Day 6: Pulling the Plug

How does one define success?  The Oxford English Dictionary defines "success" as:

1 1. the accomplishment of an aim or purpose:

2. [archaic ]- the good or bad outcome of an undertaking

Origin:

mid 16th century: from Latin successus, from the verb succedere 'come close after'

Nowadays most people associate the word with the primary definition listed above - and that's generally what I'd go with as well.  By that definition this tour and project has been an abject failure.  But was it really?  I tend to think otherwise.

Goal #1 - raise enough money to provide 100 bikes via WBR to African children.

Well I fell short on that one.  By a pretty significant margin.  But, we did manage to raise enough money to provide 30 bikes - so that's definitely worth something.  That's 30 kids who will get the opportunity to stay in school and have a real chance at success in the future.  And it doesn't stop there.  Once they graduate the bikes will be re-assigned to more kids, so these 30 bikes could end up positively impacting hundreds of kids' lives.  I have to say that I'm pretty pleased with that.  I originally came up with the 100 number by trying to guess how much load I could haul without killing myself (more on that later) and then applying a nonsense factorial to it because there really wasn't any science behind it anyway.  Then I rounded it up and decided that "100 sounded like a great number".  I bounced my numbers off Jordan, who responded with enthusiasm "Dude, you can totally do that!" and I was good to go.

Goal #2: Ride a ~2000km loop from Vancouver through Penticton, Golden, Jasper, Lillooet, and back to Vancouver carrying 3lbs of weight for each bicycle donated.  I was carrying about 85 lbs in addition to my "minimal requirements" - not 100% ballast, but I did bring a lot of junk that I didn't really need to because I had weight to make up anyway.  The rest of it was water because I figured if I were to run out of fluids at any point I'd be pretty pissed off to be stuck with a lot of sand.  :p  I made it as far as Revelstoke before making the decision to pull the plug, and this was not a decision that came lightly.  I thought long and hard about it for 3 days before I quit.  3 days of just slogging along with no power, feeling really crappy, and in a fair amount of pain.  3 days of pushing with no strong desire to fight through, but not yet willing to not be making forward progress.  3 back-to-back days of questioning why I was riding when I wasn't enjoying being on the road - at all.  This isn't a job - I do this for fun.  And yet, this is really NOT fun.  I'd pushed through something similar last year; but last year I had the luxury of a much larger timeframe so I could afford rest days and short days when necessary.  This year I had a tight deadline and was already behind schedule, riding slower than ever before, just when the terrain was about to get difficult.  I wasn't going to make up time, and I just wasn't going to make it - period.  I'll also be perfectly honest and say that last year I wanted it more.  A lot more.  I'd always wanted to do a cross-country trip.  Every mile - even the shitty ones.  A "short" loop around BC is quite different and I knew that the great majority of the people who donated to WBR wouldn't be offended or want their money back if I didn't make it.  (If anyone seriously does, email me)  My desire to fight through this thing and finish the job I started just wasn't there.  I didn't want it bad enough, and that was the biggest difference.  Yes, my body hurt - but the mind is where this battle was lost.

So I sat in Revelstoke (nice town, btw), having thought through my options and called Phil & Andy just in case for a "sanity check / sounding board" - even though I'd essentially already quit mentally.  I just needed confirmation.  I'm done.  It's over.  I rode to the Greyhound station, bought a ticket, and went home.

Going back to the opening question, I'll take "success" by the 2nd definition and call it "moderate".  A lot of good was still accomplished (30 bikes to Africa!) and I learned that adding ballast isn't quite as easy as I would have thought (smarter folk would have just known this).  My 2nd day's ride from Hope to Princeton proved that last year was an anomaly - and that while that route/timing is indeed hard, it can be done.  I got to see some friends that I've not seen in several years, and did enjoy some of my time on the road.  Maybe next year I'll drive out to the 'stoke with a road bike and spend a few days doing Rogers Pass and the Icefields Highway the FUN way.  :p  I'll tour again, I'm sure of it.  I'll just probably lean toward "fast & light" next time.  :p

Scenery:

The best picture (and perhaps the best part) of the past 3 days:

This is the way the tour ends
not with a bang but a whimper

Day 5: Further adventures in headwinds...

Today dawned bright and beautiful - as ALL the days have done since I got as far East as Princeton.  I don't know what the weather is like in Vancouver but Summer has finally arrived in the Similkameen / Okanagan!

Carl was already gone (no surprise there) but Kerry was still kicking around in her pajamas just waiting for me to wake up.  She (or Carl) had coffee made and breakfast stuff laid out.  As she had been up since 07:30, she had already eaten.  I made breakfast for myself while we chatted, and then she took me on a tour of the ranch.  It's absolutely amazing what Ralph (Carl's dad) has done in the 35-odd years he's been there.  She showed me the cattle squeezes, explained how various farm implements are used and I got to sit on the tractor.  Ralph came out with a gift for me - some farm-fresh eggs that he'd just hard boiled, a wedge of cheese that a neighbour made, and some sausages.  He figured I'd need to eat on the road...  Such a warm and generous man.

I finally got rolling at ~13:20, setting perhaps a new record for a late start.  As soon as I hit the highway I knew that I'd be in for a tough day.  The wind was back, and stronger than the day before.  It wasn't "pounding", but it was plenty strong - and it stayed that way (and in my face) all day.

My L ankle still hurt.  My R knee was still feeling "weird".  And my R chest/ribs were still bothering me.  I contemplated just turning around and going back to the ranch.  Several times.  By the time I got out of Vernon the wind had picked up a bit and I was rolling, but not particularly well.  It was just going to be one of those days...

No power, no spark, and not a whole lot of enjoyment, really.  There were some amazing views but most of my day was spent managing the pain and just grinding it out.

A couple of fuel and rest stops here and there and I pulled the plug early in Sicamous - some 75km short of my goal for the day, but I knew I wouldn't be getting there...  I wasn't feeling so horrible that I needed to get a hotel room but my brain wasn't functioning particularly well and I wasn't able to locate the campsite easily.  The hotel was obvious, so I just went with it.  Took advantage of the situation to do some laundry (I had planned to do that at Kerry's the night before but we were too busy talking and I forgot), and grab an early night.

Making it all the way to Golden tomorrow might be a "big ask" with Rogers Pass coming late in the day, but we'll see how the body holds up and what the weather brings.


Stats:

Total Elapsed Time: ~5:50
Total Ride Time: 4:44
Distance: 100.35km
Avg Speed: 21.1kph
Max Speed: 46.1kph


"Driving" the tractor

Kerry & Pivo

Vince told me about this place...

Day 4: Back on the road...

After having taken 5 days off to support Vince at Ultraman Canada, I was back on the road with a "short, easy" ride to Vernon.  On the map it's just ~120km - and while the first section to Kelowna is somewhat hilly there aren't any major passes or anything like that - just a couple of moderate to large climbs up to Summerland and again out of Peachland.  I remembered the 2nd half being a lot flatter, with some rolling and a hill just outside of Vernon.  Again, nothing to write home about.

I had breakfast with a Jordan - who'd just gotten back into town the night before, raced back to the house to pack up my stuff and say goodbye to Vince, Christine and Jen, and then rolled out at around noon.  Later than I had planned, but them's the breaks.

It was windy.  Not a "killer" wind, but windy enough that I was pedaling down all the hills at between 35 and 45kph (normally I'd just tuck and hit anywhere from 60-85).  There was a pretty stead head/cross that stayed with me all day.  It was sunny and warm, but not oppressively hot - I'd guess low 30s.  Pretty close to perfect riding conditions (would have been perfect if I could have turned that wind around!).

I stopped at a fruit stand in Summerland for a Powerade and a butter tart.  The butter tart was pretty good - not as good as that one I had last year in nowhere, ON, and thus not as good as one would find at Tartine - but still pretty damned good nonetheless.  With my fuel stores topped up I carried on.

I was making decent time and on the final climb to Summerland (I think) there was a truck pulled over on the side of the road.  A man wearing what looked to be one of those yellow/green neon safety vests was standing beside the truck - but he wasn't working or doing anything - he was just watching me climb.  As I got closer he threw both hands up in the air and I started to laugh, realizing that it was Vince - emulating what I'd been doing all weekend.  He offered me a beer handoff and when I stopped to ask what he was doing so far back (they had left nearly an hour before me) he told me that they had stopped in Summerland for lunch.  He offered me water/Gatorade, but I had just topped up so I didn't need anything.  Vince took off, and I rode on.

I made West Bank in ~2:40, and noticed that I was starting to feel a bit tired.  Hmmm - maybe I'm more fatigued from the weekend than I had thought.  Nothing to do but ride on, so ride on I did.  Getting through West Bank seemed to take longer than I thought and it was just over 3hrs by the time I hit Kelowna.

Vince had told me about they hwy97 bypass which allows cyclists to skirt around the abortion of a job they've done to the city where the main highway cuts through the center of town.  It's truly a horrible thing - "town planning" at its absolute worst.  I can't think of an uglier stretch to a nice city anywhere in North America.  Squamish seems keen to try their hand at it as well, but though that's no work of art they've (thankfully) got a long way to go before they reach the Kelowna "standard".  If Squamish is my highschool physics teacher, Kelowna is Stephen Hawking.

It took pretty much forever to get through Kelowna.  It's not the fault of the bypass, which is a nice jaunt through mostly residential streets with a full bike lane nearly the entire way.  It wasn't even the fault of the wind, which somehow managed to be in my face no matter which way the route turned.  I just had no legs.  I didn't feel like I had bonked, but I was tired and unable to produce any power.  Finally I rolled up to a grocery store and got another Powerade, and hit up the McDonalds for a Coke ($1 any size, all Summer long!)  I sat down on the curb under the shade of a tree for a little while and figured that I wouldn't hit my estimated time of reaching Vernon at 18:00.

That time was significant only because I had made plans to call Carl when I got to town and had told him that I figured I'd be there by ~18:00.  I figured I'd call him at 18:00 wherever I was - and just hoped that I'd be able to describe my location well enough for him to know where I was.

From there it remained a slow slog.  No power, not much energy, and just feeling generally beat up.  My L ankle was bothering me again, and earlier on in the day I had noticed that some of the injuries I sustained when I crashed six days prior were still bothering me.  My L palm hurt in the drops, my L pinky and ring fingers hurt, and my R knee was less than "normal" - but what was bothering me the most was my R chest.  I must have done some compression damage or pissed off the intercostals when I crashed, because it SUCKS.  Pushing up off the bars, breathing deeply, rolling over in bed, reaching for stuff...  it all hurts.  For the first 4 days I was terrified of coughing or sneezing.  Ah well - what can you do but just keep rolling?

I called Carl at 18:05 at the top of Predator Ridge and was pleased to learn that I was only ~10km out of Vernon - with most of that being downhill.  I had seen a town on the lake as I climbed the ridge, but refused to allow myself to think that was Vernon.  He said "I'll see you in ~20" and I got back on the bike to finish up the day.  Carl was waiting for me at the bottom of the hill and we loaded my gear into the back of the Subaru.  Then he whisked me off to his ranch down near Coldstream - SouthEast of Vernon proper, where Kerry was waiting.  They had an absolutely ridiculous amount of food waiting there for me, with organic free range beef from their own steer (raised on the ranch) and sausages made by their neighbour.

An incredible meal, followed by us staying up way too late catching up and we all crashed at around 02:00.  Poor Carl had to get up early the next day for work.  Kerry works from home, and I just had to get up whenever and keep moving down the road.  Revelstoke is the next planned stop, followed by Golden.


Stats:

Total Elapsed Time: 6:40
Total Ride Time: 5:44
Distance: 124.33km
Avg Speed: 21.6kph
Max Speed: 67.2 (achieved on the descent into Vernon)