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!

   On a sunny Friday morning, on the main street of Cranbrook, just as I was unlocking my bike, a lovely young woman, with a bank tellers name tag on her blouse, walked up and started talking to me.

    "Hey, you must be in good shape riding with all that stuff!" she said, smiling.

    "How fitting," I replied, "to meet a lovely young woman interested in my  physical fitness just as I'm leaving town. You're a real good omen!"
    She laughed. We stood there talking a bit, then I rode off. In retrospect I  should have offered to wait around until she got off work, but I was serious about the omen thing.

    Riding out of Cranbrook, I connected to the Isadore Canyon trail, a rocky old rail bed that doesn't go anywhere near any canyon. A few kilometers  along I was passed by a white haired woman out for an afternoon ride. Then, a  couple kilometers later, I came upon her again. She was standing down, in the  middle of the path, gazing at what appeared, at first, to be a very large horse loafing in the middle of the trail.
    Riding up behind her, I quickly realized this was no horse, but a female moose!
    "Won't let you pass," I said, pulling to a stop alongside the woman.
    "I'm not sure," she replied.
    "Hey you!" I hollered, waving my arms at the massive beast. "Get out of the path we wanna pass!"
    Just then, from the bush to the right of the moose, appeared another, a male.  Both turned their giant heads to face us. Then, together, they started  galloping further away. We rode after them at a slow pace. For a half  hour or so the two would periodically stop, turn around, look at us, then gallop along some more.
    Eventually the moose disappeared down a side trail and we continued unobstructed, but a little thrilled by the encounter.  Shortly after that my temporary companion, an elementary school teacher, who was taking a mental health break after filling out report cards, turned around and went back.  That's where my adventure lost in the almost wilds really began.

    I'd set out that morning for Fort Steele. Somehow, while riding along after the moose, I'd missed a turn and now, hours later, found myself at a dead end, with no alternative but to go out on the highway, quite certain I would soon be led to Fort Steele.
    An hour later the highway brought me to a place the locals call Steamboat Hill, a legendary deadman's curve of sorts, shimmying down a cliff over the Kootenay River. Here highways crews were busy dynamiting a mountain, spending  millions of dollars righting the often tragic turns in the road.
    Midway through the construction, amid flying granite cinders and racing  semi-trucks, I blew the first tire of my journey, the rear! Stuck halfway down a steep hill, with nowhere to go but a small gravelly patch on the outside of the abuttments, overlooking the cliffs, the river, and the Rockies, I upended Blu and went to work fixing the flat.
    While dynamiters worked above, and traffic raged adjacent, I fixed Blu's  tire, uprighted it and continued down the long hill, around the bend, into  a single lane wedged against a great stone wall with no shoulder to ride on to.
    I felt the warm breezes of the the farting diesel belches of the mechancal behemouths, rumbling along within inches of my left side, firing penny-sized rocks into Blu's thin frame and my exposed shins. Fortunately, it was over almost as soon as it began and, on a gentle slope  down to a long windy bridge, at the turn off to the old railway town of Warrener, I met my first group of long distance cyclists. All university  students, they were part of a group called, Distance For Dreams, and were on the tail-end of a trans-provincial ride, promoting the importance of dreams to schoolchildren. Actually, they were probably some strange religious cult thwarting the minds of our young, but I found them delightful.

    After a rather euphoric little visit, during which they offered me beans I declined, and let me use a very good air pump they had in their possession, we  parted.
    Crossing the windy bridge and scaling the sharp rise beyond it, was when I  first realized  I'd totally missed Fort Steele, by nearly 20 K, and had overshot my day's planned mileage by at least 15K.
    Checking my Trans Canada Trail Guide, an almost completely incorrect and misleading piece of real crappy writing, I discovered one of the few things  it had right. It showed me a road called Rosicky (formerly the highway, now just a peaceful, upward arching, road overlooking the Kootenay River valley).  It led to another road, Shelbourne, that ended at a little bit of heaven-on-earth called Wapiti Lake!
    Wapiti, Kootenay for Elk, is a tiny lily-padded, glorified pond set in a vast rolling horizon of Fir and Pine trees. From the south end of the lake the Steeples Range of the Rockies, sits giant and red, while to the west, rounded hilltops, too high to see over, define the horizon. It is a dry place, not at all unlike the  Okanagan, with no potable water to be found anywhere ( a fact the guide book totally misses).
    Within minutes of arriving at Wapati, I'd met all six of my new camping neighbours, all middle-aged lovers on mini-honeymoons, passing the day drifting in rowboats their fishing lines cast. One pair gave me wood for a fire. The  other gave me a couple gallons of drinking water, and the third a five pound trout for my dinner. I was quite certain that I'd not survived the drama of Steamboat Hill, and had now found myself in Nirvana.
    For two days I lazed on the long grassy slopes, wandered through the nearby  forests, explored the hills, and took hours to cook my lunch and dinner. For two nights in a row, I lit a small campfire and watched the sky turn red, then deep purple, alive with stars, as a thin cresent moon lit up the long wavering grass.

     It was difficult to leave Wapiti, but I did one morning, on what was to be a short one hour jaunt to a whistle stop called Jaffray, before ducking another short distance to a place called North Star Lake.  As I rode away through the once burned forest, now regrown about 10 years, I  was led by a large buck deer, taking great long strides, leaping over fallen logs and other dead fall. So busy was I, watching that amazing animal leap and jump, that I missed a sharp left turn in the trail.
    Right away the words; "Missed a Turn, Do Not Collect $200" flashed in my  brain. It took over an hour to get what my instincts were trying to tell me with the Monopoly metaphor. I'd missed a turn!  When I finally listened to what all my inner voices were telling me, I was a good 15 K into some ranch land and had emerged on a high bluff on the south side  of Kookanusa Lake. There, where a heard of young cows  stood around staring at me like I was lost or something, the trail dead ended. Looking into their bewildered boivine eyes, I finally accepted they were right, I had to go back.
    My one hour jaunt to Jaffray, before it was through, became a five-hour backwoods experience, I wouldn't trade for a moment. Amid all the unmarked mud roads heading off in every direction, I was affored great views of the Rockies, and shown, in no uncertain terms, what a wide and awesome stretch of country the Rocky MountainTrench, headwaters of the Columbia River, really is.

    Six hours after leaving, I finally climbed the last little gravelly bump up to North Star Lake. Setting camp, I built a small fire, heated some rocks to put in my sleeping bag and keep my tired body warm, took a swim in the turtle-filled lake, and ate a big pasta dinner. Again I watched the sliver of a crescent moon climb above the trees before finally going to bed.
    Next moring, while making coffee and porridge, I met the first truly long-distance cycling couple I've met on the trip, a pair of Kiwis, headed for Newfoundland.  They blasted into the camp full speed, having missed a right turn of their own, and didn't want to stop and talk. The fellow, David, braked when I  hailed them, calling out: "Cyclists, I like cyclists!"
    We talked a bit from a distance, while his girlfriend Corrine, stood silent, a little way behind him on the bluff above my camp.
    "We're trying to make Fernie today," explained David motioning towards Corrine, saying, "She's real sick!"
    I pointed out they'd missed a turn. Thanking me, they rode  off back in the direction they'd come. Again, just like last year, I met my first pair of folks doing what I was doing, and they were already gone.
    Not long after, I was gone too. Down the trail, hard-packed but dusty, along the valley floor past Kikomun Creek, eventually outletting on the north side of  Kookanusa Lake, the opposite and correct side of the lake from where I'd misadventured the previous day.
    That night I camped at Kikomun Creek Provincial Park, on Kookanusa Lake, the  nicest of all the provincial campgrounds I've yet visited. Even better, they had real showers, with real hot water and real mirrors, through which I saw myself for the first time in a week. Let me tell you kids, it wasn't  pretty!
    A shower, a two razor shave, a good dinner, and a good sleep, left me ready  for the final leg of this travelogue.

    Leaving Kikomun, I followed the trail to Elko, then down the River Road Logging Main along Elk River. There, atop a high bluff, I pulled over to get view of the river below. For days my vision had been filled with the spectre of the  Rockies stretching out before me. Now, while stopped for a little sightseeing, I peered  behind me. The Rockies were there too! They were also on my left and right sides! I was no longer riding into the Rockies, I was riding through them!
    After a long haul up the dusty logging road and down its other side, I  emerged on the Crowsnest Highway, just a little southeast of Fernie. Then, about supper time last night, I hauled Blu and BoB up the hill to Mount Fernie Provincial Park (Mosquito Gultch), where I found the Kiwi, David. Corrine however was not present. She was in the hospital, recovering from a serious bout of Beaver Fever!
    Also met a Brit, of Indian descent, who'd just ridden down from Anchorage, Alaska, on his way to Tierra del Fuego, on the tip of South America!  Intersting guy, little like me! Actually, I towered over him as we walked  around the campsite last night, stretching out our compressed cycling  muscles.
    Early bed, early rise. Now I'm in Fernie, a town, at first impression, that  seems to be full of very beautiful women. Or maybe that's just because I've  been lost in the almost wilds all week!