There and Back Again (with Numbers!)

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 were fully new experiences. As an aside, all the political craziness that’s been going on south of the border began after we decided to take this trip, but it does help to affirm our decision that now is the right time to be vacationing in Canada.

3. It’s fair to say we wouldn’t have done this trip at this time if not for Josh. Josh was one of a kind with one of the biggest, boldest personalities I ever knew. He never would have joined us on this biking trip and he would have absolutely hated most of it, but he would have loved hearing about it along the way. I miss him a lot, and over the last year and a half I’ve found that doing things he would be proud of me for or jealous of is incredibly motivating. It's been challenging finding motivation since he died, so this trip has been a good reset and reminder that if I can just put one foot in front of the other again and again that's all it takes to keep things moving in the right direction.

Total distance biked

8,774 km

Separate from cycling, we travelled a total of 468 km by car. This includes: a stranger drove from Greenwood to Grand Forks in BC after we got so many flats in a row that we had no tubes left to replace the popped tire; we gave up when the Saskatchewan headwinds were too strong and got a friend to drive us from Regina to Gray; and we got a relative to drive us from Winkler to Winnipeg. The smoke was so bad it was unsafe to bike in, and we decided we would much rather be stuck for days in Winnipeg than Winkler, because we had a bunch of university friends to spend time with.

Number of flats

Eight

Longest day 

202 km, from Pipestone to Crystal City, Manitoba.

Total days travelling

106

Number times Karen ate ice cream

71. To be clear, this isn’t 71 scoops of ice cream because many times she had double or triple scoops. Her favourite ice cream places were Fete in Winnipeg and Holman’s in Prince Edward Island.

Total elevation (cumulative)

69.2 km. Cumulatively that puts us well past the stratosphere and into the mesosphere, and 69% of the way into space. Funnily enough, our single biggest day of elevation gain was Day 3.

Most common roadkill: Turtles, sadly. We saw so many throughout Ontario, and only one live one. A close second was porcupines.

Most mosquitos: Algonquin Park, Ontario.

Favourite province?

BC, for both of us. Every province was unique and filled with beauty but we both loved biking in BC’s mountain ranges. It turns out we chose the right place to live.

Favourite stretch of road?

Karen: Bow Valley Parkway, Alberta 

Matt: Old Hedley Road, BC

Best cycling infrastructure?

Quebec had so many amazing bike paths that ran parallel to highways but were also fully separated, lasted hundreds of kilometers, and were often sheltered with overhanging trees on both sides. 

Worst roads?

Manitoba had the worst roads from the moment we crossed into the province until the day we crossed into Ontario. This included highways, small town roads, Winnipeg, the towns we stayed in, and even Winnipeg itself. We mostly stayed injury-free on this trip, but I have a bit of nerve damage in a few fingers that began from bouncing along Manitoba’s decrepit roads. 

Worst drivers?

Antigonish, Nova Scotia

Best food? 

It’s impossible to choose one, there are so many contenders, but we came up with a shortlist: - 

• Mrs. Culford’s steak dinner in Sylvan Lake, Alberta

• Mom’s lasagna and caesar salad in Edmonton

• Uncle Walter’s ribs and blizzards in Waldheim, Saskatchewan

• Auntie Karen and Uncle Brad’s Mennonite meal

• A Warm Shower host’s lobster scramble in Rexton, New Brunswick

Would you do it again?

Yes! We need to work and save money, but we would absolutely do a cycling trip again. We’ve been dreaming of going down the Pacific coast, or cycling tip-to-tip in the UK.

Did you name your bikes?

Matt: The Delta Flyer

Karen: Sal

What was your biggest fear before starting, and how did it turn out? 

Karen: Keeping up with Matt and not slowing down the team. It turns out I’m a little faster on hills but Karen’s a little faster on flat roads. 

Matt: I thought my preexisting ankle and/or knee injuries would derail the trip. It turns out biking is incredibly kind on the body and neither was a problem.

What are you looking forward to the most back in Vancouver?

Seeing friends. We spent 42 days seeing only strangers and each other between leaving Montreal and the day we got home. 

We spent our tenth wedding anniversary in St. John’s. Each year we take a picture with the previous year’s picture.