Day 9
Pritchard to Canyon Creek
Sunday July 2, 2006
Distance 128km
Temperature 36 degrees

“Mercury is in retrograde,” said my fellow TDC cyclist, looking at me expectedly, waiting for me to respond appropriately.
I returned her gaze with a blank one, “What?”
She said it again, perhaps thinking by repeating it I would understand the second time around, “Mercury is in retrograde,” she stated again.
My brain furiously processed this bit of information, clicking through its memory bank trying to locate any semblance of understanding, much like Windows performs a search, with the little magnifying glass moving in circles, and then, “search results: search is complete, there are no matches for this criteria.”
She may as well have said something like, “Uncle Jellyfish is a spoon-master.”

“I have no idea what that means,” I said to her, not sure if I should feel foolish for not knowing what it meant when it was said in the same one would ask someone to pass the salt.
“Oh, it means that on Tuesday there will be lots of accidents, flat tires, you know, that sort of thing….” she reported, in total seriousness.
I looked closely at her face, waiting to see if she’d follow it up with a wink, or smile. Nothing happened.
“Oh, then I guess we’ll have to be really careful, is there anything one can do to, um, fortify oneself against this retrogradeness of Mercury?” I asked, growing quite concerned all of a sudden.
“No, not really, if it’s going to happen, then it’s going to happen.”

And so went the typical kind of conversation that goes on around here-never a dull moment.
But, perhaps there is something to this Mercury in retrograde-thing, whatever it is, as today we had three flats (including Ms. Mercury-in-retrogade) and two other people broke spokes, which is quite rare.
Plus another member of the French contingent went down with an unknown bug, and did not ride today-last week another Frenchie went down with the bug-we’re all hoping it’s a French only bug, and will not cross over the lingual divide.

People are succumbing to all kinds of injuries, and we’re barely a week into the ride.
Achilles is a popular injury, followed closely by knees. Other irritations include rashes (sun, bugs, saddle) and your garden variety sun burn.

I didn’t write yesterday as I was too pooched after the ride; I’d had a tough day psychologically; I think the full reality of the trip hit me, exacerbated by the heat and hills which just wound up and sucker punched me.
I knew I would have some of these days, but wasn’t expecting it so quickly.
It wasn’t too bad, but I just wanted to get the ride done, but it was a ride that kept going and going.

The terrain is amazing in that it changes daily, as if we were on a daily slide show, which clicks to a new ‘page’ as we go along.
Yesterday the ride took us along these very pretty lakes, with rolling terrain.

We ended up in Salmon Arm; I’d always wondered what a Salmon Arm was, it always sounded so exotic.
Well, those expectations have been extinguished and I will leave it at that in case any proud citizen of SA is reading this, doubtful as that is.
We did get to watch some dragon boat racing going on, since it was Canada Day; this was actually fun.
I also saw my first Tim Horton’s; I never expected to be as excited as I was, and was so much so that I had Lewis take my picture in front of it.
My P B and J sandwich went untouched that lunch.
Speaking of which, I am coming to the end of my tolerance for them, especially when they are all mushy and have cooked in my saddle trunk, stewed in with a banana in the sweltering heat.

We left Salmon Arm, ascending a long steep hill to take us out of the valley, taking us right into the midday sun- the heat was something else, I felt like someone was holding a massive hair dryer to my entire body.
Eventually after what seemed like an eternity, we saw signs for the much anticipated Okanogan Valley; we had a fantastic descent into the valley, taking in the view of lush green fields and pastures, which sprouted just about everything under the sun.
We later learned that the Okanogan is not naturally green, but is artificially irrigated.
There were massive industrial type sprinklers which spanned great lengths in their reach, creating an amazing visual of the valley through the fine water spray.

Since it was Canada day, we had cake for desert, which went down a treat.
As further Canada day celebrations we were all woken up by some Canada Day enthusiasts at 1:30 in the morning, lighting fireworks (but not the fun kind, the kind that sound like the artillery.)
Had I known which tent was theirs I would have banged some pots and pans outside to joyously ring in the first day after Canada Day.

Today’s ride was absolutely gorgeous, as we’ve now entered the quintessential BC that all the Ozzies and the Brit have been expecting, having seen the landscape popularized by BC tourism, The Littlest Hobo, and the Beach Combers.
To be honest we’ve all been in shock at the BC that we’ve been in for many days, as it could be the Kalahari for all we knew-dry, desert like, and rocky.

We went by the place where the last spike was driven into the cross Canada railroad, a fantastic waterfall, and visited an old growth cedar forest, where we dipped our hot little feet into an icy stream (I dunked my head as well, as I was sweltering.)
For much of the earlier part of the day we rode beside the mountain, where we would periodically pass by these mountain streams, and got to enjoy the brief cooling effect that they had-how glorious it felt in the heat.

It seems for much of the ride we’re in site of, or ear shot of trains; I love when we’re in the canyons and can hear the seemingly ghostly echo of the whistle as it goes along.
We had lunch in Revelstoke, a tiny little skiing town that must be really bored in the summer.
As we came into town, a train was pulling in right beside us; Lewis was behind John and me, and we didn’t see him do the international, “blow your horn,” sign.
The conductor gave the whistle a good blow and John and I almost jumped right off our bikes-it was ear splittingly loud.
Lewis will have to watch himself, as both John and I wanted to poke a stick in his spokes for that one.

We have seen the Rockies in the distance for a while, and they have slowly been getting closer-again the snow capped mountains teasing us with the promise of cooler air.
For the first time since we started we got to enjoy some cloud cover near the end of the ride, and I have just heard that we may have showers in the next couple of days-I think that may be quite a welcome to ride in the cool for a change, as the temperature has been measuring 46-50 degrees on course by a couple of people with bike mounted thermometers.

Our camp site is gorgeous; we’re beside a ski hill, which is now densely thick with the typical BC trees seen in all the movies and postcards (pines?)
We’re in bear country now, and have been repeatedly warned not to take any food or toothpaste into our tents.
Apparently bears have a thing for dental hygiene- at least they’ll have fresh breath when they eat you, ok, off to bed.
One more day until rest day!