Day 53: Bell II Lodge We think ten weeks is a long time to be on the road. We feel as if biking 70-80 miles every day for 70 days is plenty. We go five or six days without a shower and crave warm water to clean the chain grease off our bodies. As we […]
Day 52: The Woods are Lovely, Dark, and Deep “The woods are lovely, dark, and deep. But I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep And miles to go before I sleep.” -Robert Frost We entered the great Canadian wilderness today, the northwestern semi-frontier dotted by small communities of five or […]
Day 50: Where Rivers Meet and Friends Gather After a grueling 82-mile ride beginning Burns Lake against a headwind, we landed in Telkwa, a “First Nations” word that means “Where Rivers Meet and Friends Gather.” (The First Nations people are indigenous to Canada). Pastor Joe Ellis of the Telkwa Reform church treated us to live […]
Day 49: Sunset at Burns Lake We rode 82 miles from the Mennonite Church where we stayed in Vanderhoof to Burns Lake today. At Burns Lake, a small town noted for its outdoor activities, Rosalie and her husband hosted all the boys in their home overlooking the Lake. (The girls stayed with the pastor of […]
Day 48: What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger On our day out of Prince George, we learned the story of Dylan M, the nephew of Dorrie. His tale begins with Dorrie Sharcott, our host “PG Mom” in Prince George, who has been connected with Texas 4000 from 2004. She knows exactly what we need, […]
Day 47: A Rest Day in Prince George Every so often, our team quits biking for a day to “rest.” Usually our rest day involves some combination of visits to a local cancer support foundation (in Dallas, Amarillo, and Denver), fundraising events (in Dallas, Denver, and Big Fork), and alternative physical activity (whitewater rafting, swimming). […]
Day 46: Hell Yeah Prince George I drove the “cool van” (the one that doesn’t pull out trailer) into Prince George, British Columbia today. A city of 80,000, PG represents the last major opportunity we have to stock supplies before reaching Anchorage. My job? Seek any necessary items from grocery stores and bike shops. On […]
Day 45: The Canadian Rainforest Near the small town of McBride, British Columbia lies an ancient inland rainforest. The one-of-a-kind forest has some cedars over 1,000 years old and greater than 10 feet in girth. On our 62-mile ride from McBride to Purden Lake, British Columbia, we passed through these ancient trees. As expected, we […]
Day 44: The Mountains Were Calling Before the summer, the Rockies team compiled a list great songs and titled the playlist “The Mountains Are Calling.” We put in it songs we felt evoked a sense of majesty and inspiration. As Rockies, our route draws strength from the same mountains we climb through. Today, we left […]
Day 43: Fields of Ice Neither words not pictures can adequately describe the beauty of today’s 80-mile ride into the mountains, from Lake Louise to Columbia Icefields. Massive ice sheets and glaciers loomed overhead as we rode by turquoise-blue streams and green-brown boreal forest. The unmeasurable immensity of the ice and the majestic rock faces […]
