In June 2004 I set off across Canada on my bicycle. Or at least I'd planned to cross Canada. It didn't work out, mostly because of the weather, but I did have a great ride.

These pages are an account of that trip, as told through travelogs I sent to friends. I hope you enjoy the ride!

    Fasten your seatbelts, this one's wild and wooly!
    Back in Lake Louise, when I wasn't trolling the campground for underwear thieves (some criminals made off with a Dutch couple's new thermals and raided the camp's bear lockers) I busied myself on the beach, where I met up with beach Katy, a lovely young Quebecker journalism student, who graced the Bow River beach for several days in her white bikini (Elvis would have loved her).
    One year from her degree in journalism, I turned young Katy onto Mathew Coon Come, spokesperson for the Cree and Inuit in Quebec, who made a deal, in the late 1980s, with the US Congress, for protection of Cree and Inuit lands, which is most of the province of Quebec, in the event of Quebec's separation from Canada. This is a story that, if it ever gets out in Quebec, will likely put an end to all talk of separation and make young Katy's career.

    Sidebar: Quebec has never settled its native claims nor have treaties been signed in the past. In the begining Quebec was granted only the land 20 miles on either side of the St. Lawrence River. All the remainder of the land was, quite simply, stolen. World courts, and Canadian courts as well, have recognized the Cree and Inuit have legitimate claims over the remainder of the province. This land contains over 90 per cent of Quebec's natural resources, including hydro, gas, wood, water, maple sugar and mining. Coon Come's deal with the US Congress is that, in the event of Quebec separation, the Cree and Inuit will apply to the Canadian Federal Government for protection of its claimed lands (ie. . . most of Quebec). If the Canadian Government fails to protect the claimed land, and keep it out of the  separated Quebec, then the US Congress has signed a promise that it will step in and protect those lands. For all practical purposes, it means a separated Quebec would have no resources, and thus no economy, and would be easy pickin's for the US expansionists. This story has been totally ignored, even smothered, in Quebec. If Katy is a good as I think she might be, and is able to get the story out through the student news networks in Quebec, we'll all be hearing from her.

    Anyway, that's not my story. In between hanging out with Katy and sending you all long excerpts from my journals, I came upon another pair of Dutch cyclists, Kees (Case) and Marjon (Marion) who were about to ride their bicycles over the Rogers Pass, a decrepit steep tunnelled, snowshedded, big truck inundated, outdated, steep mess of a construction zone that kills about 10 cyclists a year.
    With all the Merlin I had at my command, I convinced them to go south instead, down through Kootenay National Park, Radium Hot Springs, Cranbrook, Nelson and then onto the Kettle Valley Railway, which was their destination. I met these folks outside the bakery in the village mall, that is all there is of a village in Louise. And when I'd convinced them to take a different route, and showed it to them on the map, then directed them to the gates of local campsite, I left them.
    Then, minutes later, I'm busy getting my dinner ready and who shows up in the campsite right next to mine but this same Dutch couple. Well, we all kind of looked at each other and decided, then and there, the next day we would cohabitate, then maybe ride on together, which is the way of the road.
    Anyway, the next day we did move in, then after going our separate ways, wound up on the beach with the effervescent Katy, plannning dinner. At dinner, which unfortunately did not include Katy, we planned the next day's getaway.
    All week I'd been thinking there was somebody coming. Someone, or two, I was supposed to wait for. When I met Kees and Marjon, I knew it was them. Sweet people, nice people, very intelligent, but not well schooled in Canadian backwoods lore.
    In Holland, it turns out, people pay good bucks to go to "workshops" where cyclists and hikers talk about cycling and hiking in Canada. These workshops seem designed to do two things. One is to interest the Dutch in crossing the ocean and spending their money having a back country experience. The other objective, it seems, is to make them very scared of bears! I've never met a Dutch, or German for that matter, cyclist who did not express real concerns about bears.
    Fact is: Your chances of ever seeing a bear are slim, close encounters are extremely rare, and most of those end with the bear running off before your brain even has time to register the fact it's there! (I've ridden, one morning in Nakusp, through hundreds of steaming hot bear scats, and not seen one single bear -- then again, I am apparently half blind, which also explains some of my grammar and spelling).
    Anyway, these poor folks get over here expecting to run right into a bear the moment they step on the pedal of their "moie fiets", that Dutch for "nice bikes." The first thing most of them purchase is a bear bell and a can of pepper spray, which is no longer called bear replellant because some relative of George Bush's, while visiting Banff, mistook the stuff for a spray-on lotion, like its cousin mosquito repellant.
    While the Dutch are substantially brighter than that, they still arrive with an exagerated idea of the danger posed by wild beasts, and for that matter, wild Canadians!
    Convinced to change direction, Kees and Marjon wanted some tuteledge in simple back country ethics and practices, like how to properly deal with food, how to light a fire, where to camp, what to cook, how to tie knots, most of the stuff we Canuckleheads learn before we've completed teething.
    For my part, I was waiting for company. The grind out over the prairie and into the rock had been a solitary sojourn. Company would be great. I could rant poetry, display my single burner culinary magic, teach backcountry ethics, show off my Canadian wilderness man persona, and have someone to talk to now and then. It  was a match made in the Rockies!
    It also presented a challenge for doddling old me. These characters were a good 20 years younger and liked to do 80 K a day. Could I keep up? We'd find out soon enough.
    They blasted off a couple hours before I climbed up the light hill onto Highway 1A, heading east. It was a good thing too, because if they'd witnessed my evil twin that morning I'm quite sure they would have ditched me quick. I don't know if it was the brown sugar I put on my porridge (which I never ever do because the shite makes me crash), or the fact I hadn't ridden in nine days, or the heat, or bloody stupid lead-footed drivers taking the scenic route, but I was one foul-mouthed SOB that morning, despite being internally eager to roll.

    I grunted and screamed my way up the hills, bellowing at the traffic, "do you think you're driving fast enough?" while they raced 100 K an hour through the 60 K zones. So loud and rude was I that I took several one finger salutes out the side windows of their SUVs. Even worse, when topping a hill, and  hearing some beater pickup come up behind me all of a sudden, and seeing an uncoming Urban Assault Vehicle straddling the center lane, I made a wild motion with my left hand for the truck to slow down. When he blew by me, forcing both me and the badly driven UAV to our repective shoulders, I let out a fearsome barrage.
    The guy in the pickup slammed on the brakes, jumped out of the truck, and tried to block my path as I sped around him!
    "You got a problem," he yelled, with all the force his massive nearly three meter frame could muster. (Here's little me looking up at Paul Bunyan from Blu's uncomfortable saddle thinking, if this bloke gets his hands on me I'm a gonner).
    "Yeah," I replied.
    "Speed limit's 60! You were doin' at least a hundred. That makes you an ASSHOLE!" I hollered, once I was relatively certain I'd escaped his clutches.
    Speeding off, I began to relax, then once again I heard his pickup racing behind me. He pulled out into the center lane, and started yelling though the passenger window.
    Up ahead I could see another oncoming UAV, you know the beasts, piggy back to a SUV, carrying all the stuff they should have left at home.
    Then I saw a highway sign, "Baker Creek Chalets, 400M Ahead." I looked at the driver, whose passenger window was within grabbing distance as we rolled along side by side at about 15K an hour, while the oncoming AUV pulled towards the shoulder.
    "Man, if you don't get out of here now I'll call your plates into the RCMP!"
    Braking, I read his plates and yelled, "FAH 188 Alberta."
    He sped off and was not seen again.
    After a break by the creek I calmed down and moved on. An hour later I arrived at Castle Junction where I encountered a troupe of eight American cyclists with "John Kerry" stickers on their panniers. Seeing this, and interpreting it as an invite to comment, I rode up and, pointing at the stickers andasked; "Are you aware this man intends to stay in Iraq, and intends to get more countries involved?"
    Two of the eight cyclists disappeared immediately. Of the remaining six, only two acknowledged my question. Both were women. We talked a few minutes. In the end their only argument was 'he's better than Bush.' They asked what I thought they should do. First I suggested voting for someone right off the radar. They said they'd done that last time, for Nader, and look what happened. So I tried to suggest they should write to Kerry and demand he come out against the war all together. This did not seem to interest them much, and for the remainder of the day, where we would pass frequently and stay in the same campground, they avoided me.
    Once past Castle Junction, the weather, which had been rather nice, got a little rude, which it always does at Storm Mountain.
    Where the sun had been shining that morning a fierce head wind came up sporting a driving rain. To augment it all, the road, which I expected to be a gentle grade, took on a six percent incline. Too boot, people were turning off into the Storm Mountain Lodge, without regard for not-so-little me and my rain drenched BoB. Those that weren't turning off, were speeding up for the hill. Again I was cursing and cussing, which brought many of the lodge's clients to the windows to see why some maniac was down on the road yelling: "SLOW DOWN YOU BASTARDS!!!"
    Made the hill and felt bad because it wasn't as bad as my eyes and legs thought it was going to be. Felt worse as I began the descent into the Marble Canyon area, which burned in one of the big fires of the last few years. It was devestating scene. Miles and miles of mountainside blackened and scarred, like an abandoned grave yard with its ghosts still weeping in the wind and grey mists, settling as the rain ebbed and the thunder dulled. Coasting downhill, I rode my brake, unable to let myself speed through the incredible swath of destruction. The trees still stand, but like skeletons.
    Seedlings, slowly regenerate, barely visible on the blackened forest floor. The wind was mindless, switching every which way with no flora to hold it. The ghostly echo of thunder, and distant flashes of lightning, adding drama to the eery deafness of the place. No birds sang, as they once might have after a summer rain. And oddly, the only colour, little swarms of butterflies, alighting as I rode by them.
    That night Kees, Marjon and I camped at the Marble Canyon campground. I showed them how to build a fire and we cooked up a pasta dinner in a cookhouse, while visiting with some different American cyclists, who expressed to me the naive belief that Bush would be defeated in a landslide.
    They were from Florida, and I'd begun our conversation by asking if they were going to rig the election down there again! Later on, much to my surprise, they thanked me for talking politics with them. "Everyone seems to be afraid to talk to us about Bush," one told me.

    There, in that eeryily strange place, a patch of green amid the burns, surrounded by the chemical redness of left over fire retardant, I had a good sleep. In the morning, Kees, Marjon and I agreed to meet later at MacLeod Meadows, on the BC side of the border, in Kootenay National Park. They packed up early and were gone an hour ahead of me.
    It was a beautiful downhill ride. Once past the burn, the forest was green, opening in places on panoramas of the Kootenay River. The 70 K seemed to go by in a whisper. I doddled, sat by the river, took my shirt off in the sun, coasted, and by mid-afternoon pulled into MacLeod.
    That night Kees built the fire in our lovely little campsite right on the river, and I gave the pair a lesson in proper treeing of food, teaching them to use two ropes to hoist the food up between trees, well away from any branches or tree trunks.
    Then we sat down and cooked up a marvellous dinner of rice and beans.
    Gorgeous it was, but we'd just sat down to eat when a great thunderclap opened the sky.
 .
     "What are we going to do now?" asked Marjon, as the first droplets hit.
    "We'll put up a tarp," I said, rather nonchalantly as I reached for my BoB and pulled one out.
     Getting Kees to give me a hand we found ourselves, within minutes, safely under our makeshift roof, feeling rather pleased, when the rain turned to peanut-sized hail. For a good half hour the hail blasted us, raining down tree branches and inundating the entire landscape with little white balls.
     The tarp flapped inches above our heads, letting the water eventually seep through onto our dinner plates. And all the while we sat there, eating, with big grins on our faces, not talking, except for the occasional ourburst of "holy shit" or a Dutch translation of such, as the storm awed and amazed us, only to eventually wimp out into a light rain, more mist, and an oddly unsettling calm.
     "Welcome to the Rockies," I told them.
    That clear bright morning, upon seeing some redness in the sky, I'd warned them rain would come by day's end. They hadn't believed me. Now they were asking, "Will, how did you know it was going to rain."
     "I've been the road 61 days," I answered, "There's been rain 48 of those days. I can smell the stuff."
     The next morning we built a big fire to dry our possessions. The rain held up and we were able to move fairly early. We knew it was going to be a difficult day. Even Kees and Marjon could smell the rain. We also knew there was a good climb ahead of us. The unmarked and unheralded Sinclair Pass, not the highest in the Rockies, but certainly one of the steepest.
     Marjon blew her second front tire in as many days as they were leaving. This allowed me to catch up, and we rode in fairly close formation, a couple K apart, until we neared the summit at Olive Lake, a lovely little emerald pond surrounded by wild raspberry bushes.
     Marjon and Kees, sped ahead, begining the decline into Sinclair Canyon and Radium Hot Springs. I was not so fast. Just a 100 K short of the lake a big blower came up, hail began again to pound, and I was forced off Blu by a good 20 K headwind.
    Walking Blu, for the first time since Elk Pass back in early July, I made my way to a picnic cook shack by Olive Lake. There, after clapping my hands and making lots of noise to ward off any wildlife, I dug into the wild raspberries, gorging myself, and getting soaking wet in the process.
     Half an hour later the wind ebbed but the rain kept falling. Everywhere the sky was dark. I knew I had no choice but to push on through. I'd looked forward to this stretch, down between the red canyon walls to the hot springs and the wide Columbia Valley. But my vision hadn't included rain, or the near absence of any shoulder on the road, or near zero visibility (though I could feel the canyon walls I could barely see them) or the traffic, which was wall to wall both ways, unyeilding, and for the mostpart speeding.
     Holding onto Blue's horns for dear life I let out, riding the rear brake until I felt it rub to nothing, getting spashed by roadside slush that was  thick as beef stew, and just about as chunky, I emerged, at speeds greater than I'd ever gone on a bike, into the strip mall that is Radium Hot Springs, where I found Kees and Marjon chowing down in a white lunch greasy spoon. I joined them and had my first store-bought lunch of the entire trip, fish and chips that sat in my belly like a football.
     "If the sign says 'western cuisine'" I later told my Dutch buddies, "then this is what it means," as we all sat around unable to take another bite of  the "food".
     Some clues, I later let them in on, when we were discussing how to find a good eatery in Canada, were: Number one, if there's lots of semi-trucks outside, it's a white lunch. If the place is full of obese people, its a white lunch. If there's nobody in the place, it's probably not even a real restaurant, or its worse than the white lunch. I wasn't able to tell them exactly how to find a good eatery, other than to say there would likely be a lot of fit, happy looking folks hanging out, and maybe an expensive SUV, or two, in the parking lot.
     While we were avoiding finishing our meals, the sky cleared somewhat and we decided to make a run for Invemere. There, said Kees and Marjon, they would buy a tarp. They'd been impressed I was able to provide us a roof the night before, and were intent on being able to provide me with one that night.
     All the while we were in Invemere shopping for food and hardware, the rain held off. Kees and Marjon purchased a big orange tarp (the royal colour of Holland) and seemed quite pleased, although Kees told me I would have to give him a lesson in knot tying because he'd never been a boy scout. It was funny, the night before, stringing up the tarp, he'd managed to fasten one end of rope to a tree, round and round and in and out, but there wasn't a knot in
 it. Trouble was, as I later pointed out, it would take an hour to undo it or make a simple adjustment. Later I would demonstrate how to tie a half hitch, which he quickly became proficient at.
     Bouyed by the weather-ease, and energized a bit by the village, we decided to put on some more K. Here my Dutch friends played a little trick convincing me the campground we were headed for was 25 K further, instead of the 36 it actually was.
     I also played a trick on them, purchasing six cobs of Taber corn (the best sweet corn in the universe is grown in Taber, Alberta) and making them carry four of them on their already full back racks.
     As usual, my pals rode ahead while I lolligaged my way along the rolling Westside Road from Invemere to near the Fairmont Hot Springs Resort. It was lovely country, and with the rain backed off, I was able to enjoy the parched brown land and widening valley of the Rocky Mountain Trench.
     When I arrived at our campground, Marjon and Kees, had already set things up, securing their new tarp to the surrounding trees with bungies and ropes using perfect half hitches. They'd been careful to slant the tarp so any rain would  run off and had perfectly positioned it above the picnic table, like good students trying to please the teacher.
     When I was all set up, and that included Marjon doing a load of laundry for me, I let Kees build a fire, which he did quickly and efficiently, then I threw the corn, still in its husk, right into the fire pit. I also cleaned some spinach, while Marjon and Kees cooked up some chili and vegies.
     When I pulled the corn from the fire, blackened and smoking, my Dutch companions looked at me rather skeptically. Bravely they followed my example, ripping the husks back but not completely off the cob, so they could be used to hold the things.Once they'd cleared the cob of leaf and string, Kees bit in. The look that came over his face was priceless. This was a man who'd only ever experienced corn from a can. What I witnessed in his face was pure ecstacy. He would rave about that corn half the night, and with good reason. It was fine fine corn, done just right.
     But there was also something sad about his joy. As soon as I saw how much those two folks loved that corn I knew my mission was complete. I'd done my part for the corn lobby, just as I'd done my part for the anti-separation forces in Quebec with Katy. Soon, all over Holland, roasting corn cobs in their husks will be all the rage. In the morning I would have to bid these
 lovely people farewell, and let them carry their new found skills into the world without me.
     Besides, we'd been averaging over 70 K a day and I'm built for comfort, not  speed. If I wanted to ride over 50 K a day I'd buy a car. I was looking forward to getting back to my own speed.
     The next morning, while the rain held off but was threatening, we disassembled our camp and with a big hug said goodbye. They headed off to Fort Steele, while I set out, an hour later, for somewhere closer, but that's in the next travelogue, which is coming your way, maybe even later today.