Hey Kids,
So, here I am, sick as a rabid dog sitting out in the sunshine whilst the neighbours pound nails and run chainsaws. I've been here a week, well not sitting sick for a week, but working like a dog building fence, clearing brush, hauling gravel, piling slash, washing dishes, and doing just about everything that needs to be done in the spring while the weather is decent.
Yes folks, its my annual labour stint in Riondel that has occupied my time since you last heard from me, so long ago. As with most journeys, it was the getting here that really mattered.
I left New Denver on a blustery Saturday morning and once again climbed atop Cape Horn. It was a decent day for a change, although I was caught in headwinds for a time at the summit. Its never altogether pleasant crossing Cape Horn. Like its namesake, the cape is a place of constantly shifting winds and weather. For the first time ever it was nice enough to snap a few photos and to make a hard ride a tad easier.
Worse than the weather was Wheels. Ever since I purchased Wheels I've had difficulty with its rear wheel alignment, and thus with properly adjusting my brakes and gears. On this day, I simply backed the brake pads off and proceeded with caution. Pulling a BoB, it is the front brakes that are more important anyway.
After a strenuous but not too difficult ride over the cape, I got on the Slocan Valley Rail Trail and made Winlaw after a six hour ride. It was lovely along the river, where crews had fixed the washouts I'd endured ten days earlier, and the many blossoms were in full array.
Made Winlaw in time for dinner and to take in a little MayDays hippie fest out front of a local eatery. The grand finale that night featured a singer, Lana, singing about intimate tantric love whilst nubile young women with flaming hoola hoops danced in the dark in front of the stage. Needless to say, but I'll say it anyway, I had to stay up and watch the show until the last chord was caressed and the last flame extinguished. That made for a very late night and a very tired wandering poet fool. Mercifully, my pal Al, offered me space on his book store floor, where I had a pleasureable but rather short sleep.
Bouyed by the eroticism of the dancers the night before, which had been my 18th alcohol-free aniversary, I was ready for the day ahead. The previous evening's performance was special, a celebration of the many changes I've gone through since I gave up pouring gallons of depressants down my gullet. Just to be out on the road on a bike, then treated to a fiery exhibition of human movement, was like having a cake and eating it too. All night, all I could think to myself was; Man, if you were still drinking you wouldn't get any of this! The occassion was extra special because I can now legitimately say that I have lived longer without booze then I lived with it. I drank hard for 18 years, and now I've lived 18 years without it. Truth is folks, its more like something has been added to my life than taken away. Think I'll stay off the stuff another 18 years, then decide if I want to try it again!
After making my goodbyes, Wheels BoB and I headed back to the rail trail for three hours of bumpy riding down the valley. There were several other cyclists out on the trail that afternoon, and one nice couple stopped, quizzed me about touring and bicycle bobs, and left me an offering of rich organic chocolate, that boosted my spirits.
The trail was decent, in better condition than the Kettle Valley, but still rough in patches. Nicest thing about this particular trail is its proximity to the sometimes swift, often lazily rolling, Slocan River, and the many scenic lookouts along the way. It is also an excellent alternative to enduring the endless procession of speeding chip trucks that groan and roar along the Slocan Highway.
After about three hours, I reached the junction of the Castlegar-Nelson road, and turned east towards Nelson along the rolling cliffsides perched high above the several hydro-electric dams on the Kootenay River. Going west to east along this patch is a moderate grunt, there are some very narrow patches, a few relatively steep inclines, and depending on the day and time, heavy traffic.
A few years ago on this stretch I met up with a fellow, Jim, who many years before was my neighbour in an apartment complex in Nelson. I thought of him as I dipped onto a frontage road near the Corra Lynn Dam, along Corra Lynn Road. Its a detour Jim had shown me last time through, that helps to avoid the steepest of the hills on the highway.
Emerging from Corra Lynn back onto the highway I was growing quite fatigued and rather spaced out. It was getting to be supper time and I knew I had at least an hour to go before making Nelson. I thought of stopping over at Taghum, but decided I should make town. It was Sunday evening, the traffic was moderately light, the sky was relatively clear, wildflowers were begining to bud, the river was a dark green, a light wind fluttered in my ears, I was daydreaming.
All of a sudden there was a silver cadillac, moving about 140 K an hour, coming head-on towards me. He'd pulled out from behind a car in the oncoming lane, and was now inches from my body going the oppposite direction. A blast of wind hit me, I felt the bike shake.
"You gotta watch that," said a voice from somewhere inside my head, or so I thought!.
For an instant I was startled, not so much that I'd almost been caught and killed daydreaming, but by the voice. For a fraction of an instant I thought maybe I'd not escaped, but had been killed, and the voice was some angel come to fetch me. Then it spoke again.
"Those guys are bloody dangerous!"
I craned my neck around to see if there was anyone behind me. I couldn't see. Then I glanced in my rear view mirror. There was Jim, on his slick highway bike, in his black spandex, peddling on my tail. He pulled out, and we got reaquainted. Realizing I was a little famished and spaced out, Jim rode along behind me until we reached the Taghum bridge, making sure I was okay.
Once by the bridge and around the rock bluffs, Jim came paralell and let me know he was going to spin off. I watched him race into the traffic towards Nelson, and continued my slow steady revolutions into town.
Arriving about 7:30, I stopped at the bank then made my way to the Nelson City Tourist Park, where I set camp, cooked dinner, and caught an early bed. As I fell asleep I found myself wondering if I'd really seen Jim, or if he was just an aparition I'd made up to keep myself from losing it on the highway. He'd come along at an opportune time. I was drifting, I was losing it, I was road wrecked, bushed, and if he hadn't shown up, I may well have become pothole pizza. It was like the cycling Gods had saved me, I thought to myself as I fell into a deep restful coma.
When I reached an internet connection the next morning I found out Jim was in fact on the road, and was no aparition. He'd sent me several photos of me cycling, with my lopsided load, and was offering to send me a movie he'd shot. Turns out, Jim had been filming me, with a tiny hand held digital camera as I went down the road ahead of him. The next day he sent the movie, the first full action picture of me in motion. It was something to see how my calves resemble pistons, pumping, flexing, pumping, flexing, pumping.
For probably the first time in history, Nelson didn't catch me. I was out of there by noon the day after I arrived, and up the North Shore road to Balfour by mid-afternoon. I crossed the ferry, rode over the Riondel Hill, and was at my friends house, brakes squealling, dogs barking hello, by dark.
Coming here has been a bit like coming home. Every spring for five years I've come here to do my annual upper body rebuild, playing landscaper on my friends four acre homestead. The dogs, Bean, a very territorial minature black poodle, and Puddy, a mutt rescued from the streets of east Vancouver, are old friends, particularly Puddy, who loves me mostly because I take her to the beach on a regular basis, and am not afraid to get down on the ground and wrestle with her. She's a fairly big dog, weighing in about 80 pounds, or 50 K, and a serious wrestler.
Puddy's great joy in life is not wrestling though, its fishing! She can spend hours wading around in the lake, eyes locked on the water, looking for trout. To this day she's never caught one, but she has come close. Staring into the lake like she does, for hours and hours, will likely make her blind one day, but in the meantime, almost everyone who witnesses her penchant for the pasttime, comments on how happy she seems at it.
Personally, I keep having visions of the dog one day actually catching a trout, and dying of shock in the instant she gets it in her jaws.
Puddy and I are so close, my friends get me to call her when she's off somewhere. She won't come when called, but when I call, she comes barrelling through the yard, tail wagging, slobbering, and ready for a belly rub. In the morning she comes and sits at my feet as I write. During the day she'll bodycheck me from time to time, and will sit for long periods at my side, while I write. Its like she's my dog.
My friends meanwhile are getting old as the hills they live in. P. is up over 70 now, and R. is 60, although he seems much older. They're a funny couple, like some sort of vaudeville routine, where the couple just hate each other and spend their whole lives getting even. They scrap constantly, and would have it no other way. Oddly, there are moments, when the two of them sit quietly in the yard overlooking the lake, they seem quite content and happy. They are peas in a pod, but not necessarily the same variety.
A few days back, P. began showing signs of being terribly sick. She was coughing, hoarse and in obvious distress. I did my best to avoid her, to not share any silverware or any enclosed spaces, but it did no good. Yesterday I woke up sick as a dog, like I said before. I was stuffed up, sneezy, coughing, and dopey all together, with a skull crushing headache and zero energy.
The bright light in all of it is, in my stupor, I took Wheels into Nelson, intent on once and for all figuring out what was wrong with my back wheel. There, sick like swine, feeling no good at all, we, my mechanic Darryl and I, finally got to the problem. My rear forks were off kilter! The drop-outs the rear wheel axle fits in, were a couple inches askew. For a whole year I've been riding on a tilt, a slant, a rightest leaning. Darryl pulled out a tool, a tool he seemed quite fond of, and bent my steel forks back into true.
The result was amazing. Wheels now rides like a dream.
So, Wheels is ready, BoB is ready, but I'm not, and the long weekend in May is upon us. Thus, my plan, is to wait out the weekend, get better, let the number of Alberta and US winnebagoes out on the local roads die, then head east.
Tuesday, Tuesday is my day. I'll write you all soon and let you know what happens, after Tuesday.
Hope you're all having fun. I am, well, when I'm not being sick.
Take Care,
Will
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