Day 3 - ??? to Parksville

Greetings,

Some rest stop (Clayoquot Provincial Park) to Parksville.
88 km, overcast in the morning, but sunny the rest of the day. Warm, yet cool in the shade.
Slight wind (side and tail).

Lovely day when you wake up and realize you haven't been attacked by the local wildlife, and the food you left in a dry-bag high in a tree is still there.

With 2 days of cycling (and camping) in the rain, I was running out of dry clothes to sleep in (and ride the next day). I was especially running out of dry socks. The night before, my feet were cold during the sleep. Last night, to “avoid” cold feet, I used my arm warmers as socks, and put on my fleece gloves over the toes. My feet were damp with to begin with (probably 24 hours of white and wrinkled feet), with the sligthly damp gloves, things didn't help much. I will buy myself a dry pair of socks for bedtime (until I reach warmer territories which will allow me to sleep sans-socks again). At lunch, I took off shoes and socks to dry out my feet. It took an hour for them to almost return wrinlke-free status.

The morning. The sun was poking through on occasion, yet it was still cool. I still have my full outfit (including coat and fleece gloves, minus the toque this time). After a 30 minutes of cycling, the sun started shining through more and more – and stayed like that for the rest of the day.

I thought I passed the mountain range yesterday. When I was climbing for 10-15 minutes today, I realized that I was wrong. I climbed, and climbed, huffed, and puffed, then reached the top of another pass - this time over 400 metres or something (466?). Those “SLOW” signs were still up. But, they didn't get to me as much. Actually, things felt quite good today – I feel I am starting to wake up my old legs and lungs, it was sunny, and that slight tail wind didn't hurt at all.

Overall, nothing major to report today. The scenery was basically the same the whole time (beautiful country) – streams, small waterfalls, lots of mountain tops, some snow on the side of the road. Once I got past Port Alberni, I was greeted by a nice long hill, another 15-20 minutes of grinding. Layers started coming off. Luckily, I knew I was probably at a peak, as I was heading down towards sea level (destination Parksville). The downhill was lovely – hitting 75km/hr – with the dry (and winding) roads, and a little test of downhill the day before, I just let the bike fly this time. It was chilly though. Further up the road, I was biking under a tree canopy for a while. For the next 25-30 km, I would be riding on the side of the road that was sheltered from the sun – so back went on the layers. Later, it was beside a nice lake nestled by the mini-mountains – quite lovely. I stopped for a while and just chilled.

The roads were actually quite nice – nice shoulders, not many broken bottles or bad little sharp rocks. Traffic was heavier than I thought for a Friday. It's only upon my arrival to town that someone told me it was actually Saturday. I had a few honks of encouragement from people (they drive by, honk, and then wave). I enjoy those folks.

Parksville. very nice little town. Right on the shore too. I can see the mountain range (north of North Vancouver, I believe) from the spot I chose to sleep. Having all my clothes dirty, needing a shave, batteries for the computer, one set of camera batteries, and mp3 player drained, I chose to rent a room at a cheap hotel. It also gets me a chance to upload all these entries. (Franck the tank, sorry, I wont grow a beard during this trip).

I also can't figure out how to install Picasa on tihis ASUS computer. It runs on Linux, and it can't run an .exe file. What gives? Where's Chady when I need him? But, I will (have) uploaded a few photos on the blog. Pics of each day will somehow be put on the internet with a link from the blog.

People like to keep me guessing with these weird aliases. La vieille, I think I can figure that one out by figuring out which area code that is. Plus, Monkeytown, I've never heard that before, but again, I have a good idea where it is.

So, it now feels like I'm on a bike trip. I am starting to feel the rhythm, and worry less and less. I did some experimenting today on the bike, and realized one of my cleats is a bit off – which could explain those odd little twinges I felt in the past few weeks. We'll see what's the deal in the next few rides.

Off to bed once the beer is consumed. I have planned a fun, exciting and scary event tomorrow (besides the biking). In two days, I get to see my new mountain bike in Duncan, B.C. It's only missing the forks, so I can't ride it. Shucks.

Well, have a lovely day.

Oh, one major bad thing happened today – the Canadiens lost, so no more canadian teams in the playoffs. Where's my beer...

Pierre