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Friday, June 15

Distance: 52 km
Riding Time: 2:50 hours
Average Speed: 18.7 kph
Top Speed: 70.2 kph
Location: Kaslo Municipal Campground

On my own again! Sortof. Dave is still camping with me, but we separated on our cycles today, and rode the bulk of the day in different directions. Good thing, too.


We started the day about 12 km from the ferry terminal where we were to cross Kootenay Lake. It was a fairly pleasant ride, though Dave seemed a bit knackered along the way. Just a few K before the ferry is the small town of Crawford Bay, which looks like just a lovely place to spend some time. I think they have two golf courses and hardly any homes, ample camping, and a stretch along the highway of Artisans who make the most extraordinary stuff. They have a blacksmith, a weaver (loom and all) a glassblower, and several more. Though we checked out a few shops, we didn’t really spend any time there. I was trying to find something to bring home to the missus, but it needs to be small, sturdy and light. Nothing there fit the bill. I’ll be going back for a week one of these days.

Turns out somebody put a mountain pass between Crawford Bay and the ferry terminal. The ride down to the ferry was thrilling, but I’m not sure it was worth the brutal climb. Fortunately, though it was steep, it was only a couple km long. Not REALLY a pass. After a passable breakfast, we caught a sailing and headed across to Balfour, where we parted ways for a bit.

Balfour seemed like a good place for a rest.

Dave had left his campervan in Nelson, which was about 40k to the west, and I was off to Kaslo, which was 40k to the northeast. In order to be able to take the bus, Nelson was where Dave had to leave the van, so that he could pick it up near the end of the trip. If he waited until we reached New Denver, he’d be stuck with about a 110k ride to reach it, which wouldn’t be fun. So we planned to rendezvous at the S.S. Moyie, which is an old steamship that’s been turned into a museum and visitor center.

Motivation! As I was head up toward the highway, I saw 4 girls on bikes ride by, going the same way I was. They even had panniers on their bikes! Time to look strong and powerful.

Too bad I couldn’t catch them. I was overdressed so had to stop and lose a layer, and it’s amazing how far a person in front of you can travel over a couple minutes. I eventually did pass them right at the crest of a bloody awful hill where they stopped to rest. I have this thing about stopping atop hills – I’d rather rest on the way down. So we said hello and I continued on. I did notice, however, that they really weren’t carrying that much weight.

And then they passed me. I was stopped, okay? The rear rack on my bike was loose and I’d stopped to tighten the screws. The first two there were kind enough to stop and help keep my bike steady for me, while the other two were catching up. 100 bloody pound bike can be pretty hard to hold up with one hand while you’re crouching.

Anyways, these 4 ladies were inspirational, as they were in their late 40’s or so, and have had a tradition for several years where the four of them would meet up for a 3 or 4 day bike ride. They live far from one another so it’s an annual reunion of sorts. I was duly impressed. The last two showed up just as I was climbing aboard my bike, but I still needed a good stretch after crouching, and they continued on.

This was a bloody tough ride. Only 52k for the day, but LOTS of long, steep hills. As I was working my way up the third or fourth, I decided that Dave would likely have struggled. He had looked to be hurting now as I had been after reaching Cranbrook, so these hills would’ve been tough. However, I was feeling nice and strong, so though I was winded, I felt really good, overall.

When I rode into Kaslo, I looked to the west at the road that I was going to be riding up tomorrow, and good Lord, does that look steep. I’m now damn worried that I’m going to get my ankle all flared up again, or that I just won’t be able to cut it. From Kaslo to New Denver I have a major mountain pass to get over, and I’m worried. This’ll be the first true test since Radium, and that one didn’t turn out well.

I’m ahead of myself. I made it to the rendezvous point with a half hour to spare, and called Dave to let him know that I was going to set up at the municipal campground. We weren’t sure that cell phones were going to work, which is why a meeting place was picked. No worry, though, lots of reception. Dave called about ½ hour after we were supposed to meet to say he was on his way, but was likely about 45 minutes away. When he arrived, we headed out to dinner and he told his story.

He WAS tired and sore. And during the ride to Nelson he was getting steady more wiped, and was starting to worry. Realizing he still had 20k to go and only a half hour to get there, he pulled into a gas station to buy the ultimate of all energy sources – Red Bull. As he walked out, a fellow in a pickup truck drove in, and Dave asked,

“You going to Nelson?”
“Yep”
“Can I buy you some gas”
“Sure, need a lift?”

And then, once they were underway, the fellow asked one of the greatest questions of all time.

“Would you like a beer?”

Perfect way to end the riding for him.

Kaslo Marina.

So all is good. After dinner we went to the local pub and the pool drubbing continued for Dave. We also met a lady who grew up around home, and knows Willie Bridge quite well. Willie is a fellow Exshawite who has done some plumbing work for me at the plant, so I promised to pass on a message next time I see him. As I write this, I still haven’t seen the man. No matter.

That’s it for now. Bring on the hills!

Today is, I think, my one year anniversary of leaving here in Northern Ireland. And now, the UK army is pulling out, I think in acknowledgement of the safety and prosperity I have brought this once troubled little nation. Or maybe not, things are always complicated here.

In celebration, let’s have some South Africa photos:

There aren’t very many unfortunately, as I was working most of the time. Maybe next time…

Bonjour. Just stepping back in time a bit here, these are my photos from France:

It was the first time I’ve ever filled my camera memory card, 260 photos. So be ye warned, I’ve pared them down a bit, but there’s still a pretty substantial volume to sift through. I recommend starting off with 5 minute shifts, and building up your immunity, before trying to tackle the whole thing in one go.

I’ll be going through the few South African photos I was able to take. Most of my time was unfortunately taken up with work, and since the sun goes down there around 5:30, there wasn’t a lot of time to go sightseeing. But what I did see was pretty great…

The Sirdar Pub

After we left the pub, we again saw some spectacularly bad looking clouds, and were braced to gear up. This time we weren’t so lucky at avoiding the rain, but having watched the weather for a couple hours now, we didn’t think it would last. We stopped for shelter under a tree and waited the storm out. Had a brief conversation with a tourer going the other direction who disdained our hiding from the rain. Snooty bugger.

Brief, but intense.

We stopped at the truest tourist attraction of the trip so far, the Glass House. This place was built in the fifties by a retired funeral home director. The man spent a decade collecting empty embalming fluid glass bottles and proceeded to build a house out of them as you would with bricks. It was never his intention to create a tourist attraction, but since it became one immediately and remains one, looks like it was out of his hands. His family runs it now.

I forget how many thousands of bottles

After a fair day’s ride we made it to a campground at Grey Creek, both pretty tired. For me, I’m less tired than I am tender, and the constant rubbing of the pedaling action has resulted in some painful chafing in the nether regions. Time to break out the “Chamois Butt’r” tomorrow. Incidentally, another amazing shower after all the riding. I asked Dave, “How many days in a row a fellow can feel like a new man?” A shower is a truly excellent thing.

For dinner, we rode an additional 4 km down the road on unloaded bikes, which was a true treat, to the local Chinese food place. It seems a bit strange to find this restaurant situated in the middle of nowhere, but we weren’t complaining. In fact, it was some of the best Chinese food I’ve ever had. It seemed fairly authentic to my uneducated eye, and was run by an older Chinese couple. The food was spectacular and it was quite uncomfortable to ride back to the site on account of the bursting belly. Not complaining, though, it was well worth it.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this turns out to be the nicest place we camp at all trip. We right on the water, far away from the other campers, so it’ll be nice and peaceful. With the rain stopped, we started a fire with the wet wood and sipped butterscotch schnapps while we chatted. Eventually I started to crash and it was time to make my notes and call it a night. All in all, a great day.

Nice place for a nap

Wednesday, June 13

Distance: 40 km
Riding Time: 1:51 hours
Average Speed: 21.3 kph
Top Speed: 55 kph
Location: Mikkelson residence, Creston

Oy, what a wonderfully easy, relaxing day. High time, dammit! Truly back in civilization for a night, and it’s a welcome change.

Got up at….Yahk, and had a truly unappetizing breakfast of a protein bar with juice. I’ve had a number of protein bars for lunch during the trip, but I’m pretty much starving when I do so and they’re not too bad (actually, the Honey Stinger brand tastes fantastic, give ‘em a try). But for breakfast, not so good. Not sure what time we got going, but we were only planning on reaching Creston anyways, so weren’t in any hurry.

Had a fair stretch of little hills over the first few kilometers, but then it pretty much flattened out, and we even had a few nice downhills. The weather was nice, at about 20 degrees with some sun, so on the whole the day was going well. We stopped in the small town of Kitchener, BC for lunch. On the map I had, it showed the town named “McConnel.” We asked our waitress, and she explained that when the railroad first came through, it wouldn’t allow more than one stop of the same name, and Kitchener Ontario was bigger. So, according to the train and some maps, it’s McConnel. Some useless trivia for you. At any rate, if you ever go through Kitchener, make sure you stop at the restaurant there. Nothing to look twice at, but the food was utterly spectacular.

Once we got to Creston, we tried to look up a fellow name Leon Mikkelson. He’s a welder who did a lot of work at Lafarge over the years, and I knew he’d recently moved out to Creston. I even knew a general lay of the land for his home, because he’d described it to me in detail. However, I couldn’t recall enough to be confident finding it. We asked around a bit, and found a young guy who’d delivered some landscaping supplies to Leon’s home, and he gave us some solid directions.

Well, it was a pretty big shock to Leon to have us ride up. He knows Dave better than he does me, but we were both made welcome by him and his wife, Sheryl (I think it’s Sheryl, but please forgive if I’m wrong!). He even offered us beer like a true champion. Kokanee, of course, but he buys it just across the border in the states, because it’s cheaper there than from the brewery. Go figure. He gave us a tour of the property, which was truly spectacular, but I forgot to bring my camera on our tour, sadly. However, I do have a shot of his two little girls, who insisted on showing off their dresses before going to bed.


It didn’t take too much convincing for us to stay for dinner and spend the night, so we headed out and bought a few supplies for the meal. Beer and…something. It was nice to have some other input into the conversation, and on the whole we had a great evening. I crashed early and headed into to the tent to write this, and timed it just right because a few minutes after I climbed in, the heavens opened and it started to pour. I love my tent.

So, on the whole, a damn easy day, but it was quite fulfilling anyways.

Many thanks to the Mikkelson family for putting us up.

Time to see if anyone’s actually reading this. There’s a good reason why there was a fair delay before I posted this part of the blog. I had to wait until the first trimester was up! It was on this day in Creston, while waiting for dinner to cook, that Donna told me over the phone that our family was going to grow without us adopting a new pet. She’s due on February 8th!

Well earned rest at the top of a moderate hill above Moyie Lake.

Dave rested too. We stopped to look at some new mobile homes on the way to Moyie Lake, and also stopped so that I could stretch. In the small town of Moyie, just past the provincial park we were supposed to shoot for the night before, we stopped for lunch and a few quick games of pool. It was a neat little pub, and it witnessed the near humiliation of Mr. Williams getting thoroughly schooled at the fine art of pool playing. We also had a brief chat with the first other tourers we’ve run into; a young lady riding with her father. Fairly inspirational that, I’d say the fellow was in his mid to late fifties. But they were going the other way so we didn’t talk long.

Can anyone tell me what a Sacrifice is? Post in Comments.

We continued on, and before long I learned that Dave is the sort of fellow who likes to take in every aspect of the trip. Basically, he likes to stop at look at things. Whether it’s an old mine,

Damn door was nailed shut.

An old graveyard,

Used as recently as 2003

a promising looking stretch of highway, a junk shop, a jewelry shop (with a proprietor who smoked like a chimney and if you didn’t like the secondhand smoke, you could always get the hell out), an old cabin

For sale cheap! Only $3000

or just a rest stop, it really doesn’t matter. If there’s something moderately interesting at the side of the road, Dave stops.

Here’s the funny thing. If I hadn’t been so worn out and in need of rest, all this stopping would have frustrated me to no end. As it was, the breaks were welcome, and because I could sit back and look around a bit more, I realized that I really should have been stopping more anyways. The previous days, the rides had all been about getting from A to B, with necessary stops in between for meals, etc. I think I'd developed that habit while riding through areas I knew well when training, and I think I missed out on a bit for the first couple days of the trip. I also found out that Dave was a bit worried about being able to keep up with me, so he’s trying to stay as fresh as possible by taking regular breaks. So I learned that stopping to smell the roses, so to speak, certainly has its benefits. On the other hand, all the downtime added a lot of extra travel time to the day, and by the time we got to Yahk provincial park in…Yahk (yes, sounds like a bodily function), I was looking forward to a shower and a rest.

Too bad about the shower, there were none. But the campsite was nice, the beer from the corner store was cold, and dinner was plentiful. We tried to go out to eat, but nothing in the town was open these days, so we picked up various groceries at the corner store and commenced stuffing ourselves. Dinner tonight was crackers & cheese, creamy soup ( crackers dipped), and a dried meal you can get at MEC of Valhalla. All in all, pretty tasty and lots of it.

After eating, I tried to get the satellite phone to work. I rented this thing from the Phone Store in Canmore for $371 for three weeks, primarily for the peace of mind of my missus and mother. I’m to check in every night to let Dee know I’m still alive, or she’ll start to panic. Surprisingly enough, Yahk, this metropolis of 28 people, give or take, doesn’t have cell service. So I broke out the satellite phone and confidently wandered out to a clearing across the highway to phone home.

No service. Not a twitch. Couldn’t pick up a satellite nohow. After about 10 minutes I wandered, frustrated, back to the campground, and took advantage of the pay phone that was there to call home collect. I'll try this thing tomorrow in Creston to see if it works there.

And now, belly full, it’s time for bed. Not excited about sleeping without showering; I feel absolutely slobular, but there’s not much to do about it. The river is ice cold and very high. At the store we learned about another campsite further down the road that has showers, but since we already have the bikes unloaded and don’t know how much farther down the road it really is (people in cars have no sense of distance), we’ve decided to stick it out here. Ah, well, I knew it was going to happen at some point, so I’ll just have to deal with it.

So I’m here in Cape Town South Africa, sitting around wondering where all my little trainees went. It seems that 2pm is the time of ‘The Disappearing’ or something, I’m not sure. I sat down for lunch, and when I was done everyone was gone. Mind you, that’s alright with me as training isn’t my favourite activity in the world.

So far Cape Town is great. This Tabletop Mountain that I’d read so much about really is very spectacular, towering over the city with nice tree lined sides. The city is nice enough, perhaps nothing to write home about architecturally, but better than say .. Vancouver. The view from my room is also great, looking out over the Bo-Kaap, a traditionally muslim area filled with multi-coloured houses. Beautiful, but apparently not the safest to walk around in by yourself. All that said, I haven’t had too much time to have a look around on account of my working. I swear, they pay to fly you around the world and the expectations just go through the roof! Hopefully this weekend I’ll get a good look around the Cape itself. Photos to follow..

I will say this, the people here are freakily friendly. Not just polite, and they don’t just smile and carry on their way, they actually appear to be really interested in what you’re doing here. I was on a first name basis with my waiter last night. I’ve been to at least a few countries in my time, and I’ve seen nothing like it. Mind you, it could just be the shock of coming from France, where we were basically asked to leave the restaurant because after sitting there for 15 minutes we helped ourselves to a few menus, mostly so the kids wouldn’t die of hunger. ‘This is not fast food!’ Apparently so. But it’s easy to forgive the French their excessives as they make such lovely cheap wine…

Well, SlantyNet is catching up to 1999 standards of performance (I’m really going to have to reboot the server), but since you’ve actually loaded up the page, you might take a look at the Betke blog where Mr Sodomy details his bike trip

I’m looking forward to reading it, its a wee bit of a change from the spells and the butterbeer as I’ve been (frantically) re-reading Harry Potter (made it from finishing Prisoner of Azkaban over the weekend to starting the Half-Blood Prince)

Guessing that I won’t be seeing many people on Sunday.