To the Edge

Some miles in the wrong direction, with intention

Ride Summary

Distance: 31 mi (50 km)
Climbing: 1070 feet (326 m)
Descending: similar
Difficulty: moderate
Link to workout in Strava
Things are trending up and to the right, as we used to say in the business world. It'll probably be awhile before I detox from business thinking...


When your breakfast restaurant tells you to have an eggs-celent day, you do it!

Last night, I repaired my tent bag which eagle-eyed Lori had noticed was starting to tear right as I set out (this repair turned out to endure reliably for the whole trip). Then, before I set out this morning, I tightened my front wheel right in the lobby of the hotel. This substantially reduced my rolling wobble - which I could now see was not entirely about "newly loaded bike"! How did I get here with a loose wheel? I had just the day before finally swapped in some fancy locking wheel skewers instead of the normal ones it came with - meaning that nobody could steal my wheels, and that I could lock the bike by the wheel with a certainty that the bike would still be there upon my return to it - and not just the wheel! I hadn't tested them well, but fortunately the only resulting problem was a minor wobble, no tragic failure or crash. But, all buttoned up now!

Today I headed some miles eastward, to get to where I want to start riding west from. It's "traditional" on this route to start from milepost 0 on the Canada highway 1, which is on Vancouver Island...and that island is accessible only by boat or plane. The ferry terminal is about 30 miles South-Southwest of Vancouver downtown, so I rode down and enjoyed pulling up just in time to board the next ferry without much wait (they leave every hour or so until nighttime). On the other end, it was still some distance to Victoria from the terminal on the island, and that took the rest of the afternoon to make it to town. I went by bus, since I'll ride directly back on Wednesday along the same route I would have taken today and didn't want to start my trip with an out-and-back, though in retrospect it might not have taken much more time to just ride than it took to wait for the bus, unpack my bike, repack my bike, and finally ride straaaight uphill from the bus stop a couple miles.

Regardless, today's ride on the mainland was quite pleasant! Nearly all very well signed bikeways and thoughtful MUP's (Multi-Use, off-road Paths; generally paved). Even the rural roads I picked largely based on the online "heatmaps" generated by other riders who track their rides had sharrows on the farming roads, and implored tractors and bikes to ride single file, and even the highway shoulder I had to get on for the last few miles was marked as a bike lane. I love riding in Vancouver, but I knew that already.

On the way out of town I rode on the Mosaic bikeway, which I vaguely recall from my first visit on a bike here; it was probably 15 years ago. I remember it specifically since I was (back then) riding at night, and while I rode, I had the only negative interaction on the road I can recall thus far in my visits to Canada which have usually involved biking: a frustrated motorist pulled around me (to the left) as I was turning left, yelled something unintelligible at me, and ended up throwing an apple at me from their car. I caught it, and perhaps ill-advisedly, later ate it. It was tasty and I did not get sick. Net gain! But nothing like that happened this time, it was smooth rolling all the way to the sea.

The MUP's were fabulous and mostly followed the light rail tracks; transit was everywhere as were well signed bike facilities. Wish more of America invested in non-car transport options to this degree :(

I recall the Alex Fraser bridge from my last ride in this direction, and while the sidewalk that hangs off the side of it is only slightly wider than the I-5 bridge sidewalks in Portland, it is way less claustrophobic (higher, but also no chance of banging your head on anything), and that (as well as EVERY OTHER MUP) seemed like it had just been swept clear of all debris moments before I arrived. This pattern would persist almost all the way across canada - even the dirt shoulders almost never had broken glass or shredded tires or other debris in them. I dunno how much effort the local transport agencies put into cleaning their bike paths and shoulders, but it sure felt like they were all very well loved! Indeed I saw at least a couple dozen workers doing construction and landscaping along the paths on this fine Monday morning. Contrast this with, say, the I-205 path in Portland on which I typicaly have to pay constant, close attention to the surface - to dodge all the broken glass and other trash. I think I'm not going to be riding on a whole lot of bike specific infra once I leave the metro area (until I get to Quebec where they reportedly have great infra!), but what's in the metro area is just so obviously well loved, even if I didn't see many (almost none) other trail users once I started crossing bridges to leave Vancouver proper into the suburbs. But the connections, signage, and even bus stops in the middle of nowhere were still excellent, comforting, and left me feeling connected to wherever I might need to go no matter what might happen (e.g. catastrophic bike failure or exhaustion in the middle of nowhere)!

While in the countryside, I rode past a random unexpected farm-to-table brewery that grows their own stuff and brews on site, so had a delightful lunch-snack of a very local beer and pretzel before continuing to the ferry.

Unfortunately, my cranks are creaking a lot again. I'd complained of this about a week and a half ago to the bike builder, and they tightened some reportedly very loose bolts in the drivetrain up and it went away, but it seems to be back. On the third hand, this is the most weight I've ever carried on this bike, so maybe that's just normal? Sure hope not since it's gonna be quite a constant companion if it persists. I'll see if I can provoke it without much baggage tonight, and if so, I'll drop by a bike shop in Victoria during my day off tomorrow.

Besides that, I have a little list of stuff I have to do, though I may not journal unless the day is noteworthy, I do intend to:

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You can email me: gently at gmail.com