Here is what I used to know about Victoria:

Tea
Queen
Parliament
Big gardens I could care less about
Buskers (god, I even hate that word)
Boats and water ferries
Bad trip with college boyfriend and his mom involving tea, previously mentioned dumb gardens and a Christmas Shoppe
Tourists!!

Parliament at night. Taken with Yashica T4 on Ilford B&W Film.

Parliament Building and Queen with tourists. Yashica T4/Ilford

Besides the bad college-boyfriend trip of infamy, the last time I was in Victoria was last summer during one of my solo bike tours. I’d ridden north from Portland and had just come across on a ferry. After clearing customs, I was dumped out into a mass of mindless, touristy humanity on the city’s inner harbor. I’ll be honest with you: I freaked out. Then I did what seemed safest – I got on my big, heavy bicycle and pedaled out of town as fast as humanly possible.

It wasn’t really fair to Victoria, but I did what I had to do. The next day I followed the Galloping Goose Trail and connected to the Lochside Trail system to ride up the coast toward the ferry that would take me to Vancouver. It was one of the best days of the tour. The trail took me through farmland and coastline and gravely passages covered in green canopy. It was lovely. And amazing.

I vowed to give Victoria another chance.

That chance came a few days ago, when I paid the old island a visit for a big bike ride with 1500 friendly strangers. (The Tour de Victoria is a 140k ride that covers the most beautiful roads in Victoria and its surrounding towns.)

Bike Boxes Win Friends and Influence People

(Or at least just make good conversation pieces.)

Having never flown alone with my bike before, I commissioned a Bike Packing Boot Camp session from my favorite wrench (that one boy what lives with me in my house and brings me coffee in the morning). After showing me the ropes, he forced me to disassemble, pack and the re-assemble my bike twice to make sure I knew what I was doing. Apparently, I was convincing because he gave me a bike-packing merit badge and dropped me off at the airport.

Traveling with a big bike box seems to draw a lot of attention and most of the conversations I had went like this:

Them: Hey, what’s in that huge box?

Me: Bike. (I enjoyed saying “Bike” instead of “a bike”. As if Bike were a proper noun. It doesn’t take much to amuse me.)

NO WAY! A bike??! What is it like one of those ones that folds up or something?

[Me looking at the HUGE box kinda funny] No, it’s just a regular bike. A road bike.

NO WAY! How did you get it in there?

You have to take it all apart and then stack it together. It’s like a tetris game but with more grease.

Ha! So, you take it apart… like with a wrench?

Yeah, kind of like that. Handlebars and seat and wheels and pedals come off. You take off the derailleur too. (I started to lose them here, so I’d stop talking.)

Well, I’ll be….

From the Famous Last Words Department…

The weather didn’t look very promising when I left Portland, so I packed a fender. If I pack a fender, I reasoned, then it will be sunny for sure!

I was feeling very smug and sneaky the next day when I woke up to a report that said it was going to be partly cloudy and mostly dry during the day of the race. Victoria better be thanking me for my fender black magic, I thought. I turned my two-room, two-balcony suite at the Grand Pacific Hotel into a bike shop and reassembled Bike. Then I moved the coffee maker to the bedstand, set it up and set an alarm for 5:00am. In the morning I rolled over, punched the button and waited for the smell to hit me.

Hotel room bike shop. Yashica T4/Ilford.

When I woke up I thought, It’s a good day for a long bike ride with 1500 strangers.

On the start line I chatted up a lovely couple.
The announcer bellowed and hollered and it was exciting, though I couldn’t quite make out what was being said.
Then a gun went off or a horn blew or something loud happened and we were rolling.
As we went under the starting banner I could finally understand the announcer who said things like, “look at the mass of humanity rolling through downtown Victoria!” and “incredible crowd!” and “Good luck!”

I reached back and patted my pocket to double check my food supplies only to discover that I’d forgotten them in the hotel room.

No worries. The first feed zone is at 40k. I can ride 40k without calories, no problem.

Meat Sticks and Mud

I prefer to ride alone, but when you’re in a recreational group ride, the point is to relish the togetherness and camaraderie. Riding with people is a quintessential cycling experience – an act that bonds us and brings our consciousness beyond our own suffering. I’d come to the ride alone, but I hoped to find a group to call home.

25 kilometers in, I began to yo-yo with a group of three women who were mixed intermittently in with a pod of men. I couldn’t tell exactly where the alliances were, so I stayed close and paid attention. The woman in gray hammered on the flats. The woman in red pulled away on the climbs. Eventually, I introduced myself to the climber and we rode together a while. She stopped for a nature break and I kept riding, eager to find the first feed zone and get some calories rolling.

Eventually, I realized that I’d manage to miss it all together – my computer read 50k and I still hadn’t eaten. No one else had seen it either, so two gentleman took pity on me and fed me. They got me through the worst of the climbs, a section of the route referred to as the Highlands: punchy, steep hills on narrow roads through wooded countryside. Stunning and spooky with sharp turns that sent at least one rider careening over a barrier and down a hillside.

When we emerged from the Highlands, the Climber in Red caught me. We sat up together and waited for her companions and when they arrived she introduced me. We worked together. It started to rain. Hard. We stopped to put on jackets and The Climber fed me cured meat.

“Be careful with that meat!” laughed Gray Vest, “She keeps it in her bra!”

Gray Vest had a name: Mary. Mary the Mountain Biker.

The rain came down harder and when we hit a grade I decided not to let The Climber get away again. I sat on her wheel eating mud and water, then took a shift dragging her up the second half of the hill. Sitting in back while a steady spray came off my back wheel she said, “UFF! I think I liked it better up there!” No one had fenders. It wasn’t supposed to rain.

At the second feed zone (kilometer 75) we filled our bottles with water and our pockets with food. It was the last time we stopped to rest, choosing to blow through the final two feed zones in favor of finishing faster.

We’re Winning

On long rides, I always get better as I go along – it takes me a good 35 miles to really start feeling good. There is a point where the legs begin to feel disconnected from me – almost numb. I look down and they are turning over like pistons – 85 or 90 RPM. Tick, tick, tick, tick. The connection between my body, my bike and the road is seamless and I feel like I can ride forever.

That happened to me this time, but I could tell my group was starting to feel the pain. I started to drop The Climber when the road tilted up. The pace on the flat sections eased a little bit. We chatted and laughed. We hit and off-road gravel section and came out of it looking like battle-weary cyclocross racers, faces and bodies covered in mud.

As we got closer to Victoria, the volunteers who were controlling traffic (a rolling enclosure for a recreational ride – amazing!!) became more and more animated. At the top of a steep but short hill, one ran alongside me, clapping and cheering. The corner marshals told us we looked strong. The cadets who were stationed at each corner throughout Oak Bay cheered like they meant it.

Somewhere up the road in Victoria, Ryder Hesjedal was finished and showered. Here we were straggling in hours later and the crowds made us feel like we were winning.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

By the time we rolled under the finishing banner, we didn’t feel that way anymore. Weary and cold (my companions all had numb hands from wet gloves – it’s worth noting that though my $18 wool DeFeet gloves soaked all the way through, my hands stayed warm until to the bitter end), we rallied a bystander to take a picture of us.

The lens on my phone camera was fogged from condensation and the resulting image says just about everything there was to say about our ride:

This is absolutely the only photo I have from the entire day.

I said my goodbyes, pedaled around to the back of my hotel and took off my outer layer of socks, which was caked in grime. Holding my shoes and socks in one hand and bike in the other I tried (unsuccessfully) to sneak in unnoticed by hotel staff. Luckily, they smiled at me instead of beating me with my own carbon fiber and then making me clean up the watery footprints I was leaving.

In the room I realized I had no recovery food (I didn’t play this nutrition thing very well, huh?) so I scarfed a bar I’d been handed as a promo on the finish line, jumped into a neck-deep tub of hot, hot water and tried not to scream as the embrocation re-ignited to varying degrees of fiery hell. (ok, I admit it, I kinda like it when that happens. Pain is my pleasure.)

One tw0-hour nap and a very muddy sink later I was ready to rock. Ryder Hesjedal and the Tour de Victoria crew hosted a salmon barbeque on the top floor of the Parkside Resort and Spa which was filled with free booze, hot pro cyclists and really, really awesome local cycling advocates and organizers who filled me in on the state of trail projects, the upcoming Bike to Work Week initiative and what it really took to put together a ride like the Tour de Victoria.

Glory stories and celebration were the order of the day.

I walked home exhausted, stopped at a 7-11 for Kinder Eggs and cream for my morning coffee, and then collapsed with the city winking outside the window.

Muddy sink. (Yashica T4/Ilford)

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On August 21, 2010, I rode north through Victoria, BC toward Sidney, where I intended to nab a ferry. I took the Galloping Goose Trail, which brought me, at some point, to The Lochside Trail System. It was some of the best riding that I’d had all summer – through neighborhoods and farms and trails that transitioned from pavement to well-conditioned dirt and back again.

Sidney was welcoming, I was hungry, and soon enough I found Toast Cafe. Two old men on a bench outside chatted me up as I secured the bike.

Inside, I ate a BLT sandwich that was so delicious and carby, it brought tears to my eyes. There was a group of older women gossiping at the table next to me.

Here were the notes I put in my little pink book:

Ladies in Toast Cafe talking about bridge.

BRIDGE SOUNDS COMPLICATED.

Ladies in Toast Cafe talking about relationships.

RELATIONSHIPS SOUND COMPLICATED.

Then,

BLT is perfect. Soft bread, just so!

It really was a good BLT.

Later, I listened to a pair of boys my age talking about love and they kept referencing trueeeee love. They seemed confused.

So many boys from the 90s were really fucked up by Princess Bride.

TRUE LOVE!

Man oh man.

None of this is helping me prepare to tour again, but that last bit about Princess Bride is true. That movie did more harm than good, believe me.

On the next page is a crossed out note with a star next to it.

*Rope and ask about bears

I did ask about bears. In Pemberton. I also asked the man I met in Pemberton about riding up the Old Duffy highway. My pink book shows the following notation:

Advice in Pemberton: You’re fucking retarded.

I didn’t ride up the Duffy and I still regret it.
I did see more than my share of bears.
And also tried to kill Sal with a frying pan.

All of this to say: I’m excited to tour again (I’m heading out solo again) and

I really need to tell you about the frying pan attack.

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I have a claw-foot tub. Romantic, but probably impractical. There’s no wall to hold onto and the sunlight slips through the sheer white shower curtains on the rare morning when Portland lets me remember what it is to be bathed in light.

You have to be careful stepping into that tub. You have to be precise with the hot and cold faucets, which are separate.  Over the years I’ve learned a perfect system. The perfect shower. The perfect temperature.

The truth is that I love that finicky old tub. As much as I miss the pressure and precision of my ultra-modern San Francisco loft, I appreciate the approximation of temperature. The antiquated plumbing. My house is 103 years old and it knows things.

I listen.

And in the mornings, in that shower, I remember. The shower is a slow gift during which perhaps I should focus on the accuracy of shaving or the massage of shampoo but mostly I let my mind wander through memories.

The blue bucket is always there. It’s plastic and precarious. It’s filled with cold water that feels like gratitude.

*

In the winter of 1999 I lived with a Muslim family in Kolkata, India. I was working for Mother Teresa’s Missionaries of Charity in a home for the dying. I’d been in Calcutta for 2 months and planned to stay 4 more. I took the room because it was cheap and because the Welsh girl who invited me to share it was cute.

After a month, the petite brunette who had a habit of doing adorable aerobics every morning moved out and moved on. She headed south. To Kerala, she told me.

So long, Siobhan.

We’d battled mice and cockroaches together. We’d comforted each other through Christmas, filling stockings with silly toys.

I missed her. But I learned to live alone and the quiet was welcome at the end of a long day of watching people die. How does one communicate the experience of cleaning a 10 inch bedsore? How do you talk about pulling maggots out of wounds? You don’t. So I came home after work and sat on my cot and stared at the ceiling and wished for aerobics.

Shortly after she left, our landlord’s feud with his brother grew worse. His brother owned a large hotel around the corner and bribed the government to cut the water to our house.

And so there we were. With no water.

Every day a dark-skinned man without shoes arrived with a huge container of water on his back. He dumped this into a large metal barrel. That was the water for the day. That was it. And believe me, it was anything but clean.

I could have moved, but the family was very good to me, inviting me to dinner occasionally and fretting when I came home too late. It felt good to have someone looking out for me. I felt like we were in it together. So I stayed.

My landlord decided that my $1.50/day rent warranted me one bucket of this water in which to bathe every day. It was there every morning, waiting outside my door, which locked with a padlock from the outside and a large iron bolt from the inside.

When I was sick he heated it over a flame but most days it was cold. I had in my bathroom bucket a scratchy scrubber like you’d use to wash a dish. I also had a bar of lime green soap. My favorite, bought from the market around the corner.

This bucket shower became a challenge.

I had to work quickly, because of the chill – and the only suitable location was over the drain in the middle of the narrow hallway-patio outside my door. My landlord always gave me space for modesty, but I still had to wear shorts and a tank top.  I reminded myself daily that I was killing two birds with one stone. Laundry, which I did by hand by scraping my clothing against concrete, was a hassle. Here were two items that I wouldn’t have to pound and hang!

Blue bucket showers were a study in efficiency and magic.

But, more than anything, they were a study in gratitude. Water on the skin, however cold, was cleansing. More than my patients had asked for before they were brought to me. Water over the head never escaped the heavy burden of symbolism, though the intensity of the suffering I’d witnessed had already beaten the religion clean out of me.

In Kalighat, the home where I worked, I carried women in my arms into the bathing area. Their fragility and jagged bones against my body made me feel puffy and white and fat. They screamed. They screamed and I sang John Denver songs. And then I washed them while they rocked back and forth speaking a language I could not understand. Dying of diseases I could not understand.

I carried them back, clean and dry. And when I put them on their cots they screamed and held their hands out toward me. Later they would shit the cot and I would clean it. Then I would carry them again into the bathing room. It went on and on like this.

I’d take the subway home and keep my head down, attempting to avoid the inevitable anonymous groping that would come when the car became too crowded. Once I fought back. Most days I just got off at my stop and walked home.

I knew the blue bucket would be there for me in the morning.

Cold water, clarity, peace and strength reflecting hazy, polluted morning light.

My whites had become gray. My heart had become quiet.

I poured the water over my head strategically and remembered what it was to live. The glory of daily inconvenience. The triumph of discomfort and perseverance.

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Here’s how it happens.

I wake up in the morning and put on a fairly almost-brand-new pair of Sidis. I lash a temporary home to the back of a heavy steel bike with a long wheel base. I pedal out of Portland.

Along the way, I learn how to start the heavy bike from a stop without kicking the rear panniers. I learn to maneuver it gently to keep it upright. I learn – slowly – how to climb out of the saddle without creating an agonizing swing of momentum. I learn to stop gritting my teeth when logging trucks rolled by.

I stop at a General Store in Barton, Oregon and buy chocolate milk, a corn dog, a bag of cashews and a pack of gum. Then I think, “I’m doing it. I’m touring.” Outside I sit on a picnic bench and make a protein shake out of the chocolate milk. It is terrible. The corn dog is worse.

Two hours later I am somewhere in the middle of a national forest climbing a grade that refuses to reveal itself. The road neither rises nor falls, it just goes on and on forever without drama. I tick off a steady cadence and marvel at how a bike can move at 5 miles per hour with such persistance.

Five miles per hour. That doesn’t get you anywhere very far, very fast.

I make myself pedal for an hour exactly and then stop. There is a large log in the shade where I lean the bike before sitting down beside it.

I’m almost out of water and have no idea how much is left to climb so I take small sips and convince myself to keep going.

People plan these things – I know that’s true. People pore over maps and make route plans with way-points and calculated refueling stops and perhaps scenic, entertaining interludes. I didn’t bother with any of that – I just started riding.

How complicated can it be to ride to Bend, Oregon? There are big, busy roads in between those two towns. I know people in both. I am a phone call away from rescue. This is not exciting, this is just plain crazy pedaling.

Highway 242 through the Willamette National Forest is quiet and narrow and winding. I’ve ridden these roads once before as part of a brevet that involved PB&J sandwiches, a gang of friends, a lunch-box strapped to a carbon fiber bicycle, and a vintage cooler hidden in the woods.

They’re different when you’re alone.

I’m used to ticking off, maybe, 17 or 19 miles every hour, depending on whether I’m alone or in a group.

Five is crushing. Crushing.

It doesn’t matter how many times I remind myself that I am on a 65 pound touring bike or how many physics equations I do in my head to convince myself that the power output really ought to be completely phenomenal regardless. Five miles every hour?

I’ll never get to Bend.

I spend 90 minutes squinting for road signs. Road signs signify civilization and progress. Road signs will mean that this crawling pace will come to an end. Light through trees look like yellow diamond signs. I hallucinate green signs which might indicate a campground that has water. I stop at the river and fill up my bottles though I don’t have a purifier. I dampen a bandanna and wear it around my neck. I squint into the sun.

Mary, I’ll Be OK

The hill ends, of course. They always do. And after a series of false summits, I hit the real one and ahead of me there is a mountain with a winding road that goes down.

It goes down! The pig bike, I discover, loves to go downhill.

I coast like a kid and watch the miles tick over effortlessly. You owe me this! I think. And then I remember that I’m wrong.

“Thank you!” I say out loud. These roads owe me nothing, so I should be grateful for what I get. “Thank you!”

75 miles in and already with the revelations, Swift? Sheesh, this is going to be a long trip.

The downhill sweep leads to hippies. Hippies who are hitch-hiking. Hippies who have water.

Saved.

Then there’s Detroit.

Rolling into town after 50 miles of Capital N Nothing is almost religious. There’s a blue-green lake to the right filled with people on boats who are diving.

I want to jump in.

At the gas station and General Store the woman forgets that I gave her a five and not three dollars so I lose two bucks in the process of procuring water. It’s not worth the argument so I take my $5 bottle, ask her where I can find the best burger in town and then pedal there.

Inside the Corner Post I find Mary.

For the record, my mother’s name is Mary and, while perhaps half the world is also named Mary, this coincidence still managed to strike me.

I am the only customer so Mary asks if it’s alright to visit with me a bit and we chat about my journey.

“You’re traveling alone? Isn’t it awful?”

“It’s actually kind of nice. It’s quiet.”

“But aren’t you afraid?”

“I’m being careful. And counting on the universe – and several years as a self-defense instructor – to take care of me. I know there are risks, but I want to be able to move around freely in the world. I don’t think that’s too much to ask, do you?”

She assures me she does not, but feels compelled to remind me about the guy who took the girls from Portland a while back and brought them to Detroit specifically to rape them.

“You’ve got to be very careful!” she urges. Then she helps me figure out where I will camp later and brings me a very big and tasty bacon cheeseburger and an extra Dr. Pepper before helping me refill all the water bottles that did not get filled with the $5 supply from the general store.

“I wish I could freeze these for you!” she says.

I like Mary.

It’s getting late but I keep pedaling, hoping to tackle some of the grade that will murder me all the way from Detroit to the summit of Santiam Pass tomorrow. I make it about 8 miles, see a campsite called Whispering Falls and decide that sounds just lovely.

At campsite 6 I put up my tent, change into compression recovery tights and a wool base-layer, organize things for the morning, sit in the sand on my own private river bank, and then sleep like I’ve been kicked in the head. In the morning my North Face Puffy Jacket pillow is covered with saliva, my phone is dead, my alarm didn’t go off, I feel half-alive and I am glowing from the inside out.

I am in a fabric shelter, still sitting with my feet tucked into the sleeping bag, boiling water over a camp stove to make one-cup coffee with a re-usable fliter. There is a river to my right. The Long Haul Trucker is still sleeping next to the tent. Compression tights are hot. Coffee is strong. Panniers are heavy. Everything needs to be taken apart and packed up again.

Everything is so simple. It’s easy. Straight-forward. Streamlined. My life is in these bags or spread out on a picnic table.

I wash my arms, face and neck in the river, re-pack the bike and shove off up the road. On my way out, I wave at two older couples who are talking outside their motorhomes.

Electricity – what an amazing luxury! My phone is dead and people are worried about me so I have to pedal fast.

Eight miles later I find Marion Forks Restaurant, a bowl of hot oatmeal, a sausage patty the size of my face, and a power strip.

Electricity!

I’m telling you, it’s brilliant.

I plug in various devices and a young woman walks through the front door and says, “Oh, you’re that girl!”

Guilty as charged in most cases, but clueless in the particular moment.

“You ate the restaurant my mother works in yesterday… Mary! She told me all about you last night. She is worried about you!”

Hey, Mary. Don’t worry – I’ll be ok. Promise

To Be Continued.

PS: Blog updates will lag a little bit, but for real-time adventure updates, just follow me on Twitter. As long as I can find a little range, I’ll tweet a photo or two.

(In the bathroom at the Marion Forks Restaurant)

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It’s true.

As last year kicked my ass like you wouldn’t believe, it also gave me a crazy case of cabin fever. Pow! Biff! Bang!

Crazymaking.

I stormed into 2010 with one mission: get the hell out of Portland as often as humanly possible.

It’s not that I don’t love it here, it’s just that sometimes my gypsy blood gets the best of me. I gotta move, man. I gotta GO.

We just came back from a business-mixed-with-pleasure trip to San Jose, California. Business was done, bikes were pedaled, running commenced, camping took place. But most of all?

Eating.

Like – crazy French-food-melted-fried-pasta-carb-cannoli face stuffing.

It was fucking glorious.

We stayed just long enough to start missing Portland. We got back just in time to save the garden from imminent explosion (and, incidentally, force fed ourselves one cubic ton of salad greens). We snuggled the cats, unpacked our suitcases, went to the office, got down to business.

And as religious as it is to sleep in my own bed (sweet jesus I love my bed. Have I told you about it? Good god!), I’m ready for the next departure. It’s a good thing, too, because the rocketship lifts off next Monday for a trip of slightly grander proportions than the ambling, camping-ey road trip that we just took down the coast.

Next week we hit the big time. New York City.

It’s a place that I have cherished ever since I made my first trip (solo) at 13 years old to visit my Great Aunt Mary. Making the transfer through the Chicago airport was, quite possibly, the single most terrifying experience of my life until that date.

I was hooked.

The thrill of the unknown. The possibility of getting lost and stranded in a monstrous airport.  The idea of boarding the wrong plane and ending up somewhere unintended (this is still my favorite travel daydream!)

These days the airports aren’t so daunting and most of the flights are direct so we buckle up and hold on while the world shoots by down below. When they doors open reality is shifted, the landscape is new and the air is filled with hope and energy.

Great Aunt Mary still lives in her one-bedroom co-op apartment in Harlem just as she has for more than 65 years. She’s 95 or thereabouts nowadays and fading a bit on us but, for the moment anyway, she still sits up at the breakfast table working away at NYT crosswords and looking at old pictures of her 3+ trips around the world.

She is my power animal. Her presence in the world has always reassured me that I do not need to choose the standard paths into adulthood.

New York is her city. In my mind, it belongs to no one else. Crossing the road with her walker in front of a stampede of charging taxis, she owns everything. They always stop. Always. Every time.

Traveling to her city reminds me that everything is possible.

Little old ladies not more than 5 feet tall can stop four lanes of charging traffic on Broadway. Small-town farm girls from conservative Norwegian families can move to New York City in the 1940′s by themselves, never marry, eschew children and travel the world many times over.

This year, we’ll visit her apartment but stay with a friend in the Lower East Side. I’ll eat until I pop, run until I drop and take the streets by bicycle storm.

I’ll think of the young woman who is now an old woman and imagine her coming here alone all those years ago.

I’ll be energized and inspired and feisty. The way she was.

The way she always has been.

*

PS: Check the Tumblr site for a more micro-bloggey immediate blow-by-blow of travels, adventures and life.

PPS: This post has been edited so as not to offend CP’s sensibilities! ;)

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