On April 1, 2005 I set off across Canada on my bicycle. Or at least I'd planned to cross Canada. These pages are an account of that trip, as told through travelogs I sent to friends. I hope you enjoy the ride!

Hi,

Every day I wake up to the sound of birds singing and four small dear munching bushes a few meters from my camp. I lay there for sometime, looking up through the mosquito net at the forest of awkwardly leaning cedar, birch, and cottonwood trees.

All around little buds are forming on the berry bushes and maple saplings. The sun pokes through the upper branches, one ray at a time. In the distance I can hear the sea and faint sounds of sea lions barking. Once in a while the young cow in the pasture south of my camp lets out a plaintive Moooo!

When ready, I shimmy out of my mummy bag, which has lost a few teeth in its zipper, and is beginning to get testy about staying zipped, slip on my cleanest dry running shoes, and slide out under the net, taking the rocks I've warmed in the fire the night before with me, after peeling the socks of them, and curling them over my flat little feet.

Once free of the mesh, I have a good long pee, then crumple some paper, pull some cedar twigs from the pile, and squeeze it all together between the twin cinder bricks in my fire pit. Pulling my zippo from its perch, I light the fire then turn to fetch my food bag from a nearby cedar. Normally it would be high in the trees, but there are no bears on this island.

Once the fire blazes, I slip in a few hardier-in-girth cedar twigs and add a little driftwood. Most times the flames crackle and rise immediately. Grabbing my black-burned saucepan from the makeshift plywood table, atop a stump, I dump the contents of a water bottle into it, fumble its lid in place, and set it to boil on the old fridge grate that rests on the cinder blocks.

By time I pull open my red waterproof food bag and yard out the coffee, then pour it in a healthy heap into my waiting plastic one-cup cone, with the metal filter, the water is boiled. I pour the bubbly water throught the cone until I know there is just enough to fill my travel mug.

Refilling the water pan, I set it back atop the fire, and reach for my porridge pot. Filling it one third full of oats and grains, and two thirds full with water, I place it on the fire beside the water pot, which is already hissing.

I turn, take the cone off the coffee mug, drop its lid in place, and enjoy a warm sip of rich Elvis Esspressly, provided to me by my good friends at Karma Coffee in Coombs. (They're in the phone book kids, order some today, best coffee anywhere in the current shape of the universe).

A couple sips of coffee in me, and out comes my journal and pen. For the next  hour or two I sit, I sip, I scrawl, and I sip some more, interupted only by the bubbling of the porridge pot, which I throw some raisins in, cover, and set to the side. The water pot also hisses, its lid sometime dancing, so I set it aside too.

When I have completed my writing, made my second coffee, and given the porridge a stir, I wander off with my wad to my appointed place in the bushes, and have my morning constitutional, all the while scanning the area for more dead fall cedar and birch. When the dump is done, and suitably buried, I get up and start collecting twigs, sometimes breaking large dead branches from the cedars, and dragging it all back to my camp, where I leave it in a pile.

If I have not made my second Elvis Esspressly, I do so now. If I have, I take a swig and set about my next task, fetching water. Water is fetched from a hose that ends about 60 meters away, near some other campers. Not campers really, well, yes really, but permanent ones. Winter, spring, summer, fall they are camped here on the garlic farm. They are never up at this hour of the morning, except Sundays, when one or the other gets up early to milk the aforementioned cow.

When the water is returned and stowed, I load Blu (BoB has sat locked to a tree for some days now) and we head off, either to weed and dig some garden, or to the beach. Either way, whether we weed, garden, stack firewood, pull fence or what, we always end up at the beach. Little Trib, one of our favourites.

We soak in the sun, eating dates and avocados, organic raisin bread and pistachios, drinking copious amounts of water, and letting the flesh burn red like Indian paintbrush.

The sea weaves and turns, and I take my hairy short body into its waves. I dunk myself until my long hair drips with salt and sea smells. Then I walk in the sand and lay down again. This goes on for hours. Sometimes other folks come around to share the fun, sometimes I do so alone. Later on I ride back to camp, start another fire and prep some food, usually beans or pasta full of all sorts of veggies. Even later I make tea and sit by the fire writing, until I can see neither pen nor page and can keep my eyes open no longer.

Some days ago, I turned left at Buckley Bay.  I knew I had to. It had be a wild rainy wind blown afternoon. I  got soaked to the bone and blew a rear tire in the middle of a hail storm, and had to patch it clean in the middle of a hail storm. With cross winds so hard they lifted Blu, BoB and I out onto the main part of the road a couple times where I was sprayed over and over and over again by road wash from big semi wheels, I knew if I turned left, and spent $20 on a bed in the Denman Hostel, I could hang everything to dry in front of the funky little pellet stove in their common room, and give Blu and Bob and me a night indoors. I  also knew in the morning, once we rode across Denman and down onto the Hornby Ferry,  the sun would come out and there would be days of endless hot. I knewI had to turn left and stop.

It'll be a few days but I'll be moving on by early next week, with every intent of riding straight for at least I week. I'm heading for the hills, well, when I get off this beach.

Talk to you all when I get there,
Will