Two Weeks of Preparations
Andrew writes:
It’s like seeing a long-lost love, after many years, except in our case, it was many moons. When Amanda pulled our bicycles out of the shed at my Uncle’s house, a huge smile lit up my face. I immediately hopped on and pedalled around the block; ignoring the near-flat tires.
“I am so happy to be back on this bike, continuing our around the world journey!”, I thought.
We only spent enough time in Parksville as we needed to get the bikes and equipment loaded into my Uncle’s van for a drive to the ferry terminal. Two hours later, we were back in Tsawwassen, and actually riding loaded touring bikes again for the first time since October, 2014!
It was a short 10km ride back to Amanda’s sisters house, and I enjoyed every second of it, even the big hill.
We bussed our bikes to North Vancouver for a few days to see friends, and Amanda went to a hockey tournament in the US with her old team. Trips to West of Java (cafe) and Obsession Bikes (store) made me feel like it was the good, old days, living in North Vancouver. We spent a number of hours going through all of our equipment, and re-packing our bags for Cuba. The logic being that after two months in Cuba (tropical), we would return to Canada in summer, and cycle east towards the Rockies, and eventually end up back on the Pacific Coast. Hopefully the weather would be hot, hot, hot. So with that in mind, we put all of our winter clothing, and our expedition gear like the bear cache, into a box and are storing it at a friends house until we get back from Cuba at least. Still, it’s amazing how much “stuff” we can accumulate, that we consider non-essential, yet we pack it up all the same, “just in case”. Ugh.
Our best ride occurred when we rode the 55km back from North Vancouver to Tsawwassen.
I borrowed a wetsuit from a friend and attempted to go kitesurfing in nearby Boundary Bay. I say attempted because I was a little too excited to get out on the water, and within 30 seconds of launching my kite, crashed it into a nearby garden, causing a perforated bladder, and a rip in the sail. I was able to fix it up, and a few days later, got out for my first Pacific NW kiting session. It wasn’t a lot different than Mexico, except that everyone was bundled up in 5mm wetsuits, with hoods, gloves, and booties. The water temperature here is about 10C, compared to 20C water in Mexico.
On the family front, we had a fantastic Easter dinner at Amanda’s sisters house, surrounded by loads of somebody’s relatives, including Amanda’s mom. I saw my own Mom too, and 96 year old Grandma, separately.
We wrapped up our last few days with some shopping, as well as purging equipment that we feel we won’t need in Cuba, like cooking equipment for instance. There’s nowhere to really buy food where we will be riding.
Hopefully everyone is still tuned in when we return, since we will be in a veritable black hole for the next 60 days. We will have plenty of blog posts queued up upon our return!
Amanda writes:
Totally enjoyed being back on the bike, even if it was only for a short time. Also thoroughly enjoyed the curiosity of others regarding our trip. Within our first hour on the bikes we were approached by many and ran out of website cards to hand out. As we rode off one woman yelled to us …”I saw you two on TV!” Good times.