In July, 2023, I had the opportunity to get on my bike and try bikepacking for the first time. Here are the stats:
Dates: July 5-9, 2023
Distance: 414 km
Shortest day: 56 km
Longest day: 134 km
Average distance/day: 103.5 km
Route: Started at Kitsilano Beach, Vancouver, through Hope, Princeton, Keremeos, and ended at the Penticton library, approximately following highway 7, highways 3, 3a, and Green Mountain Road
Wildlife: Black bear, prairie dogs, chipmunks, various birds, and insects.
Encouraged by my dear friend, Jeannie, to give bikepacking a chance, I thought to possibly cycle across Canada. As a start, I decided to cycle first from Vancouver to my home in the south Okanagan before deciding if I wanted to go further. Being frugal, I bought no new kit, managing to outfit my mountain bike with kit I already had on hand. It worked like a charm. There were no issues with my choice of kit or the bicycle itself. Grateful for that.
However, long-distance cycling is clearly not my passion. I’ve decided I’m up for shorter cycling trips, but I can’t see my poor butt surviving sitting on a bicycle seat for three months straight.
Bikepacking is okay, but for me there is not a lot of joy. I thought, much like on my walk across Canada, to find my mind wandering to creative things while I was cycling. Perhaps I would have time to write poetry and read a book. But that is not what happened. Instead, while cycling, I could only think of how long I had left before I could stop and rest. And when I was resting, my mind would not wander to my creative place and I couldn’t concentrate on the words in my book. A journal note for the four-day trip reads, “Another hard slog pushing my bicycle up a seven percent grade in 31C heat.” That’s right – I humbly admit that I pushed my bike up many a hill. (Dammit Jim, I’m a hiker, not a cyclist)
There were good times, of course, but only three come to mind – downhill coasting is fun (although hard-earned), easy flat-road riding is tolerable if I have a tail wind and I can ease the pressure on my butt from time to time, and the best times were when I was stopped and stuffing my face with ice cream or a good meal at a family restaurant on the route.
The final 14 kilometres on Green Mountain Road to the Penticton Library were mostly downhill. At one point, while I was coasting at 55-60 km/hour, a black bear appeared in the road. Knackered as I was, I just yelled, “Bear! Get the hell off the road cause I ain’t stoppin’!” And he ran off into the woods. I hadn’t even laid a finger on my brakes.
A day after the event, I am still sore all over, but I’m glad I had the experience. It cost me almost nothing to see if a cross-country bike trip was in the cards. Another learning opportunity on the path of life.
