This day’s ride had 2 legs.
Leg 1: Home -> Horseshoe Bay
Leg 1 took me from home to the Horseshoe Bay ferry terminal. It felt so weird to be biking through Stanley Park, and over the bridge with such a heavily laden bike. The last part of this leg included a lot of semi-punishing up and down along Marine Drive. The up was made a bit more challenging when I discovered that my derailleur cable was a bit out of adjustment, and wasn’t playing nicely in the lower/bigger/easier gears.
I thought about how best to deal with this. After careful consideration of all my options, I decided to make a single arbitrary turn to the barrel adjuster at the shifter while I was riding. In my defence, I’d forgot to pack my repair stand on this trip.
As fate would have it my low/big/easy gears were now stable. As an added bonus, the high/small/difficult gears also worked. Sadly the top two shifter slots both put the chain in the highest gear. I’m only slightly embarrassed to admit I still haven’t fixed this. Shifter barrel adjustments hurt my brain now.
I hadn’t checked the ferry schedule, but apparently I got to Horseshoe Bay a few minutes before the 11:25 was due to depart. I made it on, but had to load after all the cars. This meant I either needed to park my bike at the back (and get off last) or wind my way past all the parked cars to get my bike up to the front, to facilitate rapid debarkation.
After yet more careful consideration, I decided to work my way to the front. The good news is I didn’t scrape any car or ferry paint along the way. The bad news is I tweaked my back, I think lifting my (loaded) front wheel up over somebody’s rear view mirror. The pain of this tweak stayed with me for the rest of the trip, but (and this sounds too good to be true) it felt fine while I was riding.
Leg 2: Departure Bay -> Rathtrevor Provincial Park
The first part of leg 2 was yucky riding through northern Nanaimo. Lots of traffic and malls and traffic lights. At times it felt like an unending stream of right turn lanes that needed to be navigated, worrying about right turners coming barrelling up behind me. Once out of the city the riding got simpler. For the final third I was able to travel on a (very hilly!) back road.
To say it felt good to arrive at Rathtrevor would definitely be an understatement. My bike had behaved wonderfully, my legs didn’t hurt, I hadn’t forgot any stove or tent parts. I celebrated with a quick dip in the ocean, an early dinner, and then I wandered around the walk in area and met some of my fellow campers.
There was
- a Dutch couple who had been living in the UK (mostly Scotland) for the past 20 years
- a Victoria couple on bikes that were heading up to Hornby tomorrow
- a French couple who had taken 3 years off to cycle ‘around the world.’ For North America, they landed in Whitehorse and are working their way to Argentina. When I saw them they were doing a side ‘loop’ on Vancouver Island and planning on getting to Courtney tomorrow.
If I had it to do over again, I regret not accepting the offer of a Scotch Whiskey night cap from the Dutch/Scottish couple.
Go to Day 2