Up early again, most of us started day 4 with a large breakfast to fuel our forthcoming major climb. I chose the power breakfast, still wishing Canadian’s had ‘proper’ bacon – many do not know what they are missing out on!!! Plenty of coffee and orange juice also appeared to be essentials at breakfast – but then that is true for me every day.
The only slight problem with the large breakfast was that the first major climb of the day started almost immediately up the Anarchist mountain – a name, which if I weren’t an atheist, be all the more tempting to name antichrist. The climb was steep, but not really too bad, we were cycling at the perfect hour – not too hot at all. Simon demonstrated his climbing prowess again by breezing past me as did Jen to whom I remarked she made it look easy. She protested it wasn’t but I wasn’t so sure! Nonetheless there was a great view at a lookout before a rest stop right at the top.
Great view:
Just next to the above view was a long wire fence that I was told marked the US border.
Once reached the top there was a nice long stretch along winding rolling roads, only temporarily ruined by whoever maintains the highways. To fix cracks in the road they had decided to lay down this gravel stuff that eventually compacts and fills in the cracks. Gravel is as bad as ice for cyclists, we came across this section on a long downhill, you hit gravel at the wrong angle and it can send you flying. Quite fortunately not one person one sent flying although at it did damage the gear mechansism on at least one persons bike. The general consensous was that the word for the situation was asinine.
The rest of my morning was spent trying and failing to keep up with Jen and Simon who were off into the distance. Eventually I arrived at truck weighing stop just before Midway and met up with Simon, Jen, Heather and John and discovered that the weigh bridge was active and we could weigh ourselves and bikes to the nearest 10 kg. We thought it was closed but soon truck arrived on the scene wanting to get weighed – this was impressive sight as they weighed each axle on the truck and we and had some fun adding up the total weight and noting just how close some of the logging trucks were to their maximum load.
Weighing:
Following lunch the rest of the day was generally unremarkable for me. There was more climbing – again! We passed through a strange little village that looked like something out of a cowboy film. I did discover that my lack of time in the saddle of a road bike was a problem going downhill, this rather ruined the supposed reward of downhill at speed. As I hadn’t spent much time with a bike with drop handle bars, going down long hill sections was starting to hurt my shoulder muscles – this is not great as you want to be able to retain full control for breaking at these speeds. Also somewhat dispiriting as I was overtaken on the way into town down the hill.
One of the people who zoomed past me – again!! – was Jen who completely unknown to me had just had the first and only real accident of the ride, apparently hitting rear tyre of Simon’s bike which sent her flying. Very fortunately she was fine with only what David referred to as road rash on one arm. Surprisingly she seemed happy about it, I can see why now -I have been cycling for several years now. Nearly everyone I know who cycles has had some significant ‘off’ as they say in Formula 1. I haven’t, not once. I partly ascribe this to luck and partly to usually keeping a cool head in traffic. Jen’s happiness I stemmed from having had the first thrown off bike moment and survived without too much injury.
Grand Forks, however, turned out to be a very pleasant surprise. Our motel got my award for the best motel of the ride. Run by a British couple who had moved out to Vancouver, the owners were great and provided everything we needed – what a sharp contrast to another place later on in the ride. We ate in a Russian restaurant, which provided very handsome meals
After the ride we had one of our regular group meetings about the following day, planing where to stop for lunch. These were regularly chaired by Chris, who was really great at bringing the group together. This photo then is doubly ironic as it shows him writing the place for lunch on the side of the van for all to see clearly – he went right past the lunch stop the following day!!
Raising money for cystic fibrosis by cycling 