The Finish Line

Whoops. It's been almost a month since I last wrote this blog. Double whoopsies. Sorry folks! It's been a great month though - with finishing our cycle tour from San Francisco and meeting family and friends in both Chilliwack and Edmonton. I'll get to all that later on, but for now I'll fill you in on the rest of our cycle tour. Where were we?... Ah, yes. We arrived in Snohomish for the Canadian Thanksgiving weekend. Mmmm... turkey. But first, Paella! Erling made us this beautiful and fishy (in a good way) rice dish on the barbeque. The entire experience was enhanced by the Heinekin beer keg in the fridge and two gin and tonics.Erling and Susan's house is just beautiful. Even in the darkness of night, it looks like a cute and warm haven -- and I'm surprised I got such a clear shot having been slightly on the tipsy side. The next morning, after a few absolutely stellar lattes handmade by Erling, we all went to the local community centre for a good-natured fun time where we all jumped off the diving board, dropped off the rope swing, belly flopped (only me and Brian it seems), did some laps, and sat in the sauna. By all, I mean myself, Brian, Britt, Kip, Bjorn, Nicole, Kristjan and Erling (which are basically all of Britt's family, except mom, Susan, was stuck at home cooking the turkey). Turkey dinner. I don't know quite what else to say other than it was deeeeeeelicious. There were plenty of laughs around the dinner table too. The viking approved: At one point during dinner, Brian was talking about meeting my family in a few short weeks, and he said, "It'll be great to meet Patty!".... Um, Brian, honey... my mom's name is Pam. Whoops. His unfortunate mistake got a lot of laughs though. I think the viking didn't approve on this one. The activities kept on rolling all weekend, with an impromptu family portrait session: ... and the best darned 'Talent Concert' I've ever been a part of. Everyone had to display their own slice of talent, and boy, we had some doozies! Nicole, Bjorn's sweet and naive-looking girlfriend, ended up bringing the show to an R-rated level by making a rather interesting looking napkin design:

Bjorn attempted to screech his way to a song on an out-of-tune violin also missing one string. The Broom Trick by yours truly - ask me to do it when you see me next time. The remaining talents consisted of a Haiku, an MC Hammer rap, Thread the Needle (Kip held on to one of his feet with one hand and put his other foot through the resulting hole), "Mountain Equipment Co-Op" belched in one go, and a rubber duck shoot down with a sucker gun. Needless to say, it was pretty funny.

The morning of our third day at Susan and Erling's place, we had to pack up all our gear once again and head out onto the road. It was kind of hard getting back on the bikes because the weekend seemed like we were home, at the end of our trip, back with one of our families enjoying each other and having loads of fun times. Back on the bikes, it was just the two of us, a bit of a head wind, and leftover turkey sandwiches (which coincidentally made up for the feeling of being alone and anonymous again). I should say that the feeling of being alone and anonymous is absolutely fantastic sometimes, especially at the beginning of a big trip, but near the end of a trip, all you desire, all you dream about is being in a place where there are many people around you who love you. And a big comfy couch sometimes gets in on that dream too.

Our ride turned out pretty perfectly that day we had turkey sandwiches because after six hours of riding, we hopped onto the Anacortes ferry with five minutes to spare. The boat took us to Orcas Island, where we stayed with our gracious Warm Showers host, John. We only spent a total of 15 hours on Orcas Island, and slept most of those hours, but it was fantastic, and we'd love to go back someday and visit John again - what an interesting guy, and what a beautiful house:

The following morning, Brian and I hopped on the bikes and made a B-Line to the ferry terminal to begin what would be known as the "Ferry Hopping Day". Our first ferry transported us from Orcas Island to Sydney, BC (near Victoria). This was our "Welcome back to Canada" moment. And that brought me back to my crapola experience trying to get into the states the month before (remember boarder crossing guard, Mr. Cocky-Pants-'Every-Canadian-Wants-To-Live-In-The-States'?). Well if you recall, Mr. Cocky-Pants, for short, resulted in me getting a piece of paper stapled into my passport that I had to submit upon my return to Canada on or before the date I told them I'd be back in Canada - what a freak show. Anyway, Brian and I were the first off the ferry in Sydney, and rode up to the Canadian border crossing guard, who, first of all, was more interested in the details of our cycling trip (great trip? weather? road conditions? etc.) than he was in our identification, of which he didn't even look at. It was all together too easy. So easy in fact, that we rode off in bliss of being back in Canada and having had no troubles at the border, that I completely forgot to hand in that crappy piece of paper stapled in my passport!! When we figured this out (ten minutes had passed), Brian headed for the grocery store and I rode back to the ferry terminal to the guard, and he said, "Oh, yeah, no problem! I didn't even look at your passports!"..... I love Canada.... So there, Mr. Cocky-Pants.

Our second ferry of the day took us from Sydney across the Straight of Georgia to Tswassen, south of Vancouver. We quickly hopped back onto ferry number three which took us back across the Straight of Georgia and north up to Nanaimo. Basically, we took three ferries to zigzag up the Straight in order to bypass the 100 kms of riding from Victoria to Nanaimo. The funny thing is that we could have ridden from Victoria to Nanaimo in one day, but we thought it would be nicer to take the ferries, plus, we had two big riding days ahead of us if we were to get to Tofino in time to meet up with my Banff buddies, Kimo, Eric and Chris.

And that we did! After a night in Nanaimo with my brother's friend, Buddy, Brian and I rode to Port Alberni (not a very nice place, really) and camped in the closed section of Sproat Lake Provincial Park Campground. Perhaps the bad karma of trying to skip out on paying for camping was repaid with torrential downpours most of the evening, and especially while we were trying to set up the tent -- everything was drenched inside and out. Blegth.

The rest of the ride to Tofino was better than expected. The road I remember is tight, full of potholes and usually had heavy traffic including big rigs. Lucky for us, most of the road has been repaved with excessively large shoulders, tourist 'off season' timing meant few big RV's, and to top it all off, the loggers were on strike, so no logging trucks! Yay!

It was a long ride to Tofino, but it was well worth the work! It was fantastic to see my great old buddies from Banff. I miss them so.... We were all camped just off the beach, and as luck of all greatest luck would have it - it was SUPER SUNNY! It must rain about 360 days a year in Tofino, but we were lucky to have amazingly stellar blue sky, and some super dooper Swiss cheese!

I love that photo above. Heh heh. This is the beach. So lovely:

This is me and Eric pretending to punch out Chris in the head with our shadows. We didn't really punch Chris. All six of us hopped into Kimo's little Honda Civic and drove to Chesterman's Beach for a sunset gala. It was so amazingly stunning, and lasted well over an hour. Oh, breathtaking. Fun sand designs: We did some tidal pool viewing: We looked at the shells: We looked at the star fish: We took self portraits: And we drank beer hidden in our mittens:

Man-oh-man, it was so great to spend that time in Tofino. Thanks to Kimo for planting the seed in my head the week before to see if Brian and I could ride up in time to meet up with them. SO FUN! And, sorry to Greg for thinking that it would be raining all weekend and therefore deciding not to come out and visit with us on his motorcycle, Maggie. Doh!

The ride back to Port Alberni was pretty good because we shaved off twenty kilometres by staying in Ucluelet the night before we departed (this was in order to fix the broken spoke on the back of Brian's bike which is a long, but good-ending story).

Port Alberni is..... well.... dirty.... kind of sketchy... and just plain ol' yucky. We didn't want to camp anywhere mainly because there wasn't anywhere to camp, so we stayed in a shady hotel where they apparently charged you if you used the kitchen in the room (how they would know, I'm not so sure) but we ended up only using the fridge to keep our soy milk cool for the cereal we ate for dinner -- yes, quality nourishment, I know, but we were lazy and couldn't decide what to make for dinner and cereal was better than our other two options, which were Kraft Dinner or Burger King. Good bye Port Alberni.

On route back to Nanaimo, we stopped in Coombs for a fancy cinnamon bun, yummy coffee, and a bin full of dark chocolate covered almonds (oh my god, so good). We wrote some postcards, some fancy Canadian postcards, displaying photos of famous Canadian singers like Anne Murray and Gordon Lightfoot. Oh yeah.

Back to Buddy and Liz's place in Nanaimo for a night of beating their asses at Pictionary. Sorry, Buddy, I had to say it.

The next day, we were back on the ferry from Nanaimo to Tswassen, and rode 40 kilometres in the rain along busy highways all the way to my brother Greg's place in Whiterock. Man, were we glad to be there. Not only to get out of the rain, but because Brian was going to meet the first member of my family! Awe, man, it was fun hanging out at Greg's place. We did typical Greg stuff. We played Tetrus (Greg thinks he's better than me, but I do pretty well considering I've never owned the game)...

We went to Dairy Queen and bought the biggest ice cream cake they had. It was $24.00 of ice cream, and worth every penny. Oh, yeah, and if you hadn't already guessed from the words on the cake, Brian and I are moving to Nelson, BC. From Nelson, NZ to Nelson, BC. Pretty fitting, I say.

Greg also showed us how to rally race fancy cars on his X Box. I love how all those watching and/or playing the game will move their heads in the direction the car should be going on the track. I found it quite entertaining being around these two guys shown below because it was almost like watching folks witnessing a tennis game, but with more variety, the occasional episode of cursing, and of course ice cream cake.

Greg had to work the next day, so Brian and I spent the entire day in our pyjamas watching all seven episodes of "The Long Way Round", eating three separate helpings of ice cream cake, and for lunch: a big box of Kraft Dinner, and for dinner: Wendy's. What a fantastic day off. This relaxed and high-caloric style of living at Greg's continued for three days before we headed off towards Chilliwack, our real final destination for our bike trip from San Francisco.

This is where my photos appeared to stop completely. We took some photos with Brian's camera, but I have no evidence of Brian meeting my parents at their store, the Montie Family Fun Day we had that weekend, the time spent sorting through all my boxes at my parent's place, the visiting we did with friends and family, the time I made a pie for Sarah with the Perky Nana chocolate bar embedded in her piece (long story), etc... It was fun and a relatively quick week, and before we knew it, we were on a plane to Edmonton to meet Brian's family.

Brian's mom met us at the airport with two bouquets of roses... So sweet. His mom is SO SWEET, and she bakes like a fiend. I've never had so many baked goods, homemade soups, fresh bread, and so on since I spent time at my grandma's place when I was little. Good thing my metabolism is still on fire...

Brian has spent a lot of time sorting through his things, and we've found some interesting articles of clothing - some real doozies! Like, for instance, his two toques we've been sporting since he found them. One is a Home Hardware toque, and the other is a classic John Deer toque!

The best thing by far has been the sharms he found. What is a sharms, you ask? Well, apparently it's a homemade knit article of "clothing" if you could call it that, which is supposed to be a shawl, but for your arms only. Huh? Yes, I know it sounds ridiculous, but it's true, and it's on display below with Brian and his mom:

The sharms thing could have been a deal breaker, but luckily Brian never actually paid good money for this thing, rather it was a gag gift he sought after at a Christmas party. The fact that he sought after the sharms is frightening, I know, but it can't be any worse than the ugly blanket, which, if you recall, he paid good money for. Goodness...

I got to meet the rest of Brian's family on the weekend, including Buckwheat, Brian's dog-in-law: