Day 6: Trail to “We don’t want your type here” Creston

During a bike ride like this I think everyone has bad days.  I think probably today was that for me.  It started off very well indeed, Kate’s final act was to persuade the owners of the restaurant and pub where we ate last night to open especially for us in the morning and provide breakfast – and they did a great job of this.

Everything went well initially with a small bit of climbing and I saw – unusually for me – some wildlife with a deer crossing the road right in front of me, it had wisely shot across the road but only when I got nearer did I realise it had managed to leave it’s children behind as it stood atop the rock face at the other side of the busy road.  I decided not stick around to see the conclusion to that and head off down the road.

This morning I did probably the stupidest thing anyone did on the ride when my speedometer stopped working.  This functions by a small magnet mounted on the wheel rotating past a sensor mounted on the inside of the front fork.  If the speedo stops it is usually because one of these has come loose.  So I stopped and adjusted the magnet and carried on when it quickly stopped stopped working again, so I slowed down and reached down to move the sensor inwards a fraction.  Figuring I could do this safely without stopping it was something of a surprise when I caught my middle finger in the moving spokes of the wheel.  It was quickly obvious this was not a serious injury, but it so easily could have been worse and I felt somewhat guilty as had it been worse I would not wanted to have caused an unecessary hospital trip to add to the logistics burden of the ride!

So I arrived at lunch prior to our big climb of the day.  Lunch was provided by Daniella who had seamlessly taken over Kate’s role in the white support van – the other van being driven by Faye, who I rarely saw during the day because she usually had the back of the pack to keep an eye on.  Lunch was strategically positioned before the climb to the highest paved road that is open year round in Canada. 

Lunch (right to left: Zach, Heather, Daniella, Rebecca and Jon):

After lunch I set off alone some time behind John and Heather to climb this mountain.  This was a mistake – the road went on and on and on.  Instead of the swtich backs I had become used to I could see it heading off uphill into the distance, and just when you think you be near you’d round a corner and find more.  Non of this was aided by the ridiculous attraction that insects seem to have to me, I was by far the worse sufferer of this on the ride and had been covering myself in insect repellent.  By the time I finally got to the top I was not in the best of moods, not least as I knew I had to descend a long way and that meant the neck ache.

The long ascent – we all cycled all the way up that valley:

The top!

Again following the steep ascent was a steep descent, again the shoulder muscles ached, anywonder it went on and on for about 30 km.  I should have been able to enjoy this!!!!

By the time I got onto the flat it was getting hot and humid and I arrived in Creston with a pretty bad headache, caused maybe by the humidty or spending most of the day doing this alone or the neck muscles or even the fumes from all the insect repellent or most likely all those things!!!

Just to illustrate the magnitude of this day check out the gradient profile on the gearup4cf website:

Also not helping my mood was the attitude of the motel owners at what was going to be our motel for the night, which ultimately led to us all being thrown out of their motel.  I arrived to be told my bike was not going to be allowed in the room and had to be left outside, apparently they had had problems with cyclists before.  I said that I highly doubted my fellow riders would want to do that.  I wondered how much of the problem was the owners attitude after I then received a lecture on how to open the door with the key.  The next riders to arrive were non too amused by this either.  Before we knew it the owners had decided find us alternative accommodation at the neighbouring motel – they announced this to another one of us – also in no mood for this – by saying we’d be glad to know they’d found us somewhere else because “we don’t want your type here”

Well that was it, that lightened my mood instantly.  What a thing to say! 

The mind boggled as to what sort of type would be acceptable to them.  On this ride were at least 6 people entitled to call themselves Dr, a lawyer, a communications director, a web consultant, several people who run their own companies and more.   What more could we possibly do?  And why were we doing this?  To raise money for a important cause.  It then transpired that they probably were probably expecting bikers – motor bikers – and they would have been much more acceptable!!!  Amazing.

Our forced relocation turned out to be a benefit as the new place looked considerably nicer and many of us got separate rooms because of the arrangement of the place.  There must have been some biker thing going on because a further highlight (if that is the right word) was David’s attempt to test out some bikers staying at our motel by laying out his freshly laundered clothes on one of their bikes – which resulted in threats to his personal safety that you can read about here. 

The washing, incidentally, had been very kindly done by Rebecca, a fellow CF researcher from Calgary.  I didn’t think she’d remembered, though I do remember, meeting her once before at an American Society for Microbiology conference in New Orleans at her poster, in the year before the hurricane struck, and so another highlight of this trip was getting to know her a bit and allowing me to induldge in science talk from time to time. 

Day 5: Grand Forks – Trail

Today started with a trip back to the Russian restaurant for a handsome breakfast, only dissapointed by there only being beef and not pork sausages! 

The previous evening I’d listened to some advice on bike cleaning and had thoroughly cleaned my bike.  On long rides all the cogs and parts of the gear system benefit greatly from a good cleaning, dirt build up on these is not good for clean shifting of the gears and general performance of the bike.  Some would go as far as taking their back wheels off to give the cogs a good brushing out.  So all this done I felt good to go.

By now I was starting to get into a familiar pattern in terms of people I would ride with.  The day started with some pleasant flat riding but after riding alongside a nice like for a short while the climbing began again.  Today involved a long climb to the top of a 1500 mtere summit.  By now it had become very clear I did not have the outright pace of at least 4 other riders on the ride when it came to hill climbing.  That said I did manage to keep at the front of the pack and climbed the most part of the first hill with John and Heather.  Hard work as many of these hills were, the effort was often rewarded with amazing views into huge tree lined valleys.  This was a good example and here are my climbing partners standing part the way up the climb.

Here I discovered that there is a disadvantage to having an altimeter – you have to know what the final height is if you are aiming at it.  We knew we had a 1,000 meter climb this morning and when John said we were at 900m I thought it was not far to go, failing to realise we had started at 500m.  So I slightly faded towards the top of the mountain.  I didn’t – and indeed didn’t anywhere on the ride experience what riders call a bonk (yes, yes I was amused too, but either Canadian’s have not heard of the use of this word in Britain or they posses an amazing capacity to say it without a hint of amusement).  A bonk on a bike ride is when you completely run out of energy and cannot face going on.

I knew also we had some distance to go when we met David coming the other way in the van – who today was filling the role of a support person instead of a rider as today Kate was leaving us – informing us it was steep ahead.  Nonetheless the rest of the morning was uneventful and I made sure I filled up on water – a good rule on rides is to fill the water bottles at every opportunity, just in case and the support guys were doing a fantastic job in supplying water and Gatorade and other drinks to us.

Before I started cycling I always used to be perplexed by sports drinks.  What is wrong with just water? Well I can tell you – on it’s own water is not enough, not enough at all!  I first started using Gatorade a year or so ago when after longish rides my muscles would feel cramped.  After one bad bout of night cramp in my calf muscle (this is where you wake up in the night in agony from a cramping muscle) that left me limping the day after I started using sports drinks.  Others can provide a much more scientific explanation but when you exercise a lot your body sweats out a lot of electrolytes like sodium, potassium and calcium that your muscles need.  There is nowhere near enough of that in water so supplemented drinks are required.  I’ve not had any problems with cramp since.  Now I’m looking to some of the more professional drinks that also help supply lots of calories and things to keep you going on long rides – and thus avoid a bonk!!!

Lunch was at the intersection of Highway 3 and 3B, where we turned off to head towards Trail.  Yet more climbing followed, but this was a breeze fueled by lunch (a wrap stuffed with meet and salad).  Here I met Chris and Alkarim and we cycled off together heading towards the summit where upon I got my first flat of the ride.  Very fortunately for me, but not for them, these guys had gone passed the lunch stop.  So 10 seconds after I’d stopped with my flat David turned up in the van to offer food and drink and was then able to show me the way when it comes to changing road bike tyres.  I have changed many flats before, but I was caught out by just how hard the tyres are to get off compared to a hybrid bike.

The rest of the day was a fast down hill – VERY fast, with upto 10% gradients.  I decided to take it easy down these with my neck muscles aching yet again.  Our Motel for that evening was just near the bottom of one of these hills.  Our hosts were yet again very accommodating – providing flexibility on the rooms and plenty of ice for our beer cooler. 

David arriving, at speed following the long downhill, in Trail:

Dinner was at a pub just over the road and was our opportunity to bid farewell to Kate one of our support van drivers who had done a fantastic job organising us and supporting us throughout the ride so far.  On day 2 I had pulled up to the van having been thinking about drinking a can of coke for the last 15 miles or so – up hill.  Kate asked me what I wanted and I said that what I would really like was a coke and to my pleasant surprise she disappeared into the van and produced one (I didn’t think it would be something professional riders would admit to having!).  Kate was also one of several people on the ride who has a child with CF and for me as a research scientist it was great to be able to talk to these guys and get their perspective, one is very cut off from this in the lab.

Cheers Kate: