Day 55: Dease Lake to Jade City

With a great day off under our belts, one might think we’d be up and running around ready to tackle the road with all of our enthusiasm. But then one would be wrong. Mostly we walked around in a lethargic waltz, dancing around the important issues without really focusing too intently on getting to the end. For those of us who played soccer the previous day, we were feeling very sore. I can’t remember the last time I had felt that sore, especially the back of my left knee. Specifically, some tendon back there was feeling strained and was loathe to be used.

With all my things ready to go, and people still meandering about, I was able to half heartedly clean my bike. Mostly I just flicked dirt off of it and lubed the chain through the remaining sludge. This kept me occupied until we were ready to go, which was around ten or so.

We left the school in good spirits, though, and as we pulled around the corner to head back to the highway I let out a ‘woohoo’, ready to get going again. Unfortunately for me, my tendon was killing me so I had to spend the first thirty minutes contorting my body all over my bike trying to stretch it out and get it warmed up, without much success. So instead I went back to my low gears and went for a high cadence, hoping to avoid using the tendon all together.

We left the lake valley, which meant some amount of hill climbing, and it began to sprinkle. And then the road turned to dirt which, with the rain turned to mud. I think, though, that this was the worst road to date as there were many, many potholes. As the rain filled them with water it almost looked like a long series of brown paint buckets. After cresting one hill, I was so surprised by the sheer number of holes in front of me that I started laughing and had to take a picture. There was absolutely no way to avoid the holes.

We were going along at our own pace, nobody really riding together since doing so would mean getting sprayed with mud off the back tire. Sometimes I would ride a little bit with a person who had spent at least an hour cleaning their bike in detail the day before and they would bemoan their fate. The terrible tragedy was also quite funny since it was such an extreme difference from sparkling clean to mud soaked in such a short amount of time. At any rate, we continued on, avoiding holes as much as possible while slipping in the soggy ruts.

I made it to the first rest stop near the front and didn’t stay too long, just enough to grab a couple sandwiches and to clean the mud off of my water bottle. I’m not really a big fan of taking a swig of water and getting all sorts of dirt at the same time, but it’s starting to get to be old hat at this point. Chris Liu was quite a bit ahead so I felt like I could take off and pick up the speed a little bit, which didn’t happen as I envisioned it.

After being off the bike for a few minutes, my tendon tightened up again and it was quite painful to get going. My knee didn’t want to bend or take any weight at all. So I compensated by starting to pedal mostly with my right leg until the knee came back online, which took about five miles. But now we were on paved road again so this made the process easier.

The scenery was once again beautiful and the misty clouds against the thickly forested mountains and hills seemed to give an asian feel to the day, appropriate maybe since we were headed to Jade City. Except for the nagging pain, I was immensely enjoying the day on the bike as I toured around the various valleys and hills. There really weren’t many extreme variations in elevations, just a little bit of winding around and following rivers.

Nearing the end of the day, I had gone through a couple of rest stops to get back on the bike and find my tendon tightened up again. So I stayed most of the day on the low gears and did my best to ignore the pain. Even still, though, with my fast cadence I was finally able to catch up to Chris Liu with about two miles left. At this point it seemed like a racing situation so I kicked it into a higher gear and swiftly closed the remaining gap between us. We pedaled on together for a little bit and I was debating whether or not I wanted to race to the end. I was going back and forth in my mind and I think he was doing the same thing since the pace picked up as we neared the last hill.

At this poin,t Sam pulled by in the van and I caught a little bit of the draft and pulled slightly ahead. After being on the low gears all day long I had plenty of energy left for the high gears, even if my knee didn’t feel too good. But as we went up the hill I felt a couple of things. First, the tour wasn’t a race so I didn’t need to be running around trying to be fast and second, Chris had been out in front all day long and it wasn’t cool for me to come in right at the end and try to take some sort of glory. So I pulled up as we crested the hill.

On the other side, Sam was standing with Christy in the road cheering us on, having sensed in the van that it looked like we may be setting up for a sprint. Chris went ahead and sprinted for the finish line having gone from the start to finish in the front, which is a great feeling. I rolled in second behind him glad as always to have been through another great day on the bike and ready to relax and check the area out.

Jade City is really just two jade stores across the highway from each other. We had made reservations with the store on the right, but Sam didn’t know that and instead walked into the store on the left. When he let them know what we were doing they offered us free camping on their lot as well as lots of free firewood. Always nice. And since the other place was going to charge us to stay with them we cancelled our reservation, which they were none too happy about.

At any rate, we were in the new place and I spent the next hour walking around the jade store. They harvest their own jade from an area not far from the store and then sell it to the carvers, which sell it back to the store owners for resale. I had seen some of the pieces in other places at a lower price, but they certainly had a very large selection. I had wanted a jade bear claw chain, but they didn’t have any of those so I settled for plenty of window shopping.

I walked across the street to the other store, who were not happy to see me at all since I was part of the group who had cancelled the reservation, but money is money so they let me come in anyways. The store was much smaller, but they did have a chain similar to what I was looking for so I went ahead and bought my first souvenier of the trip.

Back at camp, we ate dinner and Mario and I talked about going fishing in the nearby creek system, which was said to have some good fish. But Brian came by and said that he was talking with the store owners and they said that there was gold mining in the area and offered to take us gold panning for free. Free is for me so I quickly signed up to go on the little excursion.

We walked a little bit to the creek and spent the next hour or so sifting through dirt looking for gold specks. We didn’t really find anything important, but I did find plenty of pretty green rocks and some mica specks that could be mistaken for gold if the light was right. Regardless of my gold-less situation I had a great time sitting in the middle of nowhere thinking about what it must have been like to have left your family and everything you know to travel halfway across the world to look for gold a hundred years ago. I was quite satisfied living in my imagined gold mining world and stayed long after most people had left. But the sheer number of biting flies was enough to bring me back into a sense of urgency and, as the sun began to set, Brian and I trekked back to camp.

In camp, I finished off the last of the fruit and sat in front of the large pile of burning pine in good spirits. The whole day was a great experience and I was reluctant to finally crawl into bed.