The layover in Centralasia served a twofold purpose: visiting friends, and giving Shannan's knees a day's rest. They'd been bothering her some, as they had at the start of her bike trip last summer, and she knew from experience that some down time was just what they needed to recover. We set off for Olympia in high spirits.
Just after passing through Olympia, however, they started hurting quite a bit again. We found a place to camp and stopped for the day, and the following morning she hitched a ride up the Olympic Peninsula to Quilcene, where her family has a cabin. This gave her another day's rest while I rode on to catch up to her. The ride was a spectacular one, the highway skirting the edge of Hood Canal much of the way, starfish and dungeness crabs viewable from the literal roadside. Once I arrived, we both took a relaxing day at the cabin together (aside from a brief forty-mile ride to Port Townsend for groceries), picking blackberries, cooking good food and canoeing around Lake Leland.
Lake Leland and the Olympic foothills from the cabin's porch.
When we started out the next day, it seemed clear relatively early on that Shannan's knee problems were not getting much better; despite frequent icing, ibuprofens, arnica salve and resting time, the pain was continuing to flare, and even begin to spread as her body tried to adjust to different riding postures. We had a scenic ride along the Olympic Discovery rails-to-trails to Port Angeles, where we stayed the night while discussing our options.
A trestle through an old-growth canopy on the Olympic Discovery Trail.
The following morning we caught the ferry to Victoria, to spend a slow day in town being ridiculously touristy, as is surely impossible to avoid in Victoria. To paraphrase a not-too-wise lump of clay, though, there was no use prevaricating around the bush; we both knew Shannan couldn't continue on without risking permanent damage to her knees, if such a thing hadn't happened already. She made the difficult decision of heading back home by ferry and bus, while I made the equally difficult decision of continuing on this trip by myself. This adventure had been weeks in the planning for us, and it was more than a little heartbreaking to see it change so drastically right on the doorstep of the new and unexplored.
Victorian Parliament.
But, as it turns out, Shannan was quite right in her decision. My first day's ride out of Victoria was probably the most physically demanding I've ever been through. I am giving my best attempt at following the Trans Canada Trail, a bicycle route that, in theory, goes from Victoria all the way to Newfoundland. (In practice, it is an underdeveloped work in progress, with frequent gaps and detours.) Much of the trail makes use of existing local trailways, abandoned railroad corridors, and logging roads; as such, my skinny road tires are often not optimally suited for the boulderific trails more appropriate for mountain bikes.
The TCT started promisingly enough, right from the ferry's gate, and onto the Galloping Goose bike trail, a splendid paved path out of town that has seniority over all other traffic. It soon ended, though, and then spit me onto the shoulder of Highway 1, hugging hellish hills for hours. The path eventually split off again, and connected to the vast network of Cowichlan Valley trails. Beautiful, flat, isolated trails ran through miles (er, kilometres) of rainforest and rivers. All was well once more, until the sudden appearance of the dreaded Kinsol Trestle. One of the highest railroad trestles in the world, the Kinsol currently touts derelict status, which is unfortunate, given that the TCT is routed right over it. Construction is currently in the works to have it open again by 2011, but in the meantime, I was rerouted through a poorly-marked, backbreaking 10-km bypass, which had me wedging my bike through logging fences, up brutal logging roads, and one particular 4-km stretch of footpath through the forest that was signed as "not recommended for bicycles", which proved to be quite the understatement. Most all of it had to be either walked, slid downhill, or "push-upped" steep embankments, which involved establishing a firm footing, pushing my bike and gear up about a foot, locking the brakes and then taking a step forward and doing it again, frequently sliding backward in the dirt. Three hours, one flat tire, and one comical spill over my handlebars and into the bushes, and I was finally through.
The soon-to-be resurrected Kinsol Trestle.
The road has since been its more forgiving combination of highway shoulders and backcountry roads, and tomorrow I'll be taking the ferry from Nanaimo to Vancouver. It's been a humbling experience here on the island so far, and more likely than not, a sign of what's to come. (I've even seen a bear already.) It's no longer the trip that I planned for, but I'm glad that I have experience with this kind of travel.
The path most simple
is rarely the easiest
but still we go on.
[P.S. I'll try and post some pictures in Vancouver, if I can find some access to a computer that doesn't come with a librarian breathing down my neck.]
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