Day 1

Thursday, June 24th
Vancouver to Victoria
82km

After months of preparation today was the first day of cycling across Canada.  Our first ride as a group of 13 was quite uncerimonious.  We rode about 1.5km to breakfast at the Student Union Building.  After that, we cycled about 26km to the Deas Island Tunnel, where we loaded our bikes onto a truck and drove through the tunnel.  (That's right...after less then 30km of cycling we had already stopped to eat and caught a ride on a truck.). The reason for the truck, of course, is that bikes weren't allowed to ride in the tunnel.

After 14 more km we took a ferry to Vancouver Island.  The ferry ride gave us some wonderful views of the many small Islands between the Tsawwassen ferry dock and the Swartz Bay ferry dock.  Beautiful, mountanous, ever-green covered Islands.

After the ferry, it was another 40km to the hostel in Victoria.  Paul and I seemed to repeatedly pull away from the pack on hills.  Some of the older people were less interested in charging up and racing down.  They all got a good laugh when Paul and I made a wrong turn and ended up speeding down a steep hill, only to turn around and climb back up it.

Thankfully my bike worked perfectly today.  Tom got 2 flat-tires and Roger got one too.
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Daniel Longo
CIBC Corporate Development
(416) 956-3831