Cyclebetes Ride Across Canada

Ontario boarder to Winnipeg – 170km’s

Thursday night proved to be one for the ages as right from the get go in the airport our fun and games just never stopped! When trying to rent a truck our reservation was done incorrectly and therefore no vehicle was available upon arrival. Plan B was to rent a fully loaded luxury truck on the group’s accord – the only way to get from point A to B (of course!). The people at the rental centre felt bad for us so they gave us the vehicle for the same price as our reserved rental…what a deal!
Now we’re travelling in style from the Winnipeg airport to destination 1 – Kenora, ON. We got to the campsite around 8pm then got a phone call from the team saying that they were running a few hours late and wouldn’t get to the site until the wee hours of the night. So we had a few hours to kill in Kenora, no sleeping equipment and an SUV that had wicked 4x4 capabilities…. See where this is going! Bushwhacking through the side roads of Kenora (all was safe of course) we got lost on a golf course, found that we could drive over curbs and climb up some major inclines (and back down with the reverse camera light and image on our navigation system).
The team finally got to the campsite and we had a monster fire going and a loud welcome with hoots and hollers ready for the riders. We set up an 8-person tent in the dark, stuffed all 8 inside and called it a night. The next morning we took a look at the tent and saw that it was done completely wrong, was on an angle somewhere near collapsing and the waterproof shell covering the top was actually on only half the tent, thus the dampness inside in the morning!

Onto the ride… We got an early start and left Kenora en route to the Manitoba boarder. With a warm welcome we met up with the Manitoba team and departed with the Ontario members. It was really a touching moment seeing one of the rider’s little boy run over to him yelling out his name and giving him a hug. His dad was riding for his little boy and this combination was really touching. This s what it’s all about… there’s no selfish attitudes on this ride, it’s not about who’s tired or sore from the day before, it’s about getting onto that bike and riding for the cause – and plain and simply seeing this little boy climb into his dad’s arms for riding was a special moment.

The Manitoba team took over and off we went with a quick turn around. 170km’s to Winnipeg before setting up camp. This was an uneventful ride let me tell you. The roads were totally flat, the headwinds were gusting I’m guessing around the 20km/hour mark and the roads had so many bumps and cracks in them because of the brutal winters here. That’s about all I can say about the ride today – we got to the campsite, had the most budget of budget showers and were overwhelmed by the mosquitoes. I mean these things attacked like they were on a mission… I have a new appreciation for GOOD bug spray.

All in all this was a good day. Everyone rode hard, people had fun and I think everyone got a half-decent sleep. I’m on the road right now in the RV on our way to Brandon, MB where we meet up at 3pm for a community ride with 30 or so scheduled riders to follow us through the city.

Keep posted on our journey through our LIVE MAP on www.cyclebetes.com

Steve and Ashley 1 .... North Shore Mountains ZERO !

As I posted two weeks ago, the North Shore's Triple Crown is one heck of a tough ride. It plays with your mind on the third and final ascend to the top and takes half a day to complete. Nutrition needs to be up to par, hydration should be topped up on a regular basis and you should have some money to treat yourself to something nice once you're done.

Ashley and I conquered the ride once and wanted to one up the anti this time around - and we did. We started at 7am and parked my car in the Grouse Mountain parking lot then took off on our bikes and headed over to Mt. Seymour. Stage 1 completed...onto Cypress then finished with dropping the bikes off and locking them into my car at Grouse. We were tired, it had taken us just under 6 hours to complete 107km's of hills but we knew we wanted more. To one-up our last ride, we started to hike the Grouse Grind. 2.8km's of uphill mayhem to finish the day!

On a regular day the grind might take us 40-45 minutes... today we both took over 1 hour to finish it! None-the-less, we showed those mountains whose boss and finished the day with a tall pint of beer and some nachos.

So what's next... Well, we've got the fire lit bright under our asses for new (and crazy) challenges. We're talking about adding in a third person so we can park at each mountain base and actually hike to the peak of each one with rides in-between. The other option right now is to sign up for the Mount Baker ride where you simply just ride to the top of Mount Baker!

What do YOU think should be our next EPIC DAY...?