Ryan here just writing a few words on our ridiculous day. To start I want to clear up a few things that I have learnt over the past five days:
-My Gerber baby butt is ruined forever.
-We have been riding the Crowsnest Highway for 4/5 days, I have seen zero Crowsnests but over 200 Crowsfeet around Scotty’s eyes.
-Sean Neville thought Canada was the size of Prince Edward Island
-Rusty’s eating habits will never change.
Today was full of ups and downs both literally and figuratively. We woke up at the beautiful Haynes Provincial Park campground in Osoyoos. Which is set on a gorgeous point that reaches far out into the middle of Osoyoos Lake. Scotty who I have been spooning for all of the camping nights has been jet lagged and up for most of our nights. To explain it quickly, the guy has been awake 98% of our trip. I am actually worried about him. When packing up our gear we realized that Rusty’s front tire had deflated overnight. Sean Neville immediately got to work and fixed the tire before Russ could have any sort of meltdown. However, around 15 minutes following our take-off Russ was cruising through downtown Osoyoos waving and whistling at every innocent bystander in his way. Just as Rusty was coming to a decent 25 km/hr he realized that Sean Neville did not connect his front brakes following the tire fix. Rusty began to panic looking for any sort of ditch that could support his frail body in any sort of bail. Luckily, Russ screaming and hollering for help eventually used his pouch as a parachute to bring him to safety. He actually used some spectacular maneuver to slow himself down without crashing through a business window.
The first third of our ride consisted of an uphill climb up to Anarchist Summit. It was beautiful, we rode non-stop as the road winded up and around the mountain that literally hangs overtop the lake surrounding the city. Our climb was super long as we dragged ourselves all the way to the top of the peak. Osoyoos was a hot spot for Baha to take the family for summer vacations back in the day so I hear! Through our eventual boredom, the two current and one prospective teacher of the boys came up with a great way to pass the time through a multiple choice question regarding each turn in the road.
What is around the next bend?:
A) A hill
B) Another bend
C) A mountain
D) All of the Above
E) Just A and C
For the next two and a half hours this is what our ascending climb consisted of. Just wait for the Rockies. As we pushed on following our first pass Russ ended up popping another tube in his tire. When he was biking he immediately knew something was wrong when “Shadow”(Scotty) was passing him. About 30 seconds later Rusty realized his tire was deflated and he was biking on his rim. I have never felt better seeing Scotty’s ego deflate just as fast as the tire after he realized Rusty’s tube was popped. A tube patch later we cruised along on the road.
For lunch we stopped at the town of Rock Creek, which ended up being a blessing in disguise. Scotty and Sean Neville met our newest best friend Harry from Grand Forks. A guy who himself biked from Virginia to California up to Seattle back in the 80’s. Harry actually had the exactly the same bike as Baha’s bike. It was insane as Harry knew everything about that model and gave us some very useful facts. Very weird coincidence! We were pumped to meet someone who had done something similar before and said Bye and thought nothing of it. Eventually, around 2 hours down the road Harry stopped his Van in front of us and offered his place for us to stay the night in Grand Forks. It was around 2:00 so we carried on and were excited as we had a prospective place to pitch our tents in the night to come.
Our last 40 km into Grand Forks consisted of one more mountain to climb then a free ride all the way downhill into the city. The last climb we were all fatigued. I could see Rusty slowly hitting a brick wall and Sean Neville considering calling it quits. Scotty, well, I couldn’t even see him he was so far behind. So, lets just say he was fatigued. Anyways, Sean was particularly struggling up this final pass. His legs were burning, stomach was growling and overall I think it had been a long day on his body. The day was long and we hit the final descend into Grand Forks. The wind was powerful and was directly smashing us in the face resulting in freezing hands and brutal sore knees from the cold. We got to Harry’s place absolutely beat, tired, sore, angry and agitated. Harry welcomed us with open arms displaying his massive Garage, beautiful home and also the pizza that he bought for us to eat. What a legend! Sean Neville went from losing his childhood pet to absolutely ecstatic as he found a new best friend in Harry, who lent him his car to go into Grand Forks to buy some groceries!
To say the least, Harry is one of the nicest guys you could ask for. He set us up with a warm place to stay, fed us and took us in with open arms. If there is anything we have learnt so far in our trip, it is that Canada has amazing people. Not only is the country beautiful geographically but it also has people nice enough to let four stinky and gross MacKinnon boys crash at their place. Anyways, tomorrow we are off to beautiful Nelson!
-My Gerber baby butt is ruined forever.
-We have been riding the Crowsnest Highway for 4/5 days, I have seen zero Crowsnests but over 200 Crowsfeet around Scotty’s eyes.
-Sean Neville thought Canada was the size of Prince Edward Island
-Rusty’s eating habits will never change.
Today was full of ups and downs both literally and figuratively. We woke up at the beautiful Haynes Provincial Park campground in Osoyoos. Which is set on a gorgeous point that reaches far out into the middle of Osoyoos Lake. Scotty who I have been spooning for all of the camping nights has been jet lagged and up for most of our nights. To explain it quickly, the guy has been awake 98% of our trip. I am actually worried about him. When packing up our gear we realized that Rusty’s front tire had deflated overnight. Sean Neville immediately got to work and fixed the tire before Russ could have any sort of meltdown. However, around 15 minutes following our take-off Russ was cruising through downtown Osoyoos waving and whistling at every innocent bystander in his way. Just as Rusty was coming to a decent 25 km/hr he realized that Sean Neville did not connect his front brakes following the tire fix. Rusty began to panic looking for any sort of ditch that could support his frail body in any sort of bail. Luckily, Russ screaming and hollering for help eventually used his pouch as a parachute to bring him to safety. He actually used some spectacular maneuver to slow himself down without crashing through a business window.
The first third of our ride consisted of an uphill climb up to Anarchist Summit. It was beautiful, we rode non-stop as the road winded up and around the mountain that literally hangs overtop the lake surrounding the city. Our climb was super long as we dragged ourselves all the way to the top of the peak. Osoyoos was a hot spot for Baha to take the family for summer vacations back in the day so I hear! Through our eventual boredom, the two current and one prospective teacher of the boys came up with a great way to pass the time through a multiple choice question regarding each turn in the road.
What is around the next bend?:
A) A hill
B) Another bend
C) A mountain
D) All of the Above
E) Just A and C
For the next two and a half hours this is what our ascending climb consisted of. Just wait for the Rockies. As we pushed on following our first pass Russ ended up popping another tube in his tire. When he was biking he immediately knew something was wrong when “Shadow”(Scotty) was passing him. About 30 seconds later Rusty realized his tire was deflated and he was biking on his rim. I have never felt better seeing Scotty’s ego deflate just as fast as the tire after he realized Rusty’s tube was popped. A tube patch later we cruised along on the road.
For lunch we stopped at the town of Rock Creek, which ended up being a blessing in disguise. Scotty and Sean Neville met our newest best friend Harry from Grand Forks. A guy who himself biked from Virginia to California up to Seattle back in the 80’s. Harry actually had the exactly the same bike as Baha’s bike. It was insane as Harry knew everything about that model and gave us some very useful facts. Very weird coincidence! We were pumped to meet someone who had done something similar before and said Bye and thought nothing of it. Eventually, around 2 hours down the road Harry stopped his Van in front of us and offered his place for us to stay the night in Grand Forks. It was around 2:00 so we carried on and were excited as we had a prospective place to pitch our tents in the night to come.
Our last 40 km into Grand Forks consisted of one more mountain to climb then a free ride all the way downhill into the city. The last climb we were all fatigued. I could see Rusty slowly hitting a brick wall and Sean Neville considering calling it quits. Scotty, well, I couldn’t even see him he was so far behind. So, lets just say he was fatigued. Anyways, Sean was particularly struggling up this final pass. His legs were burning, stomach was growling and overall I think it had been a long day on his body. The day was long and we hit the final descend into Grand Forks. The wind was powerful and was directly smashing us in the face resulting in freezing hands and brutal sore knees from the cold. We got to Harry’s place absolutely beat, tired, sore, angry and agitated. Harry welcomed us with open arms displaying his massive Garage, beautiful home and also the pizza that he bought for us to eat. What a legend! Sean Neville went from losing his childhood pet to absolutely ecstatic as he found a new best friend in Harry, who lent him his car to go into Grand Forks to buy some groceries!
To say the least, Harry is one of the nicest guys you could ask for. He set us up with a warm place to stay, fed us and took us in with open arms. If there is anything we have learnt so far in our trip, it is that Canada has amazing people. Not only is the country beautiful geographically but it also has people nice enough to let four stinky and gross MacKinnon boys crash at their place. Anyways, tomorrow we are off to beautiful Nelson!
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