Sandi and Lewis' ride across Canada

Day 10 Canyon Creek to Golden Monday July 3, 2006 Distance 116 km Temperature 36 degrees Today was another tough one; I thought I could be limited to only one psychological toughie per week, but says who? When we started the ride climbing this morning, I knew I was in for a killer ride, since my legs felt like two cement blocks attached to my body and did not want to cooperate with the day’s planned activities, which included a lot of climbing since we’re now in the mountains around Roger’s Pass. Try as I might, I could not get them to go; my energy was just not there, as my leg engines lay dormant-the past few days have included a lot of climbing (measured on someone’s altimeter between 900 and 1350 meters per day,) and my poor little legs haven’t had time to recover, so are quite sore. So when we set out this morning, they said, “You’ve got to be kidding me, we ‘aint doing this again, no way-leave us alone.” What to do when you’re setting out for a 115 km ride, mostly uphill into the...

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 Tues...

Friday June 30, 2006 Day 7-Merritt to Pritchard Temperature: 34 degrees and 50 degrees measured en route Distance: 144 km Another hot one today, with a ride that included the dreaded and much talked-about within the group- 4km climb. There are two groups doing the Tour Du Canada this summer, and we’re traveling a day apart from each other, ours being the second group. Yesterday was a rest day, where the groups overlapped at the camp site in Merritt; the other group was talking about taking a short cut to Pritchard today that would essentially eliminate the 4 km climb, plus take 10km off the route, and remove going to Kamloops. Of course once our group caught wind of this conversation, people immediately jumped at the chance to skip the hill, as hills have taken on the persona of the bogey-man for many people (I’ll admit, myself included.) We have been regaled with stories of legendary hill climbs that we will come across during our trans-Canada ride; one woman from Newfoundland was so ...