The day was supposed to be a catch up with fitness. It turned out to be one mechanical step backward instead.
A day at 'the office' began after I had escorted Cathy to her car in the downstairs car parking at 6:30 and
returned to the town house. Usually the day involved replying to correspondence and resurrecting the How's My Cycling web
site. In the remaining days until the August 1st departure I also needed to try and regain some sort of fitness to allow me to cycle with a loaded bike, take on the
climbs up and over the Canadian Rockies that begin from day two and not bust my knees trying.
The ride
across France at the beginning of the ride of continental Europe taught me the lesson that going too
fast too soon means that while the muscles get strong quickly, the ligaments don't develop as fast. The result was
a debilitatingly sore knee that took about four days to set right. That stage of cycling followed the mostly
flat roads of northern France stopping before the hills of the German Black Forest. Here in Canada I’ll have one day of
a flat road and a bit over a week of hill climbs until weeks of sailing across the plains. I hope my body knows how it coped in the past. It’s done me proud to date.
Before the day was absorbed too much into the fiddly business of standarising web pages
adding features here and there, I had to get on the bike. Taking the busy arterial roads south then east I eventually found myself at the beginnings of the seawall of Vancouver’s Stanley Park.
Running along the shoreline where a peninsular of forested land pinches the entrance to Vancouver's inner harbour and nearby to the commercial heart of Vancouver, the seawall of Stanley Park is popular with walkers, roller bladders and cyclists alike. All are catered for and safely segregated. A circuit of the paths runs counter-clockwise. I started at 08:40 position (south west) and wanted to head for 12:00 (north) and the Lions Gate Bridge. I was going against the flow. Instead of walking the path I cut inland and took to the small gravel bridle paths and walkways winding through the thick-trunked firs and hemlock swaddled in thick undergrowth. The cool interior of the forest muffled the passage of cars driving through to take the bridge so it felt like I had all I could see around me to myself.
Back on the seawall I took my time surveying English Bay leading out past the huge tankers at anchor to the Pacific beyond Vancouver Island. On the other side of the harbour from the peninsular the Pacific Coastal Range rose from the water with industrial works at the waters edge giving way to commercial buildings and finally housing clinging to the increasing slope until only trees continued up to the ridgeline.
By the time I reached Prospect Point, the highest land of the park (some 210 feet above sea level), it was not my fitness that was questionionable; the bike’s left pedal was starting to loosen where it met the crank.
Now, long ago in a land where the earth is red and the sea and sky share shades of blue, I had to replace one of a dwindling list of original parts of the bike that had departed England with me. There in Australia my original pedals had finally had it. To complicate things, the cranks into which the pedals were affixed had been bashed over rocks and other obstacles in the process of traversing half the world. Hear me, my best beloved, when I say that the tip of an alloy crank can distort under stress, but not so easily the steel of the pedals. When I replaced the pedals I had a tough time getting the new pedals to mate with the cranks’ thread deformed from the extraction of the old. They were made to fit but damage was done to both. Things might have been OK if I hadn’t been required to remove the pedals to stow the bike for flying. Joining the two damaged parts again here in Vancouver was the final straw. By the time I had crossed from Stanley Park to North Vancouver the crank and pedal were irretrievably munted (NZ vernacular for ‘damaged through abuse’). The accompanying picture shows the alloy has been ground smooth by the poor mating with the pedal. Contrast these parts with their counterparts above (the right pedal and crank) as something approaching normal.
I was getting not going to be clocking up serious mileage in a training ride today. Nursing a sickeningly wobbly pedal I rode west along the back streets of North Vancouver. Here the streets were quiet and the kids on holiday obviously used the empty avenues for recreation. Street hockey nets, basketballs and tennis equipment were stowed in carports for easy access to be brought to their asphalt play area. There was even a lemonade stall selling homemade refreshment for 25 cents a cup. Two nine-year-old girls sat on boxes behind a larger cardboard box on which were placed pitchers of yellow liquid and a stack of cups. I didn’t have any cash on me so didn’t stop.
To ease the suffering of the bike and to ensure I could still return the right pedal to start another right side pedal stroke for power before the left fell off, I decided to take the ferry across the inner harbour instead of riding the 2nd Narrows Bridge back to Vancouver.
I got a scenic view of North Vancouver retreating away as the Sea Bus made its way past even more shipping to central Vancouver. Because of the two stage fare (CAD$3) I had to purchase for the Sea Bus I put the ticket to further use on the Translink public transport system of Vancouver. I rode the Sky Train, a limited network of automated railcars elevated above the streets built as part of the 1986 World Expo held in Vancouver. Though limited for space with the bike in the rearmost compartment of the two car train, I rode it the 6 stops until the train diverged from the line I needed so got off to ride.
As close to limping as is possible on a bike, the right pedal was heavily favoured until I got to Our Community Bikes on Main Street. They didn’t have the parts that I needed, nor would they in the time I had remaining in Vancouver. They could point me in the right direction of a timely supplier and so I paid the Black Sheep Bike shop a call. A deal was struck and even fewer original parts of the bike would remain by tomorrow morning. A used crank set (with virtually new chain rings thrown in) and new pedals would bring the bike back to roadworthy condition.
Barely home for more than 5 minutes and it was Christmas in July. Carsten from Ralf Bohle GmbH, the makers of Schwalbe bicycle tyres, had sent me two Marathon XR tyres and Schwalbe inner tubes. I’ll have tried out the whole range of Marathon tyres by the end of the journey and I recommend unreservedly any of them to all touring or ordinary cyclists.
Finally, the day was rounded off with a wonderful dinner with Cathy’s cousin Robert and their Aunt Thelma at Robert’s house overlooking some 800 acres of cranberry fields, the rest of the Fraser River Valley, the city of Richmond in the distance and in the hazy horizon some terrain that is part of the USA to the south.
previous 
