Beglium Baby!

Can anyone give me a crash course in Flemish? Ha, actually they speak english(or choose to, i don't know) a hell of a lot better then the French do, but that is not saying much as France is the only place i have ever been were the people give you a hard time if your french sucks(which admittedly mine does) even at the visitor center!

last night i was taken in by a wonderful family in Belgium.................

i embarked upon this journey to find the answers to the many question which, at times, can weigh heavy on my mind. what i have experienced is that, as i have ridden, more questions have risen from the depths of my sole?

The question of the day: How long can one survive on Belgian chocolate alone?

robthedubliner?

just hanging on the banks of the liffey. takin' the ferry to wales tomorrow and expect to be in london by the weekend.......

Heading to Belfast......what riots?

I'm in Halifax and have been staying with Joy and Paul, Volker's homestay family when he spent his grade nine year in Canada. Volker's my new Austrian buddy whom I met in New Brunswick, more specifically (which I'm sure nobody really cares about but it's interesting to me to think back to looking to my left, as Arlyn and I were cruising along a secondary road, just south of Edmunston, and seeing this smiling cycling dude at the stop sign waiting to merge into my lane, who I end up sleeping with, in a haystack, that night in a local farmer's barn)just he was coming off the number 2 highway to take a break in Grand Falls.

Volker and I had wicked ride out to Peggy's Cove today..it was so cool I won't bother saying anything now.
Paul, Joy and Volker are just about to drive me to the airport so I'll talk to you from Belfast.....

Poor little baby he was born in the 'the gary'...................

You'll have to pardon my lame Elvis references. After Anna and Clint whipped up some of the best home made pizzas I've ever had, we were off to Jonny's styling new pad to partake in some Stampede festivities. After a weekend of 'stampeding', Clint offered to take us up to his condo in Canmore and do a day scrabble(which means walking up a mountain, but one that doesn't require you to use any special equipment), so Clint, Alison, Chucky and I climbed to the summit of the mighty "Chinaman" peak, which you can see in the pictures below (it's actually only moderately challenging, but sure makes for good photography!). After the climb, we had a lovely meal back at the Condo, from which we could clearly see our recent conquest. After Chucky, Vina, Holt and April had headed back to Calgary and Alison was was doing some writing, Clint and I retired to the patio to do some catching up and, if possible, figure out all of the world's(ie. our own) problems. We were having such a great talk that we figured it was deserving of a great cigar, which Clint has apparently become somewhat of a connoisseur of. Myself, who still doesn't really know how to smoke a cigarette, listened carefully as Clint gave me some pointers on the do's and don't's of cigar smoking. Naturally, the cigars brought the conversation to an even higher level. A hour of so later came the hard part, getting up out of the chair. As I attempted this feat, I was immediately brought back to teenage memories of getting off 'The Zipper' at the local fair and being overcome with nausea. After making my way to the living room without causing too much commotion, I laid on the floor next to Alison and informed her of my situation, which I think was already quite obvious to her. With her encouragement and the knowledge that it was only a condo , thus the staircase length was not insurmountable, I summoned up all my working faculties and made my way up the stairs to the bathroom when, all of a sudden, the thought of a cool shower became extremely appealing. As I was showering(well...holding myself up against the wall while in the shower), unexpected, but instantaneous relief came in the form of a rapid exodus of that evening's dinner. After cleaning up(which luckily wasn't such a dirty job being that I was in the shower) I was feeling just well enough to dry off, find Clint's spare room and crash........

A final attempt at an overview......

Admittedly, I find it difficult to give brief overviews, mainy because it's the richness of the experiences which I find most interesting and try to capture, but due to the fact that I'm heading to Belfast in a couple days, I'm going to try to finish a summary of the Canadian ride before I leave.

Alison and I rode the TCC from Penticton to Christina lake. An immense cougar sauntering along infront of us was definitely a highlight. The extremely rude waitress in Beaverdell being a close second

Ali "what kind of soft drinks do you have?"

rude waitress "it's too hot in here for me to tell you them all"

me "what kind of salad dressings to you have?"

rude waitress, in an utterly disgusted tone as she's walking away

"we got all of them except for the weird ones"

from Christina Lake we took the "old Santa Rosa" road which entered into Rossland via Red Mountain. A beautiful, 80 km, forest road with three passes which was our first real hard day riding together and I knew after that Alison was going to be a good riding partner.

From Rossland to Nelson we were on the road via Fruitvale. I stopped in Fruitvale around 5:30 knowing that Alison was due for a "five o'clock freak out"(usually around five o'clock she would have a minor freak out which could usually be subdued with a small amount of food, but sometimes requiring her to run really fast for a bit). While waiting for her, I went across the street to the Subway to ask an older couple, who were enjoying their sandwiches at a picnic table infront of the restaurant, "Where could I get some fruit in this town?"
the women responds, dryly "nowhere, it's called Fruitvale but you can't get any fruit. You should be able to get some in Cranbrook (which is about 100km away)."
me, thinking that's pretty strange "hmm alright".

After crossing the ferry on the Kootney lake we took the Grey Creek pass, a 4x4 road, to Kimberly. From there we went to Fernie and stayed with Alison's friend, Danny. From Fernie we took the number 3 highway and entered in to Alberta via the Crow's nest pass.

It was evening as we came over the pass into Alberta and we decided to pull over and camp near the river which the road was following along. As we were looking for a place to pitch our tent we noticed that another cyclist was already tenting nearby. Though his bicycle was not of high quality, nothing appeared unusual to me. Not so for Alison though, in fact she didn't want to go anywhere near him. So we walked around until we found a spot on the other side with a couple meters of treed area separating us.

4:30 in the morning........

other biking guy(or maybe I should just say, guy with a bike)awakens us with his disturbing mantra which lasted for a least 20 minutes.

"MOTHER FUCKER! COCK SUCKER! MOTHER FUCKER! COCK SUCKER!.........."

after laying motionless for the duration of his first round of morning greetings, we decided that 'getting the hell out of there as fast as we could', would be the best course of action.
As we were attempting to quietly pack up everything to leave we heard some rustling and some new, disturbingly loud, pondering resonating though the trees "WHY DID I DO THAT?! WHY! WHY!........". In about 10 minutes(a job that usually takes more than a half an hour) we had packed up everything and quietly, yet quickly got out of there. The sense of relief when we reached the highway was enormous. Maybe 30 seconds after we had gotten on to the highway, something from 'planet of the apes', carrying its bike on its shoulder, came barreling out of the trees. We put our heads down and gunned it to a gas station that was a kilometer or two up the road. That was our only glimpse of him. What a way to start the day! MOTHER FUCKER!

So we continued on that day past Frank Slide (the rocky remains of a town that was totally engulfed by a rock slide some time in the 1920s, I think) and turned north on the 'cowboy trail' towards Calgary. A great road for cycling with minimal traffic and large, freshly paved, shoulders (you gotta love that Alberta oil!). We met a fellow cyclist, John, a real interesting American man, on the road that day. He's a genocide historian at a college in Wyoming. Every year, he does a 4 to 5 thousand kilometer cycling tour, this year's being from San Fran to Alaska. Though we had planned to ride the over 200km to Calgary, the stress of the extra early morning wake up call was adding to that challenge. Luckily it was the Friday of the last weekend of the Stampede, I had talked to Clint and he was taking that afternoon off, thus offered to pick us up, which he did, in Black Diamond, about 50km south of Calgary.......

Alison............

I first met Alison at 'the lighthouse', an expat watering hole in Kaohsiung. I was told on numerous occasions that I was to meet this crazy girl who was just about to leave on cycling tour of south east Asia, but we always seemed to miss each other. The night I finally did meet her was the evening of her going away party. It was that evening that I first became aware of how amazing this girl is. As is customary, when I meet someone whom I find to be intriguing(male or female), I often pose to them direct questions, such as: what is beauty?, what is greatest thing we as people can do?, what is the meaning of life? etc. Honestly, I can't remember exactly what the question I asked was and I don't remember the exact words she used to answer it, but what I will never forget is the intensity, sincerity and strength of her reply, it left me, and I'm not using this as a cliche, breathless.

After that evening Alison and I kept in contact periodically via email. I arrived in Vancouver a week before I was planning to commence cycling. By the end of week she had decided to ride with me across western Canada. Though I didn't really expect that, it felt very natural, as it turned out to be.

Alison is a very aware, intelligent and passionate person, but it's her child-like enthusiasm, which she exudes most while cycling which is most special to me. I really can't describe it in words, but felt it on the countless occasions when our eyes would meet and share a smile and a laugh.

She is now studying for her Master's degree at the University of Victoria. I have confidence she will excel at this and whatever else she does. I wish her the best and know she will always be a special person in my life:)

Hope to Penticton..........

So I followed the swarm of Christians (actually they only went over the first pass) over the Hope to Princeton highway. An amazing ride which consists of two passes, 1400m and 1200m, and 140km of breathtaking scenery. It's through Manning provincial park and the traffic is minimal. It was great just to really let it all out. Sometimes people ask me why I want to ride my bike like this. There are, of course, many reasons, but one them is because of days like this one. I can only describe it as perfection, being completely alive, aware........happy. To finish off this day I roll into the west side of Princeton at around 8:30pm and feel like grabbing a bite to eat. I see the restaurant at one of the cheap chain hotels is open and decide to check it out. To my surprise it's operated by a Greek couple and I end up having some of the best hummus ever! But even better, was this American truck driver I met and had dinner with, a large, intelligent looking man, maybe sixty and clean cut. He had this calmness about him and these penetrating eyes. We spoke for at least two hours. It was surreal the deepness and sincerity of the conversation. I look back now and wonder if that really happened. Was I really in a small BC town, eating hummus, talking philosophy with this truck driver?

By the time I left the restaurant it was late, so I rode back a bit and camped in the ditch. From Princeton I was going to take the trans Canada trail(TCT) to penticton. I got a map from the Princeton info center and headed out. Here the TCT is old railbed, so the grade never exceeds 2%, thus the first day was up at an almost unnoticable rate and the second day was downhill at a nice cruising speed. A nice ride. I ended up getting to Penticton on Friday, I think. I was supposed to meet Alison there on Sunday and then we'd continue on TCT from there. Being that it was Friday I had to find a place to camp. An abandoned paintball field on the south side of town became my weekend getaway.

After going out with Alison and her friends on Saturday night, we said goodbye to them on Sunday morning and headed northwest out on the TCT along the Okanagan lake........

misplaced post

this was my first posting which was accidently put as a comment.

thanks to my little bro Doug, it appears as though, i have a blog spot. thanks doug.

well i`m in a small french town, 60km east of quebec city in the school "bibliotheque" (my french is pathetically poor, infact, when the people speak to me I can`t help but reply in chinese, which doesn`t help the cummunication process at all, but today i did, at least, understand the directions to the library, so here i am) which shuts in ten minutes. Arlyn and I are enjoying the small town french bakeries and coffee shops on the way to Fredericton. I know, who's Arlyn?

5:57 PM

from the 'bird man' to the Christians............

What's with Jordis? I still love her though.
Suzie's rockin' out "never tear us apart"
enough comentary on 'rock star INXS' though................


After being warmed by the birdman and his wife's hot cereal, tea and hospitality, the former graciously offered to drive us to the elusive Hope, which we 'palefacely' accepted. After hammer treated myself and the birdman to a meal, we parted ways at the local laundry mat, where I was left to pick up the pieces of the failed attempt. Prior to leaving, my friend hammer, did his best to assist me in case of future mis-adventures, by giving me his handlebar compass/bell, first-aid kit, and necklace to attach to my Swiss army knife. All of which are with me to this day.

So now I was alone, slightly delirious from lack of sleep, at the hope laundry map. After an hour, or two, of laying on the bench, falling in an out of sleep, my laundry was finished. It was around 3pm, I loaded up the bike and began to wander aimlessly around Hope as a light rain continued to fall, not letting my forget paleface. This was the closest I came, on the whole trip, to getting a hotel for the night. Infact I went and checked some prices, going on a tip from a kid at the info centre, I checked out the cheapest hotel in town, which has been operated by the same women for, something like 60 or 70 years. She was a very sweet lady and it was only about 45 bucks, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. What precedent would I be setting? On this journey I didn't want to be a tourist, I was supposed to be a traveler. But the thought of rough camping(basically just going out of town and camping anywhere) was painful as I was exhausted and it was still raining. After a period of aimless wandering, the 'big guy' apparently intervened as I was lead to local camp ground into the arms of 150 Christian cyclists! Who fed, clothed and sheltered me. Not really, but they did share their meal, which was prepared in one of the two semi-trucks which was supporting them. They were generally pretty wide-eyed and I shared a lot of wide stares with many of them (you gotta love religious people especially when there in the mist of their religious fervor, combined with a day of cycling, most of them were just floating around the camp ground).

a Christian lady in her fifties during a brief conversation we had as she was coming out from her, after cycle, shower and I was walking to my tent.

"you really love it(cycling), don't you...."

me

"yeah"

we then proceeded to stare into one another eyes for an, in retrospect, unusually long period of time.

gettin' palefaced........

Ok, so that "overview" ended up with the four cats waking up sunday morning in cultus lake. From here the 'plan' was that hammer would ride with me towards chilliwack lake (a very large, very cold and sparsely populated lake about 60km east of Cultus) from where we would turn north and have to cross paleface mountain to arrive in Hope (by our route appox. 100km from cultus) where Haemish's truck would be. From there, he could head back to Vancouver in time for work on monday morning. An apparently flawless plan............

As we were enjoying our breakfast on the patio of a nearby restaurant, haemish's number of visits to the 'little boys room' was growing at an alarming rate. He was apparently feeling a little too 'loose' this morning. As hammer's adventuring partner i have grown accustom to him overcoming great physical ailments once we 'hit the trail'.

me, addressing haemish just prior to leaving on one of our many adventures in taiwan
"you gonna be ok, man?"

hammer, as he is coughing up some of the infamous green flem which, as he has often informed me, signifies infection
"yeah, i'll be fine once we get out there"

This morning's reply was something about the 'salt remedy', a trick he had learned while hiking in Nepal.

With Ty and Timmy seeing us off we headed on towards the chill of the mighty chilliwack lake. After getting lost twice(the second time adding an additional 10km of off-road climbing) we finally arrived at the base of paleface at around 5:30 to the sprinkling of rain. After some, actually no, deliberation we decided that an evening crossing of paleface was the best course of action. As we understood it, it was about 10km straight up from there, then down and about 25km on a forest road out to Hope. Being as haemish was not carrying any gear, i went through mine and found enough for the two of us to be comfortable assuming the current weather situation would persist. Also at this point i must note that after determining that this mission would require a significant amount of time in the rain i proceeded , with great excitement, to squeeze on my newly purchased cycling booties over my shoes, giving them, to my great pleasure, that seemless 'moon boot' look of the latest generation of basketball shoes, yet still having the space in the bottom to 'clip in' to the pedal. Earlier, my booties purchase had promted a somewhat disaproving sigh from my soon to be cycling partner, Alison, which i was already able to translate as a "don't get those things they are useless and are only really for cheeseball yuppies who what to look the part", but apparently the "cheeseball yuppy" in me couldn't resist. Needless to say after about an hour of trudging up the mountain in the mud, as the intensity of the rain had increased, the booties were torn to shreds. I kept the remaining shreds of them in my bag with the idea that they were still usable, "nothing a little electrician's tape couldn't fix up", until somewhere in manitoba when they were finally 'retired' after their one valient tour of duty.

So we continued to trudge up paleface, unable to actually ride the bikes because the narrow trail had reached saturation point. Undeterred we ventured until around midnight when we simultaneously realized we weren't at the top yet, due to some earlier crossroads we weren't even sure we were still on the right trail, it was too dark and wet to go back down, we'd have to spend the night up there, we were totally soaked and freezing and we only had one sleeping bag! After this sobering realization set in, we checked in my waterproof trailer bag for the minimal remaining dry clothes, took out the tent and together tried to determine which was the best puddle to set it up in. Then squeezed our way into my sleeping bag and slept. At the crack of dawn, after a less than refreshing sleep, we loaded up the bikes and rode back down to chilliwack lake immediately turning into one of the few nearby cabins in search of hot water. Little did we know, we had just entered the domain of 'the bird man'............................

east coastin' it..........

So i'm aware that it's pretty lame that I've reached the east coast and my total correspondence consists of 'day1' and some random blurb from a small French town that no one has ever heard of. Thus today I will attempt to remedy this by giving a general overview of the trip so far, right up to me sitting in Fredericton in my friend's (Fiona! an apartment mate of mine from GangshanTaiwan) living room typing right now.

After the 'first dinner', Ty and I headed out following the maze of 'trans Canada trail' signs which took us from the street to bike paths, to single track trails, by highrises and factories, along rivers and golf courses, to a ferry(which we took as the sun was setting and we were enjoying our French bread and olive oil which has become one of my staples) and eventually after two days to a beautiful beach on Cultus lake where both Timmy and Haemish were to meet us. Ty, after one night, not having anymore of this 'camping thing' suggested we rent a cabin(actually it was like a motel room,) for the night. Just as Ty and I sit down to lovely dinner of hummous in a bag and blueberry wine(which we had picked up at a local winery on the way) Timmy shows up sans Haemish. Fortunately a couple hours later I hear the familiar, somewhat reminiscent of the fat albert cartoon "hey, hey, hey..." And I immediately know Hammer(Haemish) is 'in the house'. The four of us were enjoying some after dinner local brews when we notice a the four girls down the way indulging in similar festivities. One of which, shortly after, came to introduce herself to us. To the shirgrin of the others(who actually are from or have lived in Vancouver), they were 'surrey girls'.

Timmy "what is the first thing surrey girls do in the morning?"
me "I don't know what?"
Timmy "go home"
Note: I just spoke to my brother Mark on the phone and he asked me to try to keep this blog 'G-rated' so as my niece, Madison and my nephew, Jordon could show it at school. This is the best I can do considering there is Ty and beers involved in the story.

Thus the surrey jokes continued on between us for the remainder of the evening. Only to be superseded by "hey man, you're wearing a touque!" which the drunkest guy in the, actual log cabin, bar shouts at me just as I enter. The humor in this is drawn from that fact that my wearing of the touque had become a major point of discussion early in our indepth conversations with the surrey girls. Ty, the one least in favour of the touque wearing, of course, found it the most humorous. Finally after sipping(actually chewing) down some locally brewed dark ales we all headed back to the cabin. Ty, after having spent the last two days cycling 180km was ready to crash. Haemish and I, knowing we had a big day ahead of us also were quickly out. Oh right and Timmy.........there was something about the tallest surrey girl, security guards, picnic tables.......but unfortunately my memory becomes a little fuzzy here, as dreams of the next day's cycle lead me into a deep slumber.........................:)

riviere-du-loup........

arlyn and i are just making the turn south towards new brunswick and will follow an old railgrade for the next 134km. it poured yesterday day from morning untill night, we manged about 45km into saint jean port joli, a funky little, artistic community on the south side of the st. lawrence, maybe 150km from quebec. after parking our soaked bikes under the balcony of le bonte divine we entered into the beautifully restored old house to comforting aroma of freshly brewed coffee. For the next three hours not a word was said as we read, drank coffee and watch the rain come down. Finally we decide to walk around the town and see if we can get some accomodations after checking out a crappy camp ground sans shelter and a overpriced hotel we slip into a lunch nook. The waitress is this awsome french girl who is laughing and singing as she serves the, mostly local, customers. i ask her if she knows of a shelter we could set our tents up in. to make a long story short, we end up staying at her home right on the sea (or river) having a wonderfully homed cooked meal with her and her friends containing, of course, amble red wine, local micro brewed beers, laughing, shouting and everyone inturn describing what is is about their individual passions that drive them.........