Pedalling Nonsense

Here’s a photo of us having completed our journey and dipping our tires in the Atlantic Ocean, near St. John’s. We made it home safely and are happy to be among friends again in Vancouver. Below are some of the fun metrics and Frequently Asked Questions. What made you decide to go on this bike trip? We've never been hardcore cyclists, just commuting cyclists. Before this cross-country adventure we’ve never done more than a single overnight bike trip, and that was in preparation for our current trip. There are a few reasons we made the decision to put our jobs in hold to make the time to do this trip: 1. Spending time with each other is our favourite thing to do so why not take advantage of our childless lives and take some time for just the two of us? 2. Canada is awesome! We love spending time in Canada and exploring all the amazing places this country has to offer. Prior to this trip we'd never been east of Montreal within Canada, so most of Quebec and the eastern provinces w...

Photo courtesy of Molly Bawn Whale and Puffin tours. We were so excited to see the puffins that we didn’t take any good photos of them on our boat tour.  This blog post is coming to you at 4:00 pm Atlantic Time, 4:30 pm in Newfoundland: We made it to Newfoundland, the final province! We’re on the final stretch of our journey before flying back to Vancouver. We’re still both enjoying ourselves, but also looking forward to seeing friends again. Even as we approached Newfoundland, it looked so unique compared to other parts of Canada we’ve seen. The coastline looks like it belongs in a fantasy novel or Treasure Island  — craggy headlands and exaggerated jagged cliffs. These rocks are over 1.5 billion years old, making them the oldest exposed rocks above sea level anywhere on earth.  If the Maritimes embody Canadian stereotypes of kind, polite, friendly, and stoic people, then Newfoundlanders seem to be an exaggerated version of those stereotypes. So many people stop us to ch...

Many people recommended that we cycle around Cape Breton Island, and the scenery delivered. In the last week we went to Halifax, spent several days there, then cycled around a bit of Cape Breton towards the ferry to Newfoundland.  In Halifax, Karen was eager to spend an afternoon at the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21. I was impressed by the museum. Seeing people’s stories of resilience, acceptance, and belonging made me proud to be Canadian. The museum also didn’t ignore Canada’s attempts to push certain groups away to keep them out of Canada. A few days after leaving Halifax we stopped at the Peace By Chocolate shop in Antigonish. The store’s owners were Syrian refugees who came to Canada in 2015, and their journey of overcoming hardships and building a new life in Canada is featured in a book and movie.  The Pier 21 museum also has an “Immigrant Journey” room with staff dedicated to helping museum-goers search their family’s immigration history. I told the staff t...