From the Mountains to the Seaside City...Vancouver

I love to ride my bicycle. I think I've pretty well proved that by riding it every single day for the past few months, mostly without complaint. But for a few days that changed. I didn't want to ride my bike anymore. We had just ridden over a mountain on 14% grades on a dirt road - which was actually quite fun - but we were faced with climbing another mountain on very steep grades the next day, and the next. Thanks, Canada. Looking back, the climbing wasn't the hard part. The hard part was the heat - you see, nobody told us it would be HOT in Canada. And being Team Krusti, getting out in the early part of the day before it turns scorching seems beyond us most days. So there we were, the water in our water bottles slowly coming to a boil under the hot sun, cranking our way ever so slowly up yet another ridiculous grade when a man appeared, riding out of saddle. He said his name was Jess and when I jokingly goaded him for not hauling enough stuff, he took two of my bags on the back rack of his bicycle. In addition to saving me from pushing my bike up the mountain, he also coached both of us that day in climbing mountains, which neither of us have done much of. All in all, a very serendipitous meeting.

Regardless of our meeting with Jesus, I mean Jess, climbing that mountain in the heat of the day when I didn't really even feel like riding my bike to begin with wore on my spirit of adventure. And after an amazing descent into the town of Pemberton only to be told we would need to climb back out again to get to Whistler, my patience was running thin. We did manage to wake up early for the ride up to Whistler, which was beautiful and scenic with much more approachable hills than the previous days, and it made all the difference. We left Whistler after the heat of the day and made it outside of Squamish to be guarded by an owl friend over our tent that night. The next morning we rode into Squamish for breakfast, then began riding the "sea to sky" highway toward Vancouver. Remember, this is the highway Canada put a billion dollars into for the Olympics. Unfortunately, the foot-wide shoulder is often interrupted by large drainage grates that leave cyclists with no choice but to veer into highway speed traffic to avoid them. Needless to say I had had enough. I threw my bike down, put my head in my hands, and the tears began streaming. We stuck our thumbs out for the first time in 2500 miles of cycling, and it felt soooooooo good. We were picked up by a kite surfer in a minivan after a short 15-20 minutes of our thumbs waving in the breeze, and carted the remaining 30 miles into Vancouver at a pace unbeknown to us for the two months prior.

Once in Vancouver we found the cheapest hostel available - $20/night not to shabby eh? It was convenient to Vancouver's famous "crack market" (where crackheads sell anything they can get their hands on at very low prices to afford more crack) and run by a very "eccentric" Italian man who believed that wireless internet is destroying the world/scrambling your brain. Apparently he was also suspect of cleaning as well, because stepping into the hostel felt like stepping into a badly kept brothel in a 3rd world country. But, the price was right, and we don't seem to have contracted any strange diseases.

Vancouver is a town to tear up on bicycles, and that's what we did. We rode around and through Stanley Park - a park bigger than central park with beautiful bike/hiking paths running through it that skirts the ocean. We went to the market at Granville Island and saw huge king salmon worth $400 a piece along with every other kind of fresh seafood, fruit and vegetable imaginable. It was quite a shock to our senses to see that kind of variety after the sparseness of produce in Alaska and even in Canada, where the produce is fresh but of average variety. We then went to Wreck beach - a famous nude beach near UBC where we discarded our clothing and were offered a margarita by a man wearing only a fanny pack. We finished off our stellar day by gorging ourselves on all-you-can-eat sushi. The next day we met up with a couple who cycled from Vancouver to Patagonia with their 3-year-old son (!). We met them in a different part of Vancouver where coffee shops and breakfast joints abound and ended up at a coffee shop that rented props out to theater companies and movie productions. Pictures to follow. From that shop we were pointed toward the closest bicycle shop in the area to get directions on the best way to leave Vancouver by bicycle.

Dream Cycles was the bike shop, and it was our dream come true. As we walked into the shop we oohed and ahhed at the selection of beautiful Brooks saddles, custom built steel-framed bicycles, and other Team Krusti desirables. Kristin found exactly what she had been looking for - beautiful new handlebars and new leather ergonomic grips - money going to a great shop with a great cause - to give people their dream bikes.

After a girl we met outside of the shop bought us a cup of coffee it was finally time to hit the road out of Vancouver. All in all, Van-city was a varied and enriching experience, but it was time to get the HEY out of Canada!