Tour before the tour ...: The Chinook blows ...

For those of you with long term memories I mentioned in the last post that we were about to be heading off on a 3 day tester trip. With the bikes finally loaded up and glorious sunshine we set off full of optimisim for our first outing. Kim's bike with load was about 85 pounds not including water and mine with the additon of the Bob trailer was about 110. We had not made much of an effort to restrict weight at this point as we had carried out a quick ride round the block and it didn't seem that bad. I had estimated the distance to the camp we planned to stay at to be about 40km and so we expected to be able to complete that in about a couple of hours.

Here are the before pictures ..

Still all smiles at this point ..

One man and his Bob ..

Things were going pretty well for the first 10 mins until we hit the first hill. Suddenly the laws of physics came into being and the life was sucked out of my legs. Ok this was going to be a bit harder than expected but Kim seemed to be doing Ok so I presumed I'd get used to it fairly soon. That was until the wind hit head on at the crest of the hill. I was moving at about 5 mph but with near maximal effort. Maybe training for this would have been a good idea after all. Note: I had briefly forgotten that the Kaiser never trains except during races*

2 hours later we reached the Calgary city limits. (13.6 miles). We had thought that we were pretty much at the outskirts of the city when we left so this was news to us. As we reached 22 miles Kim was starting to get a bit concerned about how much distance we had still to go. It was at this point that I thought I should probably tell her something that I had realised about an hour before. The campsite was 40 miles not 40 km - my bad. Normally on a bike that wouldn't be a bit deal but today it was.

Although this probably sounds ridiculous to any cyclists out there, we really didn't think we could make it that far. The significantly net uphill with the constant head wind and mentally draining slow speed were taking their toll on us. We needed a plan B. I checked the map and saw what looked like a possible campsite a few miles ahead. We figured that if that didn't work we might have to head to Bragg Creek and stay in a motel - not a very good start.

As luck had it we found the campsite and were met at the gate by the camp warden (an old timer with a long grey beard who looked like he knew a thing or two about camping). Once he heard that we were planning to keep going up the mountain the next day he looked a bit concerned saying that snow was on the way and they expected a significant temperature drop. We pondered this as we set up our tent (technically Kim set up the tent but I'm a team player).

It had taken us 5 hours to go 31 miles and we were wiped out. It had been a net uphill but we hadn't even gotten into the mountains yet and the serious climbing. Thoughts of cycling to Prince Rupert in a week were starting to look like a bit of a stretch. Maybe we would have to re-scope the trip.

But tomorrow is another day ...

To be continued ...

Kim's version of the Lance Armstrong look back at mile 18..