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Monthly Archives: April 2007

Mission

I’ve had my bike for a little over 2 months now and have ridden over 800km. Close to half of that is probably just going to and from SFU which is only a round trip of about 15km. Hardly a distance to be considered a day trip. It’s almost a daily trip in fact. Although my reason for that ride is to commute to and from school, it does serve the purpose of a workout since most of the way there is a single, long, 20 minute climb where my average speed is no more than 13km/h even when I push myself.

Day trips, on the other hand, I would consider as recreation; Longer rides with a destination or perhaps a senic route in mind. The other half of my 800km, I would consider day trips. The most common destination for my day trips so far: The North Vancouver MEC. I’ve got a lot of cycling and camping equipment I need to buy for my trip this summer. I’d usually think of biking to the store as an errand, but I actually enjoy going to MEC. Plus I always try to tack on something to the route that I haven’t ridden before. Or even just make the route longer simply so I can spend more time on my bike. One of those days I decided to head towards West Vancouver and then across the Lions Gate Bridge. That day was actually so windy that I had to pedal to go downhill on the other side of the bridge. There’s a new experience.

My Furthest day trip so far was out to Mission. The purpose of that trip was just to ride a long distance in a single day so I just got onto the Lougheed Highway and started heading east until I felt like I had gone far enough to take a break. At exactly 40km away from home I pulled onto a side street that took me down to the the train tracks at the edge of the Fraser River where I had a short break to eat an apple and take some pictures. Surprisingly, I wasn’t very sore from being in the saddle the whole way. That’s a good thing because I’ll be spending much more time in the saddle in the comming months. On the way back, not content with the 80km that would have been my total if I followed the same route, I wandered away from Lougheed up to the Allouete River where I rode along the trail until it connected to Pitt River. After crossing the Pitt River Bridge, however, it was all familiar territory following roughly the same route back again for a total of 90km. That’s a longer day trip than most people would do I guess.

The next thing I have to try is a Multi-Day trip. I haven’t decided where to though…