Strong and Free

Thank-yous: First, I want to thank my number 1 supporter and constant companion throughout this journey - Nutterbut. She has spent every day with me, slept by my side and remained faithfully wherever I've left her during brief moments apart. I truly love all of her marginally functional self which has put up with an abysmal lack of attention, being constantly dirty and loaded to 70lbs over miles of often rough terrain. She can handle gravel, rocks, being carried through streams, dropped over guard rails, mud, pellatons, traffic, rain, wind (basically anything) and has kept spinning, more or less. Sometimes she has her moments - skipping chains, brake fatigue and functionality loss - but hey, she's been pedalled farther than most cars in a year, and taken a whole lot less gas. Rounding out the top-tier supporters would be my parents, aka the world's greatest on-the-fly googlemappers, best source of verbal entertainment on long empty roads, greatest encouragers, patient creators of fantastic base-station weather, road and fire reports, incredulous listeners, and the people who always pick up the phone - I did not do this trip alone. Thank-you you two for all you've done to support me and for raising me to believe I can do anything I set my mind to, although I bet you never thought it would be this. Also, thank you to the rest of my family for your support, my moments of break at your farms were some of my favourite. Thank you to the entire Osborne clan for your messages - you are all the best and have no idea how many times you have made me smile. Thank you Max for joining me on the Dempster, selling me the perfect bike when we had no idea where it would end up, mechanical advice and amused mechanical and moral support. Thanks Jackie and Ian for taking more than your fair share of my messages. Huge thanks and gratitude to everyone who hosted me, and for those who connected me with hosts. Staying with people was not only a magical logistical joy, gastronomical delight and fantastic opportunity to do laundry, etc., it was a highlight of my trip. Thank you to the strangers along the road who honked encouragement, the incredible number of construction workers who tried to hitch rides with me and made me laugh, all the people who smiled at me, and especially alllll the 10s of thousands of drivers who didn't turn me and Nutterbut into squished peanut butter. (I am so grateful for everyone who decided that waiting for a moment to pass me was the most important use of 5 seconds of their life.) Sarcasm aside, I have been extremely impressed by the road sharing I have witnessed. Yes, there have been moments of a lack thereof, but for the vast majority of the time my space has been respected, especially by professional drivers of transports and buses - you folks are good, and I will forever be trying to figure out how a giant, wide transport truck can move over significantly farther than a small car in the same scenario. Okay, I guess I can't quite put the sarcasm aside... I am Canadian after all.

Canadians - gosh darn we're funny. Travelling solo and sitting in all sorts of places within earshot of other people means that listening in on their conversations is kind of unavoidable. Every exchange of a greeting starts with a quick sarcastic remark followed by a sharp, usually self-depreciating retort which then typically leads to commenting on the weather and then maybe talking about work, which for many small town Canadians has something to do with working outside, so they circle back to the weather. I cannot count the number of times I've bit back laughter and cracked a huge grin listening to these exchanges. 

Canada is a truly beautiful and diverse place. It has been very interesting biking not just across landscapes and landforms, but through and over them - watching the hills soar into mountains, squish down to flats and roll into bumps. All the landforms and especially the routes on roads and trails through them are defined by where the water has gone or where it is going, and I have had a lot of fun following the drainages and learning to predict hill climbing by them. I picked out a phrase from one of The Arrogant Worms songs on one of my first days, and it has rung true though this entire trip - "Our mountains are very pointy, our prairies are not. The rest is kinda bumpy, but man do we have a lot."

I have special appreciation for this country. It's freaking huge! I have also noted that while there are the wonderful and popular nodes that so many Canadians are familiar with - the cities, the national parks, the famous sites - there is a lot in-between. Tiny communities, wild spaces and lonely stretches of road make up the bulk of our land. And while the land is big, the people are bigger. How so few people knit this country together and take up so much space is beyond me!

"People are good.” How often do you hear that? It’s not something I would have affirmed so confidently before this trip but after meeting literally thousands of strangers, some with just a smile as an introduction and others by staying in their homes, I can truly affirm that people are good, great, generous and kind - especially when you're traveling solo and on a bike.

In answer to some other questions: Howww is my gear still functional? Okay, mostly functional. I have no idea. My bike needs new brakes (badly), a new drive train (chain replacing isn’t cutting it anymore - my little ring hasn't worked since Saskatoon, and the rest is getting decidedly skippy). My bike shorts are falling apart and need to be incinerated, the rest of my riding clothes are faded and are probably never going to ever smell good again, my shoes smell like something died in them (possibly true), but my rain poncho is holding out well. My sleeping bag is fantastic and still keeps me toasty warm on colder nights, my hammock and tarp cover are great, my panniers are most remarkably still waterproof and attached, and overall, my stuff is fantastic and I could probably just add a few layers and keep going... 

My body could keep going even though it has put up with a lot over the past few months. Things that I used to think were hard or impossible now are comfortable, everyday activities. My legs are understatedly strong. Sleeping on any surface is comfortable and on the hammock, particularly so. My butt and bike saddle have developed a really great relationship. My knees still get sore if it's a hilly day. My flexibility is hilariously horrendous. My toes only get numb about 50 percent of the time and my hands need a good long break. 

When I look back on my two cycling journeys since May - about 12,000 km total with 9,000 km in Canada - it seems like an impossibly far distance to ride and I’m thinking, there's no way I biked that far, not a chance. But I did and it never felt like 12, 000 km! It was one day at a time, one kilometer at a time, one pedal stroke at a time, and when you add a lot of ones together I guess you get a big number. My memories of my journeys will always be the ones... the one person who waved, that one horn honk, that one time when... I now have twelve thousand new memories to smile at as I return to 'real life.' I'm now headed west for a few days rest in Waterloo and then off on a speedy car-enabled road trip to points much further west. I am looking forward to returning to work in North Vancouver and biking my free time away. 

P.S. My apologies for all the typos and nonsensical sentences that my various blog entries have contained - they have all been pecked out on my phone keyboard, often while falling asleep in my hammock, and strange things happen on small devices.:)