Holy moly! What a @$%^ day!

View from Chukanut

So here's the thing about bicycle touring: you can have both the absolutely best day AND worst day ever, all at the same time. The way it works is this: nobody transports you to the start of a spectacularly scenic route or challenging climb. Nobody picks you up and whisks you away to your hotel when the road surface deteriorates, or you hit huge traffic, or you have to cross a bridge riding on the sidewalk against traffic going 60 mph. You handle all that crap on your own.  It's actually part of the appeal of touring; solving those problems and getting where you need to be is a source a great satisfaction and accomplishment. Doing it yourself is what touring is all about, after all. But . . . some days you can get just a little too much of all that.

Mt Baker, we think

Thus, we began our day with a sweet ride through the Skagit Valley. We had an incredible ride up and over Chukanut to Bellingham. We enjoyed coffee and the best pastries I have had (outside of France) in the cutest little coffee shop right there on the main drag. We passed through one charming, vibrant little coastal town after another. We even stopped for fresh cherries at the last intersection before the border. The weather was fine, winds were favorable. We were making good time and this day, like yesterday, was on track to be one of the great days on a bike you remember forever.

One of touring's sweet rewards

And then, following our crossing into Canada, we began a four hour descent through the cycling world's seven levels of hell, and the day became one of those you will always remember, but for different reasons. First, we lost our guidance system (map got funky due to our data plan issues); got lost (multiple times); got hangry (I told Roger I had to stop to eat something but it was really about him); got hot (nothing to do about that but dump water on ourselves).

Your route might be off-road

 Traffic was CRAZY (we were in city driving at rush hour for 35 miles); we had a deadline (we were planning to meet an old fried for dinner); and THERE ARE HILLS EVERYWHERE (oh Lord, not another one to climb!)

I mean, with 7+ hours in the saddle, and within 10 km of the end, you do not want to face a 10% grade on a 200 foot climb. If you are riding in the Tour de France, I understand that comes with the job. But c'mon - is there no way around this hill? Apparently not. Vancouver is built on the rocky hills and ridges left by the glaciers.  It's all up and down.

Photo does NOT do it justice. We walked this one.

By the way, did I mention that we also had to contend with the data conversion from meters to miles? Because of course, once we were able to get a map and route refresh (thank God for McDonald's and their universal WiFi system!), all the route keys were in kilometers. But my Garmin was running miles, so I had to do the math to figure where our next turn would be. If we missed something and got off course, it tried to recalculate the route, which it couldn't seem to do because of the data plan, and thus everything froze up, and we had to find another McDonald's. (Fortunately there seems to be one every few miles up here.)

We did at last make it in to our hotel, after 88.3 miles and about 7 1/2 hours. That's more than we thought it would be, and way harder than we'd anticipated. Our dinner with Elliott and his daughter was great, and we were happy to have a nice bed to sleep in. Most importantly, we knew that we had nothing to do the next day! Roger said, "I don't know how I can ride that bike in another day!" But of course we will. A day spent resting and refueling, and we'll be fine.

Done!

Mount Vernon to North Vancouver, 88.3 miles

3647 feet climbing, 11.7 mph