Riding Logs

Cold in the morning. Kept on the sweater and jacket. Lazy morning, procrastinated for a long time. Packing every day is getting annoying. About 7 mins into the ride I was nice and warm and continued with just a t-shirt.

Downhill forever. Nearly all the first 8k or so was steep downhill, with just one small uphill. Very hard on the knees.

Got into Princeton at 11:30ish left 2 or 3ish.

Princeton has a ridge dividing it, and the downhill I took to get to centretown was another very steep downhill. Knees were in rough shape after all that.

Found a laundromat, washed all the clothes other than what I was wearing.

No bagels I could find, got spinach wraps instead, plus one apple and one orange.

Got about 15k but stopped even though it was early; my right knee is hurting.

Stopped on an island. small stream to cross to get to it, ended up in it and soaking my shoes. not sure how I’ll get out tomorrow without getting soaked again.

Branch #1 for hanging food snapped. #2 didn’t but the whole tree sounded about ready to fall over.

Mosquitos already.

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Manning Park Resort - Friday Mountain

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Late-ish morning, left about 11:30, but good breakfast: bun with jam, bread with PB, tea, porridge.

Got some fruit from the store, three oranges and an apple. None of it looked too fresh but whatever.

Long climb up to Sunday Summit. It was a good ride.

Down a bunch, then another significant climb up the edge of Friday Mountain(?).

Rode and rode and rode. Lots of energy, though I was getting hungry by the end of it.

Stopped just before a very long steep downhill. Turns out I was just 16k or so outside Princeton.

Legs were tired by the end, but I could have rode for quite some time still (had I not been at the edge of a huge downhill).

Nice place to stop, long strip of nothing but some sort of long grass. Made for an excellent pad to sleep on.

Snapped the first branch I tried to hang the bag up with. Second one worked fine. The Pine Beetles have really done a number on the trees around here.

Manning Park - Manning Park Resort

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Rain. Most things were ok, but everything got at least damp. Rain is miserable, but the clouds of mist that come with it are pretty cool. Bad weather is sometimes good riding motivation some how though.

Stopped a bit after noon for lunch. Took some time and walked around.

Bad place to stop for the break perhaps: right after that was a huge climb, going up to short grades of 8%. Climbed forever and eventually got to the summit: Allison Pass.

The sun came out and rain became intermittent after that pass, and the ride was really nice, level or downhill but not steep. Got into the Manning Park Resort just a bit past 4:00, and stopped there so I could get a room in the hostel to take out all my stuff and let it dry.

Got some chocolate chips to add to my trail mixes. So far I’ve gotten three different mixes and none of them have had chocolate chips.

Hope - Manning Park

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Got a loaf of “Bohemian Pumpernickel" at the Hope Bakery in lieu of bagels. Good stuff; dense and delicious.

Late start, after 1:00.

Road started going uphill right after the split of hwy 3 and 5.

Stopped for lunch at a stream running under the road (small bridge): Snow! Already!

Looked around some, then back on the road.

Tough riding, lots of uphill. Eventually, after many breaks and a lot of walking, reached the summit of Hope Slide, where a sign indicated that I’d ridden a 7% grade for 6km. That made me feel better.

Easy riding after that. Got to Sunshine Valley: not much around, didn’t see a grocery store to get fruit. Oh well.

Rode a few km into Manning park and then stopped to set up camp.

The only dry spot (no snow) was under a tree right by the highway. Good maybe, as it’s high (dry in case of rain?) and the road noises should deter bears.

Got the rope over a branch after many attempts. The weight I used was much too light and took a ridiculous amount of time to coax down. The branch was not very strong, so I took everything except the food out of the pack.

Night was still warm so I didn’t bundle up. Halfway through sleep I woke up freezing and had to rearrange to get warm. light sleep after that, rain started at some point.

Chilliwack to Hope

Beautiful Day. Probably around 11c and clear and sunny, with a calm breeze at my back.

Roads were nearly dead flat right up to near Hope. Lougheed has the longest stretch of straight road I've ridden yet, which made things feel slow.

The last 17k or so got a bit tedious. There is nowhere to stop on Lougheed, I had lunch just on the side of the highway. My back was hurting quite a bit more than it has, it was definitely the main slowing factor.

The bridge on Highway 9 was terrible. "Cyclists use caution" should read "Prepare to die if you actually ride this." There were fences on both sides with no sidewalks and the road was quite narrow. The bridge is really long. I rode up a bit, but very soon there was a stream of cars coming in the opposite direction and a big transport coming up fast behind me, with no room for him to pass. He had to slow down pretty much to my speed and at that point I just hopped off and let him pass. It was intense. Luckily right there there was a little inlet thing on the side where I could catch my breath. On the edge of the road and up about 18" up and 18" wide was a ledge I could use to walk the bridge and not get killed. Lots of trucks, and when they passed they made a huge gust of wind that would have really thrown me off had I tried to ride it.

A good day over all.

Abbotsford-Chilliwack

Left late, but it was a short ride so not a big deal.

Riding was great. No cyclocomputer made it tricky, and the bike shop was closed.

Roads were great, weather was great, traffic was great.

Vancouver to Abbotsford

Rain rain rain. A little to warm to be in the jacket but to cold not to wear it.

When I stopped for breaks the pack was steaming where my back was.

Made it out of Vancouver with my very complicated directions and no map.

Left pedal came loose after Surrey. Instead of taking all my stuff out of my bag to get the bad adjustable wrench that doesn't really fit between the crank and the pedal making it unlikely to be able to tighten the pedal enough, I bailed and found a payphone, got a ride to Abbotsford. I've done more than the ~25k I didn't ride going way up to the top of Vancouver and back. This is not a ride-every-metre-if-it-means-death trip. If it didn't work out it would have taken 5 hours to walk, and that's if I didn't get lost. It wouldn't be fair to show up at a host's house at 1am. Ah well.

It was relieving to find that it was the pedal that was loose and not the crank on the axle. Pedals are easily replaceable. If something is messed up hopefully it's the pedal and not the crank pedal threads or something.

cyclocomputer broke. The cord ripped off where it attaches to the computer mount.

Victoria - Vancouver

Seat angle doesn't feel quite right.

Riding in the city at night was actually kind of nice, I enjoyed it.

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