Alberta Bound

 A picture of the Misty— I mean, Rocky Mountains. Keeping the Tolkien references to a minimum is an ongoing challenge with this blog.

This past week we said ‘goodbye’ to BC. Biking over mountains has been much more fun and rewarding than I imagined. Some of the best days so far have looked like this: get into a low gear and grind uphill for tens of minutes (or sometimes several hours) while trying not to think about how slowly we’re moving; feel a thrill and sense of achievement at eventually making it to the top of a pass; reward ourselves by bombing down the mountain at full speed; repeat the process several more times throughout the day.

Summation of our time in BC

Both our bikes and bodies are holding up reasonably well this week, apart from karen having a persistent sore knee. Both of us are surprised that her body is causing more issues than mine, given my pre-exiting injuries, but that will likely change in the upcoming weeks. Her knee hasn’t actually been debilitating or slowed us down yet, but I’m unclear if that’s because the injury isn’t too bad or if it’s because of Karen’s fierce determination. We are hoping that a few days rest in Edmonton is all her knee needs to heal, along with the daily icing, foam rolling (ie. bear spray canister rolling), and stretching she’s already doing. 

“Hot springs? Ooo, I’m there!“

Warm Showers hosts have all been incredibly gracious as well, with no intent for reciprocity. We heard stories from one of our hosts about tandem biking across Canada. Tandem touring could be in our future, but Karen and I know from experience tandem biking around Stanley Park that it would only work if she was at the front steering (feel free to read into how that anecdote is symbolic of our relationship). We also heard stories about bikes as tools of activism and countercultural movements, like the role of bikes in the women’s suffrage movement. Through these stories we learned that even though our four month journey seems big, we’re just barely dipping our toes into the world of bike culture.

We’ve had a stellar week of wildlife. Apart from the typical Rockies sightings of mountain goats, elk, and deer, we saw two wolves and three bears! Sadly, the wolves disappeared before we could get a picture, but one of the bears we saw was completely indifferent to us and blundered past us foraging. 

One bear sighting happened on a day when Google Maps led us to a nonexistent campsite. Where there was supposed to be a campsite, all we found was a black bear. It ran away when it saw us, but we opted not to setup camp in the bear’s hangout spot and continued on to the nearest town to find a motel.

Karen’s BC Book of the Week: Mining Camp Tales of the Silvery Slocan