To read our bike trip from the beginning, follow this link:
You're Doing What???
If you dont know what type 1, 2 and 3 fun is, then you might enjoy listening to this podcast - 3 TYPES OF FUN.
The date is June 27th. It is our first planned day of cycling over 50 miles. There have been lots of changes since starting this trip and this day is no different. For one, I originally planned routes to detour around highways but now, nearly 2 weeks into the trip, I appreciate a well placed highway route (given a wide enough shoulder) if it is going to cut off mileage. I never would have been ok with that a week ago, but today....YES! Give me a highway over the scenic tour any day.
We were up at 6:15 like we had planned and there was no sign of Beth anywhere, plus, even more concerning, her car was not there. We were not going to wait around to see what was going on so we just grabbed the half completed, roughly drawn map and headed DOWNHILL. What a beautiful thing. I think we went downhill for a solid 20 minutes, which is about the time it took us to drop 2000' from the summit of Mount Lassen, if you read that blog post! That is pretty insane, and totally fun!
The half map we had was useless because it never showed how to get to golden ears bridge....it just ended...so we found the Traboulay Poco Trail and that was on my original directions so we followed those. Unfortunately, my directions were also useless because it said things like Poco (.2) R to stay on Poco (.1) L toward Bridge to follow Poco (.1)
What the hell does any of that mean, I say to myself now! UGH...we just kept following the Poco until it ended on Pitt River Road. Now what do we do? Well, if we had this handy dandy map (that I got 2 hours later) we would have known NOT to go left, (all that circled red highway means DANGER!!!! DONT CYCLE HERE....) but since we did not have the map and we knew we were going east that day....we headed left, right into the danger zone!. What follows is not for the faint of heart. (ie, grammy and poppy you should probably skip the next few sections and start reading again when you see a picture of Shane eating some chips!) If you read my post "You're doing WHAT?" you may recall that Shane and I nicknamed a stretch of highway from Campbell River to Port Hardy - The Highway of Death. Well, we found the mainland version of this highway, and we found ourselves riding 15mph along the 2 foot shoulder, sandwiched between huge trucks and a cement wall. All I can say is that all 4 of us had our angels watching over us for the 45 seconds it took us to get through that stretch of highway.
Thank goodness it was only a short stretch until we could get off and try to get our bearings about us. We could see a bridge up ahead, but it did not look bike friendly and I made sure to check EVERY bridge prior to our leaving, to make sure it was safe for us to cross.
We pulled off the highway and asked a man in a company van where the Golden Ears Bridge was and I wish I had a picture of the look he had on his face, as if we had asked how to get to MARS and back in an hour....granted, he was totally stoned (yikes!)...but still, it was not sounding good for us. He told us to keep going on this road (Cape Horn) and follow a trail to a river and around a bend and yada..yada...yada...we thanked him, crossed the highway at the light and went to go ask the respectable railway worker on the other side of the highway.
He said the only way back was to go the one mile back from where we just came from and to follow Shaunessey all the way to town. Ok, this guys sounded sober...and seemed to know what he was talking about, so we made a plan. The highway had a cement barrier. We could walk the whole way back on the other side of the barrier (just pushing the bikes) so that we had some safety between us and the zooming morning rush hour traffic going by. It would take longer, but it would be safe. 
We started out and it was fine. There were berry bushes along the way so the girls were pleased as punch (I dont think they even realized how scary this experience was, thank goodness!) The trouble with berry bushes was that we were going to get a flat. There are so many thorns on the vines and the vines were everywhere...we had to push the bikes right over them. Even having to replace all 6 tubes would be worth it to not have to be on this stretch of highway.
After about 15 minutes of pushing, the grass we were walking on started to get steeper and steeper and steeper, until we were barely able to hold ourselves upright and support the bikes. Then, not far ahead, we saw that not only did the grass section disappear completely...but the shoulder on the highway was almost non-existent!
I had a moment of terror, thinking we were going to be stuck here forever. There were train tracks off to our right, but it was down a ravine COVERED in berry bushes. That would never work and I am not sure I wanted to walk with the girls on trail tracks, either. I was actually surprised that NO ONE driving by called the cops to say - Hey, there are some crazy people with children walking along the highway - at least then we might get a cop escort out of there.
What we did realize was that the cars literally STOPPED coming once every 3 - 5 minutes. And the highway was 100% free of cars for about 2 minutes. This we could work with. Shane and I decided to bust our buns out of there within the next 10 minutes. We only had about a quarter mile to cycle to get back to a decent shoulder and only a half a mile back to Pitt River Road.
We gathered the girls, told them to wait for our signal and be ready to pedal like they have never pedaled before. When the first lull in cars came we lifted my bike up and over the barrier (not easy!). When the second lull in cars came we lifted Shane's bike up and over (totally not easy and 2 weeks later I STILL have a huge bruise on my calf). Then, on the third lull in cars we told the girls to climb over the barrier and get on the bikes and we pedaled like the WIND!!! We made it almost all the way to Pitt River before any cars/trucks/busses passed us. This one mile wrong turn had taken us less than one minute to get down and AN HOUR to get back. Later, at the library in Port Coquitlam, I finally found the cycling map that we should have had and it turned out stoner guy was 100% correct! We should have listened to him. We would have cycled along a peaceful river trail all the way back to Golden Ears Bridge. Oh well, next time, eh?
I have never been so happy to take a detour. We rode all the way back into town. Shane and I were so lost and our bearing were all mixed up. Up was down and left was right...we needed to get some coffee, that much was for sure!! We found a Waves coffee and planted ourselves there for a while. It started pouring rain. It had been 2 hours since we left and we had not even gotten out of the city yet, PLUS we still had to cycle to Mission - 45 miles away. This is a terrible way to start the day.
But you know us, we met a great lady who came outside to find out about our trip (we get lots of people wanting to talk to us when we are sitting at coffeeshops with our loaded down bikes - and our adorable children, of course!) This woman has a blog - Lady Camping and was a totally kindred spirit. We ended up chatting with her for probably 45 minutes. She tried helping us with a route, but in the end said we were probably best off going to the library and seeing if they had the cycle map. So that is what we did next....hung out at the library for another hour. I posted a blog, Shane read some magazines and the girls looked at books. And it was continuing to rain like crazy out so we decided to stay put until it lightened up a bit.
The rest of the day was rather uneventful (for a while). We found our way to the Pitt River Bridge,
The signs for Golden Ears brought such happiness to my heart. This morning, stranded on the side of that terrifying highway, it seemed as if we would never make it....but here we were, and it was beautiful. I love bridges, and cycling them is so fun!
We took the long route to get to Fort Langley (cuz we didnt know any better, on the way back we took the direct route!) but it was a beautiful backcountry road, complete with the Farm Stand with resident wild cats. You know the girls love cats so they started walking up to them and a lady pops out of nowhere and says, "Them there cats are wild, they be scratching you to bits if you get near 'em" (I had to tell the girls to stop staring at the poor woman, I dont think they have ever heard this dialect!) We bought a scoop of ice cream to split (huge bummer - we should have waited for Fort Langley) and continued on our way.
Fort Langley is my new favorite town. It was such a perfect little place. Awesome coffee, great market, cute stores, good food, and a CANDY store. You cant go wrong in this place. We only stayed for an hour and then kept pedaling. We still had 20 miles to go. (wow, really...who's idea was this vacation?)Just when we thought this day could not get ANY more difficult, we a mountain with a crazy rain burst over it. Please, we said, I hope we are not cycling into that raincloud. Guess what....we were. And not only that, but it was the steepest road we have pushed up yet...Lefeuvre Road.....Everyone we talk to about this section of our trip knows this road. It has a reputation. On a sunny, beautiful day cyclists do not want to go up this road....today it is the worst torrential downpour people in the area have ever seen (so we learn later) ...shoes slipping...rain jackets soaked through....I do not think we could have been more wet if we had been sprayed down with a firehose.
And here are the girls....happy as can be. You can see the RIVERS coming down the road. WOW!! The girls get to walk along the side of the road picking thimble berries. I am actually so relieved that these girls are having so much fun. How crappy would it be if they wanted to go home every day? Nope, they are having the time of their lives on this trip. Ice cream daily, candy stores, donuts, berries on the side of the road, non-stop eating all the time....these girls couldn't be happier!
Now, you might think this is the end of our troubles, but you would be sadly mistaken. While, I will say that after we got to the top, we did have a lot of downhill, that was quite enjoyable....we also experienced the worst mosquitoes yet in Matsqui Park. Once again, the girls were off picking berries, while Shane and I were huffing our bikes up an embankment, when we were full on attacked by a million mosquitoes. We could not get out of there fast enough, but the damage was done, we all had like 35 bites in under 5 minutes. Then, as Shane was hopping on his bike, his tire made a crazy sound (we would later discover that a spoke literally BLASTED off his tire) but we just high tailed it out of there. The trail dumped us onto a horrifying road (Harris Road) and we had had enough of that for one day so we ended taking a route that probably led 3 - 5 miles out of the way (cuz we were not cycling enough today!)
Finally, we made it to the Mission Bridge. It was pouring rain, we were soaking wet and only moments from being at our hosts house (or so we thought...it would be another hour at least) and I started second guessing whether the bridge was safe or not. The on-ramp had no shoulder and no obvious signs that there was a bike path. We stopped in a triangular grass area so I could walk up the ramp and try to see the bike route sign, but I couldnt. Directly across the street was a huge house and I could see a lady upstairs in her window looking down towards us. I figured she might be willing to let us use her wifi so I could look at the street view on google maps. I told Shane and he said no way.....look at the video surveillance signs on the fence. I am such an optimist, though. I said, "Really? We have children, she sees us stranded on this on ramp, I am SURE she will let us just use her wifi for 3 minutes!"
Nope! We knocked, rang the bell, knocked again....nothing. I was blown away. Once again, we headed off, heads hanging, not sure what to do. This one bridge was all that kept us from getting to Mission. We rode on to see if anyone else might let us use their wifi, but everyone had similar signs so we cycled to the end of the road and looked up at the bridge and realized that we could not see the bottom of the cars. Doesnt that mean there HAS to be a barrier for bikes? I knew I had pre checked all the bridges so most likely it was fine. Shane and I were just so intimidated now because of what happened this morning, we didnt want to be stranded on a scary road twice in one day. Plus, we were an hour late to this house, starving, soaking wet, and exhausted. We really had no options but to push on. Who's idea was this vacation? HA!
And what about the girls? Jo-Ann, our host, asked the girls how their day was....Alli says, "It was fun, we got CANDY!" and Jill added - "and ICE CREAM!"
Tomorrow is our second (and last) 50 mile day. We had great fun on that ride also....hope to be able to post about it soon. We are heading up the sunshine coast for the next week so I think I may not be blogging during this time! I did get a calling card though...so if you get a call from canada ANSWER IT!!
NEXT POST: 50 MILES AND A WATERPARK
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