Adventure!

It was a short day of small tough steep hills. We were all excited for a short day. We, intentionally this time, started a bit later than usual because it was only a 45 miles day. Boy... did we regret that decision.

The day got hot. Oh man did it get hot. I can't even explain how hot it was. For the first time this trip I was worried about our water supply, heat stroke, and atomic sunburn. It was a good thing we stopped at a market for an hour, or two?, to get food and water.

I was worried about water because the camelbacks that George and I had brought started to mold pretty bad. Disgusting too. George tossed his away. I kept mine and while waiting for the day to lose some heat, I decided to clean it. I put toilet paper into the tube, grabbed the bike pump, and shot out some disgusting moldy spit balls. It did the job and I was finally able to use my camelback again.

To make things even worse, I got a flat tire on the side of the highway. I couldn't patch it up so I asked Heidi for a spare tube. Everything fixed, we kept going.

We met Brenden on the road again near this place called Confusion Hill—the equivalent of The Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz. Then we went. We climbed some ridiculous hills and got to the park when we realized... where was Heidi. Then Brenden told us that she had gotten a flat around Confusion Hill. She had sent him off because she said she got everything to fix it. We waited for 20 minutes and she never showed up. George lost a of game of roshambo and he shed all of his packs and went back down the hills to help Heidi—remember it was a 6 mile ride back to Confusion Hill. I waited for an hour, no show. Then it was my turn. I couldn't leave George stuff so I just took all of his packs, strapped them onto my bike, which was already pretty loaded, and headed down the hill. About halfway I saw them coming up. Whew, good thing too because my legs were killing me with all the weight.

At the campsite, George and I went to go swim in the river. It was a nice change of pace and we slept well that night. We had to get up early to beat the heat and we also had a nice 2000 ft. mountain to climb first thing in the morning.

Where to now?

This must've been the worst day. No one got hurt but it was very close.

The day started really nice. The sun was out and beaming down. Then things went downhill from there. We had to take Highway 19, yeah bikes on the highway, all the way down to McDonald Provincial park. It was about a 65 mile ride.

Well here's the bad part. We hit a hugh stretch that was all downhill. At that moment I was just thinking, "Hey, my bike is pretty awesome. It's old and reliable." I hit about 35 MPH on the downhill and the highway started to turn to the right. There was a little sidewalk, barely able to fit our bikes, that I did not see. I went past it. But right before it, was this huge pothole. I was going to fast to slow down, I was too close to traffic to swerve out of the way, so I just hit that damn thing so hard my waterbottle flew out into the highway. Then I hear George hit that same one, his pump flew off his frame. I stopped a few feet after to see if the other two were okay. We recovered my waterbottle, it was on the shoulder, but as George was reaching for his pump a truck ran over it right in front of his eyes.

Hitting that pothole was scary. REALLY scary because if I didn't have that weight in the back of my bike, I'd have flipped over on the highway. The cars were already close, about a foot away from us sso I wouldn't have just broke my bike, I'd have broken my face. I'm still a bit shaken up by it so I'm just going to go slow on the downhills now :)

I thought everything was okay. I went ahead a bit. Everytime I made one revolution, my whole bike bounced. I saw that my front wheel had a big flat spot. It was unbearable to ride, but we still had a few miles to get to the next town. We found a bike shop thanks to a local cyclists and they said they couldn't fix it. I HAD to buy another one. And even worse, this shop didn't carry the wheel size my bike had because it was so old. I had to ride another three miles down the road on a broken bike to get another wheel which costs $170. The fellas at the shop were really nice but still, money money money. Then we went to Wendy's too celebrate.

We left and the next bad thing happenend. George found out that his wheel was starting to bound a bit too, but then I felt that even my back wheel was bouncing. That means I have to get a new back wheel too, which is even more expensive. The pothole that costs me $400.

The day got even worse. We decided to head to Chemainus to see the murals. Very hilly country but had some amazing views. I don't have any pictures because we were trying to get into camp before sunset. We didn't make it anyway because we had some faulty directions and signs that led us nowhere. We rode until 9:00PM, in freezing cold, to find the next campsite.

For the first time we had a fire going. We did not know why we didn't do this the earlier nights.