Tuesday, July 1st, 2008

Canada Day 2008 had an awe-inspiring start for me. I left Lillooet to travel west on the Whistler highway to eventually reach Vancouver. The entire trip was only 250 km, and I left at 11am expecting to reach Vancouver well before suppertime.

Climbing out of the Fraser canyon and into the rugged Coast Mountains is spectacular. The tiny little road- little more than a goat trail at some points with single lane wooden bridges- meandered up and up through the massive mountains that towered above me. It was hard not too feel both insignificant against this natural beauty, but also proud of the engineering achievements of those people who were able to build a road through this wilderness. This is the wild Canadian frontier, and I can think of few better places to celebrate our nation’s birth.

Little did I know that my day would peak before lunchtime. Everything after this point was downhill…literally.

The climb up the mountains meant that sooner or later I would have to come down. After the first 100km leg I approached Pemberton, and there was a steep 10 degree decline for about 5km or so. As the little road essed and turned down the mountainside, I could smell the all-too familiar scent of grinding brakes, as every vehicle in the long line of cars I was in rode their brakes down the road. I was no exception. After a series of particularly tight esses, I turned around a bend to discover that my rear brake was no longer working. I pushed on the foot pedal to no avail- I was going down a mountain with no rear brake!

I panicked or only a second as I gripped my hand brake and managed to slow the bike into a runaway lane. I never thought that I would ever need to use one of these lanes on a bike- but here I stood in the hot sun at noon on Canada Day stranded on a mountain road with no rear brake on my motorcycle.

A few fellow motorcyclists pulled over to assist me. That’s one thing about bikers- we are always friendly to each other and always make sure that everything is OK. One of the motorcyclists thought my brake cable had snapped, another thought my brake pad had eroded too badly. They were both wrong.

A third biker came by, laughed, and put me at ease. Apparently this had happened to him before on this exact same road. When one uses the brakes to much going down a hill, it heats up the brake fluid to the point where it boils and the brake stops working. He said that all I needed to do was let it cool down. Sure enough, I started the bike up, and the brake was working again.

Relief. I was glad that I found out what the problem was, and from that point on I no longer rely on my brakes alone to slow me down during a decline- I use a mix of gearing down and equal distribution of front and rear brakes. Scary way to learn, though.

The rest of the trip to Vancouver included passing through Whistler. Up to that point, traffic was light and easy to handle. However, this was the end of the Canada Day long weekend, and after Whistler the traffic heading into Vancouver was unbearably heavy. For the entire 150km trip I was only able to travel 50km per hour, with frequent stops at red lights and construction interruptions. Due to the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, this highway is being twinned so there is construction everywhere.

The trip, which was only supposed to last a few hours, took about 5 hours to complete. I had a brief mental relief from the droning ride of heavy traffic as I reached Squamish and smelled the salt water air of the Pacific Ocean. The scenery was breathtaking as I rode high up in the mountains overlooking the sea. They call this highway “Sea to Sky”…today I was riding from Sky to Sea.

What a beautiful country.

I finally reached West Vancouver at about 5:00pm, and smiled a sigh of relief as the long ride from Lillooet was finally over. I had reached my destination…almost…but…not……quite. The traffic on Highway 1 tightened up as I left West Vancouver and reached North Vancouver, and then the traffic slowly ground to a halt.

As I sat on Silver in my full leathers in the 30 degree heat on the hot asphalt all I could think about was how this holiday traffic must have caused a bottleneck somewhere and that I would just need to be patient. I started to sweat profusely as the heat from the sun combined with the heat from Silver’s engine started to take its toll. This was extremely uncomfortable, and traffic did not appear to be moving. This continued for the next two hours.

Two hours in the hot sun. Imagine that. Not a good time.

It turned out that this was not simply holiday traffic, but one of the only two bridges from North Vancouver into Vancouver had been closed. A woman was on the bridge and threatening to commit suicide, so the police closed the bridge. My initial reaction, to be honest, was a rant of some unkind and insensitive words about this woman who had inconvenienced me and made me uncomfortable. However, after the incident was finally over and I was able to cross the bridge after three hours of waiting, I regretted the words I spoke. This poor soul had decided to end her life, and although this had impacted my day negatively, nothing I went through this day could compare to what that woman was going through.

She didn’t jump, thankfully, and I hope she gets the help she needs.

I finally made it to my friends Scott & Gill’s home in Burnaby at about 9pm. I was hot and exhausted from the marathon trip from the prairies to Vancouver. I had finally made it to the coast..but this is not my final destination. Tomorrow I am heading further west to another coast entirely.