesome.. she had long curly blonde hair and super nice eyes and was dressed really funky. I wanted to stay and talk with her for as long as possible, since I don’t get the opportunity to talk to many people while cycling. It turned out she was moving to Montreal soon, which made me sad. The only person I saw in the town of 900 that was my age and she was moving out to one of the big Canadian cities. These little towns need people like her to stay, but it seems as though they are all leaving for Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, etc. These little towns are such nice friendly communities. I noticed a campground nearby and rode over with a towel and used their showers and left… a nice little trick that I plan on using more often. That night I ventured out onto the CP rails to get footage and pictures of the sunsets, which was actually sub-par for the amazing things I’ve seen in the sky in Saskatchewan.

During the rest day, I decided that the rest day was a mistake and that I have to really start cycling more. So the next day I pushed into Manitoba! It was such a relief crossing into a new province and I shot some video at the Manitoba sign. When I got to the tourist information booth, I noticed they had free internet access, 24 hour washrooms and free filtered water. So, I put the tent up right near the building after they closed. I was also amazed at seeing the huge tour-busses that rich people are using as campers, so I asked an older couple for a tour of one. Huge plasma TV, satellite everything, etc. They said it cost 1.5 million dollars US. I stereotyped them to be rich jerks, but they offered me orange juice and stuff while inside and were rather nice.

Day 44 I rode into Brandon, which was “the big city” for all the little towns nearby. Since it was bigger, I had a harder time finding a place to stay. Nobody was outside, and the ones that were didn’t really seem friendly. The first person I asked said he wouldn’t care for me putting a tent in his yard. I had to ride an extra 10KM until someone painting a house commented that I looked like I was riding a long distance. I asked if I could camp in the yard and he said yes. Then I noticed the house he was painting was a really old gutted house that he was just starting to fix up. The guy was really nice, his name was Nicko and the house was over 100 years old. He explained that it is a well known house among people across Canada who were passing through Brandon, who would just sleep inside of it when it sat abandoned for years. He had bought it and it is his dream to fix it all up. So I asked if I could sleep inside instead and set everything up on the second floor where the bedroom would be. He brought me to a nearby pizza place for pizza and then later on for some ice water, where a cute pregnant waitress suggested that I take highway 2 to Winnipeg. I was happy for the suggestion, especially since the shoulder on Highway 1 turned into a gravel trap about 40KM before Brandon. It was really dangerous and I hated it.. having to ride in the lane and having RV’s zoom by at 110KM/h inches past me.

So when I woke up, I headed towards Highway 2. Only to notice that the rear tyre was flat! I changed it at an Esso and headed to Sobeys for food. When I got back from getting food, I noticed the tire was flat again! So I headed to a nearby fancy hotel to patch the tube since I had no good tubes left. I snuck in through a side door into the fancy washroom, plugged the sink up with toilet paper temporarily and searched for the hole in the tube. Patched it up and was on my way. Thankfully it held…

It was really hot, so I pulled into a closed cemetery to see if I could find running water. As soon as I pulled in, the front tire went flat! I changed it in the cemetery while being swarmed by mosquitoes. Kept riding until I saw a house so I could ask for water.. the couple was friendly, a Military officer who does Computer related stuff. We talked about how the Gov’t can recover information on harddrives that have been erased over 1o times, etc. He gave me bottled water and I decided to camp right in his yard next to the bug zapper. The mosquitoes were nuts… I figured the bug zapper was only attracting them so I got out of the tent and unplugged it in the middle of the night. The sound of the mosquitoes outside the tent was insane.. I had to kill about 10 inside the tent as well. Not fun.. when they explode full of your blood right onto the tent wall.

Highway 2 is nice, no shoulder or anything but traffic is minimal and everyone gives lots of room. The next day I made it to St. Claude, a town “famous” for it’s big pipe. Which is a big smoking pipe hanging in a park. This was the hottest day of the whole trip, well over 100 according to locals. So bad that I had to stop and cut up a tshirt to put on my head to cover my neck and to hold some water near my skin. It worked really well actually.. A restaurant in Holland (the town) hooked me up with lots of ice water as well. In St. Claude I found a camp ground that wasn’t in use anymore, right behind the Dairy Museum. So I set up there.. the mosquitoes were so bad there was no way I could cook supper. I was so covered in sweat it was unreal..

The next morning I went back to the grocery store in town and filled up my bottles at the little station they have setup for people to fill the large bottles of water for home use. I do it when nobody’s looking and it always works out fine. The reason I bother to do it is that the water i’ve had to drink the past few days has been absolutely disgusting. I’ve only had access to tap water, hose water and well water, and I have to drink it all.

I was expecting about 80KM to Winnipeg, since that’s what the sign said. But Winnipeg is big and I guess the signs are only to the city limit, not the city center like I always thought. So after 80KM, I was greeted with a sign that said “city center 20″. The first 80 weren’t bad, but when you only expect to do a certain amount, any more sucks. Especially since the roads were getting bad. Again, no shoulder and traffic was becoming less and less patient as I got closer to the city. For the first time in the whole trip, someone gave me the finger. A woman with 3 kids in the car… I figured a Walmart had to be nearby because of this, and sure enough I passed it a few minutes later.

The roads were so bad.. I can’t describe it. This province is the first province where I have ever seen road signs that say “Road breaks”, meaning huge cracks in the pavement evenly spaced every 15 feet or so that rattle your body almost to the breaking point. Then they have a sign that just shows a car shooting a spray of rocks off to the side from beneath it. This is when they try to patch the huge cracks with tar and loose rocks. So when cars go by, they squish the loose rocks into the cracks, or at least that’s what the road people hope happens. Instead, the rocks just fly everywhere… Every time a truck went by in the opposite lane I got showered by little rocks, even in the face a few times. I also realized that I had somehow lost my sunglasses…

A fellow cyclist helped me navigate through Winnipeg, which is pretty confusing. So confusing that they even have an intersection called “confusion corner”. But I arrived to Barry and Krista’s place and jumped into the shower, which felt amazing. They had tons of food waiting for me, including a big carton of soy milk. A sweet bed in the basement and a laptop with wireless internet, which I’m currently on right now while typing this.

Since this is the last big city for a few thousand kilometers, I had to get a lot of things done. Including getting new bicycle shorts and stove fuel at MEC. The tires on my bike were really worn out, especially the rear one.. so I got new tires and tubes and brought my bike to a local shop to have the bottom bracket looked at, since it was making a clicking noise since Regina. I also brought my broken digital camera to radioshack, and they credited me for it and I put it towards a new Canon A510, which ended up costing me $100. So my bike is now ready to go with new rubber, I have a new still camera and all my batteries are charged up. I can’t wait to hit the road tomorrow…

While here in Winnipeg I also checked out an old house Neil Young used to live in, which was nice to see. I checked out the Winnipeg 2600 meeting on Friday and had a big greasy burger from VJ’s for supper today. Barry and Krista also treated me to lots and lots of chinese food and took me to a lot of places I had to go. I can’t say enough about how nice they’ve been to me, and how nice everyone has been to me during this whole trip. If I didn’t have all these people letting me crash at their place along the way, this trip would probably be impossible. There’s no way I could afford a hotel room every week and living out of a tent for every one of these days without human contact, home cooked meals, internet access, etc. would just be way too hard on me.

So yeah, I’m now over 3000KM into the trip! I also did an interview this morning with AM800 in Windsor. I didn’t want to do any media before the trip started, since I was worried I’d give up a week into it. But I’m more confident now and happy with the progress thus far, so I don’t feel weird about doing media stuff since even if the trip ended tomorrow, I could still say that I’ve done 3000KM on a bicycle and made it through the prairies and mountains. Thanks for all the emails and the complements from everyone so far, they really mean a lot to me. In a week or so, I will be in Thunder Bay for another rest day.

regina to winnipeg pictures

I’m happy to report that I am safe in Regina, well fed with a nice little bed to sleep in. Thanks to Lynn & Dave (who I met through couchsurfing.com) for everything, including some highspeed internet access!

This was a part of the trip that I really wasn’t looking forward to, but I hopped on the bike and just started riding. When I would run out of energy and/or sunlight, I knocked on the nearest door (which at times was over 10KM away) and asked to put up my tent in their yard. I would have just put my tent up somewhere out of sight, but finding an ‘out of sight’ area in Eastern Alberta seemed impossible. On the side of the road is always a steep ditch followed by rusty barbed-wire fences. Trees were sometimes 30KM’s apart.

Thankfully every door that I knocked on, I was greeted by friendly farmers. However, most of them seemed to have no pants on when I knocked on their doors. The first day, I camped in a driveway between two horse trailers.

The second day out of Calgary, I was chased by a huge storm which nearly blew me off the road. I had to seek shelter inside an abandoned house for it to pass, but when it never passed I continued to the nearest house. When I knocked, the woman (who did infact have pants on) suggested that I come inside instead of attempting to put up my tent in their yard. Her and her husband invited me in and fed me salmon and chili, let me take a shower and then let me get a great sleep in their daughter’s bedroom.

Everybody suggested that I go see Dinosaur Park so I made a rather large detour through nowhere to go see it. When I got there, I descended a really steep hill at 60km/h which turned into gravel and potholes. I had to do my best to slow the bike and maneuver around the huge holes. Once I got down there, I was swarmed by mosquitoes and just had enough time to shoot some quick video and take some pictures before I had to walk my bike up the really steep hill. The park was very cool though, and completely different than the rest of Alberta. They find a lot of dinosaur bones there, and ship a lot of them to Drumheller, a more touristy version of Dinosaur Park.

After that, I slept in another farmer’s yard and then decided to make it to Medicine Hat the next morning where I could sleep in a real bed. The problem was, I had a 50km straight road to deal with and a bad head wind. The road never ended and it was so hot that I actually ran out of water! Not 2 minutes after I ran out of water, a minivan pulled up beside me and offered me water!! They had a case of bottled water and a cooler full of ice water with them and they filled up 5 of my water bottles for me…

The whole road went beside CFB Suffield, a military base used by the British forces for testing. After I got to the end of that road, I still had about 60KM worth of highway 1 to deal with before I entered Medicine Hat. When I got there, I called Roxanne, a girl I met through couchsurfing.com to let her know I was in town. She was at work, so I rode there to get a key to her place. While I was riding there, the rivets holding my handlebar bag on the bracket blew off and the bag fell to the ground. I attached the shoulder strap and rode to get the key, then to the apartment. It was a really hard day, and I was very very tired… it was so perfect to have a guest bedroom to sleep in and a place to do laundry and cook good meals. I also went to the hardware store and got bolts to fix the handlebar bag.

During my 3 day rest in Medicine Hat, I downloaded some Tour De France stages to watch and downloaded Quadrophenia to listen to, since I had been singing the whole album since I spent that night sleeping near the ocean in Tofino and hearing the waves crashing.

I wasn’t looking forward to leaving Medicine Hat and I felt even less confident than I felt in Calgary, especially after having such a hard day getting to Medicine Hat. Thankfully I received some really encouraging emails which gave me some needed confidence. Roxanne brought me to the doctor’s office that she works at and convinced the doctor to take a look at the rashes I was having on my arms and knees. They were blistering occasionally and puss was oozing out in some areas. When I went to bed, I kept scratching them and the skin would come right off and bleed really easily, so needless to say I wanted to get them looked at. The doctor suggested they were caused by the sun and gave me some cream and an antibiotic, and since I don’t have medical coverage it was around $60.

I took “Industry Ave.” out of the city, which relieved any bits of homesickness I may have had for Windsor… it was nice to see some smokestacks again. Right before entering Saskatchewan, a minivan pulled infront of me and a young girl got out and gave me a big bottle of poweraid!! The driver got out and gave me his card, he is the city counciller of Ward 6 here in Regina and his name is Wade Murray. I guess he’s seen so many cyclists on highway 1 that he now keeps a case of poweraid in his van to give to them. It is things like this that really make this trip a lot easier… the fact that total strangers are realizing how hard of a trip this is and doing what they can to help really means a lot.

The wind was hard, but it was nice seeing the sign for Saskatchewan and riding into another province. While I was doing some filming, some cyclists stopped at the sign with me. They turned out to be a french Canadian couple living in B.C. who were bicycling to Montreal. Dominique was carrying a trailer and bags filled with all of their supplies and Alex pulled another trailer modified for his dog to sit in. The dog, Betsie sat happily in the trailer with her ears flapping in the wind. I rode with them into town and setup my stuff on their campsite in a campground off the highway. They made a large dinner and gave me what they could and in the morning we rode together against the wind. From there we repeated the process until we got to Swift Current after fighting the wind for a few more days. They had a weather radio with them and the forecast was calling for really bad headwinds the next day and a storm at night, but then the westerly winds I was hoping for by the morning. So we decided to stay an extra day on the campground to relax instead of attempting to fight the wind. We went to the grocery store, had a great meal and got in the tents before the storm passed. When we woke in the morning, the wind was blowing at around 40km/h towards the east! So we snuck out the back without paying and hit the road. I also found $20 stashed underneath my camcorder battery charger in the morning, which I had plugged in at the r/v site across from us. So thank you to that person!

We did 190KM that day in around 6.5 hours and made it into Moose Jaw. It was really nice getting to know Alex and Dominique who are avid wind surfers, ice climbers and marathon runners and they really made me want to get into trying more sports once I get home. They also made it a point to sit down and eat a good meal before bed every night, which is something I had been skipping a lot of days. Usually I will just setup my tent and hide from the mosquitoes in it and then fall asleep, but now I will definitely sit down and have a good meal every night. To thank them for letting me camp on their site, I fixed a few things on their bikes and bought them some food.

The next day while heading into Regina, they really dropped back behind me and I found out Alex was having knee problems. Hopefully those go away and don’t ruin the trip for them. Once in Regina we split ways and I headed here. It was sad to see them go, since everything worked out so smoothly with them. I didn’t have to worry about finding a place to sleep every night, etc. But at the same time, I am excited to get back on the road by myself. We rode at a slightly different pace and I would usually end up half a KM ahead of them, then I would take a break and they would continue past me. I like riding a little faster and taking more short breaks, while they ride slightly slower and only take a few breaks.

As for myself, I’m happy to report that the rashes are basically healed. I now have a strange pattern of pink scars on my right arm, which I think will fade once they get more sun. My weight seems good, although there is no scale here. I was 136 in Medicine Hat and I feel quite full today. My knees feel fine thankfully, even the one with the titanium screw in it. My bum feels good and the weird bite I had on the right ass-cheek has healed. My hands start hurting after around 45 minutes, so I always try to take a break every half hour to shake things out for 5 minutes. In Winnipeg I will buy new gloves, since these old ones are quite worn and the cushioning in them is flat. My legs feel muscular and toned and my skin is nicely tanned. I did get a bit of a burn on my right thigh on the 190km day, but I think it was in an area that I somehow missed with the sunblock. My beard is getting itchy, so I’m questioning my original idea of letting it grow until I reach the Atlantic Ocean. Ever since I got into Saskatchewan, I can’t ride 15 minutes without being honked and waved at by friendly motorists, which is very encouraging. The road conditions aren’t great here, but almost all drivers (except for some of the motor homes) go into the far lane and give me a lot of room.

The bicycle is running perfectly fine and I went over everything in Medicine Hat, giving the chain a nice cleaning and lubing and making sure everything is tight and adjusted. I will do the same before I leave Regina tomorrow morning. The majority of cyclists I’ve met doing long tours seem to completely ignore their bicycles and that worries me. For example, Alex and Dominique had brake pads that were completely worn down and ready to start ruining the rims.. So I try to help out whoever I can with bicycle maintenance, since all these people have to rely on these bicycles to get where they want to go. It would really suck to have your dream trip ruined by mechanical failure that could have easily been prevented. I’ve also adjusted quite a few headsets and brakes on this trip, but I enjoy doing it for people and showing them how to do it themselves. A lot of cyclists all seem to have expensive multi-tools with them, they just don’t know how to use them.

As for the movie, I think I’ve shot another 120 minutes since Calgary. In Medicine Hat, I shipped home a few extra camcorder batteries I wasn’t ever using to save a few pounds. I also rearranged how I pack things on my bike so that the camcorder is on the top when I put my bike down on the ground so I can always get easy access to it and the filters and lenses, etc. This has actually made a big difference and I find myself shooting a lot more video with the camcorder now.

Anyways, I’m going to go do some laundry and charge some batteries. I don’t know if I’ll update in Winnipeg since I will be there in only a week, but I will have internet access next there for sure.

edit: I forgot to mention that the guy I’m staying with did sound for Lynard Skynard once and put on Neil Young’s “Alabama” through the P.A. system as soon as their set was finished!

calgary to regina pictures

I’m currently enjoying my rest day here in Calgary, Alberta and the weather is beautiful!

I stayed in Salmon Arm with the religious cyclists, where we all camped in a school yard with a nice view of the mountains. Everyone went to a nearby church for dinner, so I tagged along for free roast beef and potatoes and stuff. They announced me as their guest which was pretty cool of them. In the morning, everyone was awake by 6AM or so and left to Revelstoke and I woke up around 11AM I think and headed to Revelstoke as well. Once I got there, I found where they were camping again and set up with them. This time it was in a park on a lake in town. They have a huge kitchen on wheels that drives around with them, and they cooked up a huge dinner, so I filled my cooking pot full of everything and made layers of all the different foods they had.

They also have another huge trailer filled with bike stuff, so I used one of their stands to put my bike on and give it some maintenance. Specifically, I took the headset completely apart and gave everything a good cleaning and put it back together. It was making a bit of a noise, which was due to some dirt that got in there when I reassembled it at my cousin Aaron’s in Vancouver at the start of the trip. Now everything is working smoothly.

From Revelstoke, the religious group planned on going straight to Golden.. which was 150 KM or so and included Roger’s Pass. I wanted to sleep in and take it easy, so I decided this was where we would split ways. The girl who I talked to a lot, Katherine gave me a really nice back massage before we all went to bed. In the morning they were all gone, but I found a note from her near my tent It was the usual “hope you find god” sort of stuff.. nice of her to write me a note, but pretty iffy of her to hope for me to find her god along my trip. But anyways, they were all really nice to me and I tried to help out by looking at a few of their bicycles. However, 2 days was about all I could take of having them all pass me while going up hills since they didn’t have to carry any gear with them.

I knew finding a place to camp near Roger’s Pass would be difficult, and I worry about finding a place every day. However, it always seems to work out for me and I’m quite in-awe about how well it is working thus far. When I got tired of climbing and climbing, I started looking for a place to crash and passed a camp ground that was closed with a big gate across the road. So I rode the bicycle around the gate and had the whole place to myself, including all the facilities like washrooms and a common area with screen windows and doors to keep the mosquitoes away. The park was Loop Brook camp ground and was completely amazing. I setup in the nicest spot, right next to a mountain stream and put my bike away in the common area and put the food in the metal bear-proof containers. Woke up once it stopped raining and kept riding… Oh yeah, it is called Loop Brook because there used to be a huge train bridge there, which went in an S shape so it could slowly gain elevation towards Roger’s Pass while maintaining a slope that the trains could actually climb. So there were big huge stone pillars still standing where the bridge used to be.

The next morning, it turned out I was only about 10 KM from the peak of Roger’s Pass. I always wanted to go there, and see the huge monument that was there. I’m so glad I got to see it, the whole story behind Roger’s Pass is quite interesting and inspiring. From there, I kept riding until I hit Golden.

In Golden, I promised myself a hotel room there from the beginning of the trip, so I pulled into the first place I saw. I hung the tent and sleeping bag up from the ceiling to dry and gave all my clothes a good washing in the sink and hung those up as well.

At around 1PM I left for Lake Louise and Kicking Horse Pass, which everyone told me was worse than Roger’s Pass. I stopped off in Field, BC and the person told me it was about a 10KM straight climb and about 200M higher than Roger’s Pass. The climb actually wasn’t that bad, since I knew it was coming and took a break every 1.5KM of climbing. I expected to see a monument, but instead I just eventually found myself in another time zone and then into Alberta. I checked the map and I was well past Kicking Horse Pass, without even seeing a sign showing me the elevation.

Again, I was worried about a place to stay and it was almost getting dark by the time I got outside the city and started looking for a place to put up a tent. I went down a side road that had a gate I had to go around and found myself in a huge RV Park. I asked people if I could put up a tent and they said tents were only allowed inside the electric bear fence! So I got scared and figured this should be the time where I pay for camping, since I was tired and didn’t want to get eaten by bears. So I went to the gate, only to find out that they were all full, but the guy said I could go in and ask people if they were willing to share a spot with me! So I went and found a nice German couple that were happy to have me setup my tent next to theirs and didn’t want to take my money! We sat around the common area and talked for a while, and then they went to bed. I cooked up some food and chatted with a group of drunk Australian girls who were hitchiking to Calgary for the stampede.

In the morning, I had to wait for it to stop raining until I actually got out and took everything apart. This was a ride I was looking forward to, just by looking at it on the map. From Lake Louise to Banff I planned to take Highway 1A, hoping it would be a lot less travelled than Highway 1. The whole thing is straight through Banff National Park and in a valley, so I was expecting a lot. Sure enough, it was absolutely beautiful. More cyclists than motorists! The road even split off into single lane narrow twisty roads during the steep parts and they were really nice. It was a big wildlife area, but I didn’t see anything. After Banff, I had to get onto Highway 1, which required me crossing a “texas gate”, which is a metal grate on the road surface with 6″ wide gaps which I feared my front wheel twisting 90 degrees and falling into. So I walked the bike across, balancing on each metal bar. While I was doing that, one of the spandex clad road bikers zipped right across the thing beside me. From there, I rode into Canmore and was pretty tired. The tourist info center suggested a camp ground nearby, called Wapiti Tents. I was tired, so I decided that this time, I will finally pay for camping.

So I get into the area, and I’m greeted by a nice group of hippy-ish mountain climbers. They gave me food and told me how cool the place is. I told them I haven’t paid for camping yet, and they even offered to pay for me! That night, we all sat around the fire playing acoustic guitars while a group from Quebec practicied their circus acts, swinging balls of fire around on chains. Finally, the park owner came around to register me. He asked if I was the cyclist going across Canada doing the documentary, and I said yeah.. then he asked everyone for a show of hands if they think I should be able to camp for free. Everyone put their hand up, and he told me to have a good night. So awesome… It was only $10 anyways, and would have been well worth it to meet everyone and take in the atmosphere. Everyone was on a little journey, some were even just living in the park while they work jobs and mountain climb all day. The girls from Quebec were heading to europe to start a circus, etc. There was an older guy there who rode his bike from Calgary pulling a trailer for his dog to live in.. very interesting. These people didn’t care about posessions and money, and just cared about seeing the world and meeting people.. it was very refreshing.

I didn’t leave until 1:30 PM, which wasn’t good since I wanted to get to Calgary in one day. So I hopped on Highway 1 and rode nearly 120KM until I was finally here. It took quite a while, and the hills were a lot more than expected. I was finally out of the rockies, but the road still had a lot of intense elevation changes and it seemed primarily up-hill. I thought I would coast out of the mountains straight to Calgary, but that isn’t the case. There was a “hill” which had an elevation higher than Roger’s Pass, which totally made me realize that I wasn’t decending out of the mountains as expected. When I got to Calgary, the hills were even worse in this end of the city.. harder than riding around Vancouver! I eventually found the house, and they greeted me and let me bring my stuff in.

So right now, I’m staying with my friend Scott’s old Roomate Andrew’s roommates, if that makes sense. 3 of them are starting a business, making display kiosk type things for science museums and their first prototype is completely awesome. They also have a nice living room setup with a huge screen and projector instead of a TV and 5.1 speakers mounted on the walls, etc.

Today for my rest day, I went and got some groceries and then went to MEC to get new cycling shorts. The ones I bought a few months ago don’t really fit anymore, so I had to get a size smaller. It’s good to have 2 pairs now, so I can switch each day. I also picked up a little first aid kit and some other things, and then headed downtown to get some footage of Calgary. At first, I thought the city sucked since I had to pass kilometers and kilometers of ugly suburbs and sprawl while coming into the city, but the downtown area is really nice and especially booming since it is Stampede time here. Lots and lots of really cute girls with cowboy hats, something I wasn’t a fan of until now, especially with pig-tails. I wanted to get a nice shot of the city, but couldn’t find a spot and then I saw the Calgary Tower (cn tower type thing). I knew they would be charging people to go to the observation deck, but I thought I would test my skills at something I like to call “building hacking”. I headed straight to the basement and tried to find alternate ways to get to the main elevator, but couldn’t find anything. Same with all the other floors, except for the 2nd which had an exit only area for the elevators. I could have waited there for people to come through to open the doors and then go in, but decided to just try and give the main entrance people the “Silver City Slip” (if you don’t know what I mean by that, you can figure it out I’m sure). While a big family went to the front desk to purchase tickets to go the observation deck, I casually walked straight into the elevator waiting area and sat down in the corner. Once the elevator arrived and the family got in it, I got straight in before the doors closed and up we went. At the top, I got to stand on the glass floor that they have and get a really good view of the mountain ranges which I bicycled through to get here. Really awesome.. and free of course.

Tomorrow morning, I’m packing up my stuff and heading towards Medicine Hat, which is my next rest-stop. I think it will only take me 3-4 days max. Again, I don’t know where I will camp when I get there, but I’m not really worried. I just hope there are at least places to hide, but I think it may be endless fields. That being the case, I will probably knock on some farm house doors and ask to put up the tent on their land.

I haven’t had a chance to weigh myself here, since the nerds obviously don’t have a scale. But I’m feeling great, although my knee was hurting slightly for a while into Calgary. My legs feel great and my bum doesn’t really hurt. My rashes (which are on the back of my knees, outsides of my calves, elbows and neck) are getting worse, but I bought some cream for them today and hopefully the rest will help them. I know they get itchy when I’m in the sleeping bag and it is warm, and I start sweating. So I think I may start sleeping ontop of the sleeping bag or something so my skin can breathe. Either way, I’m gonna try to sleep soon! Peace

salmon arm to calgary pictures

Well, It is 2PM and I’m in Salmon Arm, B.C. I don’t even know where to start. I’ve taken a bunch of pictures, but cannot upload them from the library computer here, so I will post them once I get the ability (which might not be until Calgary).

I left Vancouver and headed into Mission, and camped in a couple’s back yard which was nice. Lots of loud trains going by. After that, I rode into Hope. I wasn’t feeling good so I stayed in a hotel, where people outside warned me about the Coquihalla Highway ahead.

I was hoping to ride to Merrett the next day, since it looked like a fairly straight 110KM on the map. Unfortunately, it ended up being absolutely terrible as everyone warned me. I only managed to do 43KM with an average speed of 9.9KM/h. I camped right on the side of the road at an elevation of over 1000M and it kept raining on me all night. In the morning, I continued up to the Summit, which was 1244M and from there I flew down, reaching over 70KM/h. It was insane..

From Merrett, I rode straight into Kamloops, which was the best ride of my life on highway 5A. No traffic, completely amazing scenerey and a great wind. I stayed with Bob & Lenore Mallais who are friends of the family. They fed me well, and gave me a comfy bed to sleep in. So I stayed an extra night!

I weighed myself there, and realized I’m somehow only 125Lbs, meaning I’ve lost nearly 20Lbs so far. I must start eating more, and fast!

From Kamloops, I rode into Sorrento and camped in an empty riverfront lot in an upcoming housing development! Awesome! Today, I rode into Salmon Arm and caught up with the huge group of Christian bicyclists who are also riding across canada. They’re outside watching my bike right now, and they’ve taken turns trying to ride it. They have a support vehicle carrying all of their stuff and can’t believe how much stuff I have on my bike.

I think I will stay in Salmon Arm today and try to sneak into the school that the Christian group are staying at, and maybe try to get some free food.

Sorry for the quick update, but this computer has a 15 minute limit.

But yeah, so far I’m feeling great, aside from a lot of rashes. Until next time!

vancouver to salmon arm pictures