This is the story of my cycling adventure across Canada from Victoria, British Columbia to St John's Newfoundland.
This is a list of all of the bike shops in Canada. It is sorted by longitude so it is a west to east listing. If you cut and paste the latitude and longitude into Google Maps it will show you the location of the bike shop.
This is a list of all of the Laundromats in Canada. It is sorted by longitude so it is a west to east listing. If you cut and paste the latitude and longitude into Google Maps it will show you the location of the laundromats.
This is the story of our 640 kilometre trip from Castlegar to Hope on the rail beds of the Columbia and Western Railway and the Kettle Valley Railway.
View a slide show of our trip in chronological sequence.
The photographs in this story were taken on Fuji-chrome 400 ASA slide film, then scanned at 2400 dpi resolution which gave me a 3,150 by 2,170 pixel image of 16.7 million colours. Although these original images were saved in a JPEG format, the size varied between 600 kilobytes and 1 megabyte, too large for the web. I spawned smaller versions that varied between 14 and 45 kilobytes by reducing the colour depth to 250 colours by dithering and shrinking the pixel size to590 by 260 maximum. These smaller images are not as sharp and rich as their parents, however it has allowed me to provide you with over 300 photographs of this magnificent trail.
"Peter! Peter! Quick! Get back to the bike! It's a bear!"
Mary's shrill cry spun me around. I broke into a run clasping my camera gear to my chest. Heavy crashing sounded in the forest below the lip of the railway bed.
"Blow the horn!" I yelled. "Blow the horn!
Blasts echoed off the hillside mixed with the close crashing of branches. I reached the bike, fumbling the camera back into its pouch.
"Get on the bike, forget the camera, just get on the bike!"
The clasp snapped shut. I wasn't prepared to lose my camera even though the bear sounded close. I threw my leg over the top tube,jammed my shoe into the pedal and pushed hard. In an instant the cool breeze of speed chilled hot oozing perspiration. When the odometer read thirty-five kilometres an hour I started to relax as the downhill burst of speed carried us safely away. Mary, sitting on the seat behind me, reported that there was no wild animal charging down the grade behind us. I breathed out and coasted into the coming twilight.
