Day 5

Monday, June 28th
Mission BC to Hope BC
96km

Last night was the first night in the tent.  All went well, although the tent and bedroll did not pack up nearly as small as they were originally.  Given our sine dhelf of truck storage,  I'm starting to think that I overpacked a bit.  Some of this overpacking is my own fault.  (E.g. The secound full-sized pillow.). Some of the overpacking was due to bad advice from past riders (e.g. The mechanics overalls...especially since mine are XXXL.)

Today's ride had its ups and downs.  The ups were the mountains, which we rode through all day.  The downs were my bike and me.  I fell.  Or, to be more accurate, I rode into a tree.  I'm ok though, luckily.

I was riding in a fast group of three.  Paul was in front.  Me in the middle.  Dave behind.  We were just building speed after a right hand turn when my front wheel hit a baseball soxed rock.  For a split second, my handelebars jerked from my hands and veered sharply to the right.  In the blink of an eye I had ridden off the road, across 2 feet of long grass, and into some overgrown bushes.  My bike barely missed a large tree, but the bottom of my right arm scrapped against it.

In the end, I had a large bruise and scrape on my arm, but was otherwise fine.  Not too bad at all.

My bike was not so lucky.  My brakes/shifters were severly mangled and my rear wheel was warped.  A group of us performed emergency bicycle maintenance on the side od the road to allow me to keep riding.  We got the brakes/shifters back to roughly the right position, and we yanked the wheel unt it was “true” enough to rotate arounf unobstructed.  That got me through the remaining 75km to Hope.  The biggest problem was that I had no rear brake because it would have rubbed against the wobbly wheel.  I managed alright though.  There was one 11 percent graded downhill where I put on a jacked and used it as a sail to slow my decent.  I only went 65km/h while everyone else went 75km/h.  I didn't have much choice really.

I took my bike into Hope's only bike shop.  They were really more of a mountain bike shop (along with fishing, tennis, golf, etc.) But then played with spoke tension to get the wheel closer to true.  There is no bike shop on tomorrow's ride, but there is one in Merritt, where we will ride on Wednesday.  With any luck, the bike will make it to Merritt where it can see a proper mechanic or potentially have its rear wheel replaced.

Lorne, one of the other riders, also had a crash today.  His wheels slipped on some loose gravel and he went down hard on his shoulder, hip and back.  He “limped” into camp and tool a taxi to the hospital.  They said it was a “deep muscle bruise”.  He' not sure if he will ride tomorrow. 

So, relative to him, I was lucky today.  And the mountains were wonderful...so its hard to be upset.
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Daniel Longo
CIBC Corporate Development
(416) 956-3831