Day 56: Jade City, BC to Alaska Highway Junction, YT

The further north we go the more the sun stays out, which means that even at 4 AM the sun can stream through the tent and into your eyes. This mostly means that you roll over and try to ignore it, but at the same time there’s a little voice in the back of my head that says if it’s daylight outside I should be up and about. And the part of me that wants to sleep is trying to tell that voice to shut up. But this morning was notable because it was actually hot in the tent. There was so much sunlight coming in that it felt like a sauna and, having already tossed off my sleeping bag earlier, I had nothing left to do but get up.

Fortunately for me, I had procrastinated long enough so that the van leaders for the day had already gotten up and started making breakfast. While we were getting ready, the store had already opened and was seeing some early morning business from the RV’ers. With the saws and cutting tools whirring close by and many people stopping to ask who we were and what we were doing, it wasn’t long before everyone was up and running around. It was also in this time frame that one of the owners presented us with a box of jade trees or, specifically, wire trees with bits of jade and such for the leaves.

The rest of the morning consisted of people washing their bikes down one more time with the hose and others taking one more look around the shop for possible souveniers. Some of our riders were able to get discounts as well, always appreciated by a group of relatively poor college students.

In an interesting side note, somebody put Sam’s bike directly on a hive of bees, stirring them up. When Sam went to get his bike he got a nasty surprise and was none too happy. But, at any rate, we were soon ready to go and after going through our day’s dedications we got on the bikes for another great day of riding through the mountains.

But today was also a “special” day since it involved the race to the Yukon border. It was a race in that there was a large contigent of us who were going to try to get there first, but it was about 72 miles to the border, so it wasn’t as much a sprint as some of the other races had been. I was feeling pretty good, except that my left knee was a little stiff, but feeling much better than it had the day before.

Two of the main contenders, Brett and Mario, were the drivers for the day so that made my goal of a top ten finish almost a guaranteed result. My “strategy” was to pedal in my lower gears for a good while, conserving energy and giving my legs a good chance to get warmed up, and then kick into a higher gear and try to make up the difference between myself and whoever was in front.

I led for about the first mile or so, but then Channing, JJ, Stephen, Sam and Brian zipped by. I jumped on the back of the line for a little while, but having not warmed up enough, and not being as fast as they are anyway, I let go of the line after only a mile or so. But I figured that they were going so fast they wouldn’t be able to sustain the speed the whole day anyway and I *thought* that maybe it would give me a chance to come back if they got themselves tired early on. But I was wrong.

I never saw Channing and Stephen again until the border. Talking to Mario and Brett at the rest stops they were going nearly 30 mph the entire day and were an hour ahead of me. There was one point where I came across Sam on a long climb, but on the downhill he zipped right out of sight and I didn’t see him for the rest of the day. He was able to team up with JJ and they worked together to 3rd and 4th place.

But early on I was pushing on and wasn’t doing too badly myself. Brian pulled up from the race saying he wasn’t in the mood and so having passed him up I was sitting in 5th place, a fairly respectable position. But then Nick Weaver, who happened to have his birthday that day, caught up to me. And then he invited me to jump on the back and he would pull, which is kind of unusual for Nick since he mostly likes to ride by himself. But I’m all for teamwork since it was really the key to success in a long day.

With Nick there, the speed picked up at least several mph and we were zipping right along. Unfortunately, though, we hit some hills and that makes pace lining a little more difficult. What happened for us was that I would pace faster than Nick and then he would catch up at the top of the hill as I waited for him. And then he would take up the front on the level parts and go faster than me on the downhills. And then on the uphills I would go faster. Eventually, though, we hit a large hill and I made it up much faster than he did so that it wasn’t practical to slow down enough to get back together again, which I felt bad about, but not enough to stop.

But at about this time the tendon (or whatever is back there) behind my knee started up with the pain and torment bit again and so I had to go to a lower gear to try to work it less. This had the effect of slowing me down and it wasn’t long before Nick started catching up to me again. For the next 20 miles or so I managed to stay ahead, slightly. And at the forty mile rest stop I came in ahead, but I was at a point where I could barely bend my left knee.

As a side note, there was a man there who was cycling solo the opposite direction with all of his stuff on his bike and seemed to be in great spirits. Brett offered some free food, which was readily accepted. It’s amazing the kind of people that one meets out in the middle of nowhere.

So Nick started cycling again before me, but I could see him as I started out and I thought that I would probaly be able to catch him. But nope. My left knee was so inflamed that I was limping on a bike. I didn’t want to quit, but I didn’t know how I was going to keep going either. After about ten miles of pain in every cycle, I started to cycle more and more with my right leg and I would rest the left leg.

I continued doing this with more time being spent cycling with my right leg with each passing mile. My speed dropped way down, but at this point I was mostly focused on trying to push on and less on getting in with any kind of ranking. And so I went on this way until coasting in to Mario’s rest stop at the 60 mile mark. I talked with him and he said that I was about an hour and a half back from the leaders and about 15 minutes or so behind Nick. Fifteen minutes is a huge margin to concede over just 20 miles so I knew then I was going to do no better than 6th, but I was still plenty happy with that. I asked Mario who was behind me and he told me that I was about an hour or so ahead of the next person and probably two hours ahead of the last group.

Bouyed by the news that I wasn’t going to drop all the way out of the top ten, I got back on the bike and gingerly moved on down the road. Mario had said it was about anoter 12 miles or so to the end, which was good news for me since I was just about ready to get off the bike. I felt like at this point I was doing more damage to my left leg than could be justified and it seemed like it was better judgement to take care of my body over continuing on. Indeed, for the last 12 miles I probably cycled more than 80% of it with my right leg, sometimes taking my foot off the left pedal completely and sticking it straight out while I cycled.

I went along in this configuration until, at long last, I saw the “Welcome to the Yukon” sign ahead. Brett was memorable with his whooping and hollering welcome which one couldn’t help but laught at. I rolled into the stop and got off the bike limping but smiling. I walked up the hill to the sign where the top five racers for the day were taking pictures and I joined them for the “top six” racers pictures soon after. I’m not sure exactly how long they were there before me, but I believe Channing and Stephen had been there for almost two hours having averaged nearly 30 mph all day. I talked to Nick and he said he had been constantly worried about me catching him, which spurned him on to come in almost 30 minutes before me.

After taking pictures and such we started the waiting game. Chris Liu came in about 30 minutes or so after me, and Brian and Brenna about 30 minutes after him. But then we knew it was going to be a long time before anyone else showed up since Mario had not even shown up in the car yet. So most of us decided to drive on ahead and grab something to eat.

I drove and we were pretty happy to see that the last few miles to our final destination were mostly down hill. At the restuaraunt, I ordered the grilled cheese sandwich and soup combo with a hot chocolate on the side. I mention this because of the price, which has become fairly typical lately. The sandwich itself was about $5, the soup another $3 and the hot chocolate $2. To buy the ingredients myself and make the sandwich would cost about $1. The prices for prepared foods in the remote areas we are traveling for are extremely high and it takes some getting used to.

At any rate, we gathered our orders and headed back to the border to wait. While waiting, I was able to eat all the food, talk to some riders, take a nap, and listen to music. Finally, the last group came in and we took the group picture while comparing our days' experiences. It turned out that the last group to come in had stopped off to spend an hour or so picking raspberries from the many bushes which lined the side of the road. On one hand, it was great that they were enjoying themselves and such, but on the other hand some of us (most of us) were a little upset that they had held up the group for so long.

But really it wasn’t too bad overall and with the prospect of a downhill finish ahead I was just glad to finally get into the campsite. Christy was feeling good and, even though she still had the broken collarbone, decided to bike the last little bit with us. For my part, when I got on the bike I absolutely could not use my left knee at all. It was sheer agony and for the first time I thought that maybe I could have a serious injury and not just a sore muscle from playing soccer at Dease Lake. I went so slow, even going downhill, that I came in dead last. It feels good to be done for the day, though, especially a long day like today, so it wasn’t too long before I was walking about ready to think about other things. (It was weird to me that I could walk, but not pedal.)

We had heard that there was a town that may have the Risk board game about twenty miles away. And we needed to get some party supplies for Nick’s birthday as well so I snagged the van keys and a good sized group of us drove out to Watson Lake to see what we could find. Unfortunately, we managed to show up ten minutes after most everything had closed down for the day so we couldn’t look for the game, but we were able to find the gorcery store and, hence, some cakes and ice cream for the birthday boy.

On the way back, we stopped at a huge collection of city limit signs from around the world. Apparently this collection of some 30,000 signs is world famous and it wasn’t too hard to see why. There were so many signs on posts that it was a veritable forest of them. We spent a good amount of time looking for our various home towns and taking pictues before finally meandering back to the van to head back to camp.

When we pulled up, dinner was just about ready and we happily ate the typical pasta fair that we eat just about every night. It wasn’t too long later that we started up the little party, which commenced with the opening of the presents. Some of the group got him a slingshot, Brenna made him a cool little stick carving, others got him a little alcohol (which was legal since we were in Canada). We brought out the cake and ice cream and then BJ pulled out the 150 alcohol and impressed everybody by blowing fire from his mouth. Very nice.

All in all another great party. Every one who has had a birthday party on the trip has said it's been one of the best birthday’s of their lives. I think we’ve all had a great time with them and it really brings the team together as a semi-family unit when we celebrate one of our family member’s special occasions.

Bed time was not too much later. I was worried about my knee, but for the time being I was mostly feeling good with cake and ice cream in the belly and another major province under my belt.