CYCLES CHAPTER 7:
The Ferry ride was windy. I took a picture of Matt leaning into the wind on the deck. We rode from the southern tip of the island to our campground somewhere further north. It was in a forest of pine trees. We could see the Pacific Ocean through the trees. This was the first night that we used the tent. It was Matt’s tent, most all the gear was Matt’s. It was a two man tent. The ground space inside was similar to that of a queen size bed.
We used the camp stove for the first time as well. We boiled some pasta and added it to a couple cans of Campbell’s Alphabet Soup. We sat at our picnic table and ate. Matt studied the maps, I stared out at the ocean and the family of five two campsites over. They were quiet, seemed nice, and they were the only other customers in the area.
After Matt and I finished our soup and noodles, I walked to the water faucet at he restroom building and cleaned the dish-ware. The dried pine needles blanketing the ground crunched under my feet as I walked back to our site. I passed Matt, he was on his way to the shower. I’d already showered while he set up the tent.
“It’s cold,” I said. Referring to the showers.
“Greeeeat.” Matt responded.
It was near dark, too dark to read anything without a light. It was a long day. We’d only ridden twenty miles, but everything was new, exciting, and exhausting. I crawled into the tent. I could feel the lumpy bed of pine needles crunch under my knees as I took my sleeping bag out of the stuff bag. I unfurled my bed roll on the left side of the tent, spread my sleeping bag over it, and crawled into the zero degree bag for the very first time. I’d bought the mat, bag, and stuff sack at an outdoor adventure store with Matt on a gear buying excursion. It wasn’t anywhere near zero degrees so I left the zipper open. I rolled up the fleece I’d brought for cold weather and stuck it under my head as a pillow.
A few minutes later the zipper on the tent went “ziiiiiiiiiiiiiiip” and Matt crawled inside. As he spread out his sleeping bag, we commented about the cold showers. We agreed that they likely wouldn’t get much better than that.
The campground was quiet. I could hear the distant sound of waves hitting the rocky shore. I fell asleep.
We woke early in the morning. It was chilly. I put on the fleece that had served as my pillow. Our breakfast was bagel and peanut butter sandwiches. I used the fancy Swiss army knife my dad had bought me for my tenth birthday (the kind with screwdrivers, magnifying glass, toothpick, and pen) to cut the bagels and spread the peanut butter. Every time I’d ever gone an any kind of excursion where in the knife would be handy my dad would ask me, “You taking your knife? Or did you lose it?” His tone indicating that he found my tendency to lose things a deeply flawed aspect of my character. It was was a shame I thought of that every time I used the knife instead of his love for me.
I took down and packed the tent as Matt devised a better method of dividing the gear among the panniers. He was still devising when I finished with the tent. We resolved to not overthink it and modify each morning as necessary. We positioned the tarp and sleep rolls on the rack into what we deemed an improved arrangement, and tied the left over bagels and duct tape on top of them.
We took off our fleeces and shoved them in a rear pannier. Matt looked at the maps as I took a last trip to the bathroom.
I came back, we got on the bike, and headed out, bound for the Ferry to Horseshoe bay.
Matt’s parents had visited Horseshoe Bay and raved about it, so Matt had devised this detour onto Vancouver Island and Ferry into the bay. I had no objections to the plan.
We made it to the ferry and the bay without any problems. The Bay was quaint. It was surrounded by a horse shoe shape of cliffs, thus the name. We rode down the main tourist street, took a couple pictures and headed down to Vancouver.
We immediately hit some enormous hills on our way outside of town. They weren’t mountains but they were four times as big as any hill I’d every climbed in Ohio. Our lack of physical preparation became apparent. We had to stop and walk the bike up large sections of the hills. I felt like I was dragging Matt down because he was in slightly better riding shape than me and a naturally stronger rider. He was struggling as well though.
We took a lot of breaks. A ride that should’ve been three hours turned into more than five. The sun was setting by the time we reached the edge of Vancouver. As usual, Matt was manning the maps. According to how he read the map, we were to turn up a road on the edge of the river and there was a park in which we could pitch our tent and sleep.
I had no reason to argue so we started up the hill. It went through a suburban housing development. The road winded back and forth and became ridiculously steep at times. It had been a long day, my legs were spent, and we were climbing a what was beginning to feel like a cliff side. We had to get off the bike and walk. It was getting dark and it was seeming less and less like this was an area that would have a park that was also a public campground. I asked Matt if he was sure we were going the right way.
“As far as I can tell, it’s up this road.” He said sharply. He was tired too.
“It doesn’t seem right though. It’s just a neighborhood on a hill.” I said.
“You’re welcome to take a look at the map.” He snipped at me.
I didn’t respond. I was too tired to figure out a map. Every time the road turned, I hoped to God the park was around the corner, but time and turn again, it wasn’t. We were climbing pretty high. After forty minutes, we came around a bend and beautiful twilight view of the river, bridges, and the city on the other side revealed itself.
“Wow. Nice view.” Matt said.
“Yeah. Wonder if the park has this view.” I said.
“I don’t know.” Matt said. We were walking now. We’d been walking more than riding for the past twenty minutes. Sometimes we’d push the bike together. Sometimes Matt would ride the bike for a minute without me on it. I’d walk behind feeling like a pussy, but not caring because I was so exhausted.
I looked up the hill/mini-mountain. I said, “It doesn’t look like there’s a park up there.”
“You wanna go back down?”
I didn’t know what I wanted. I wanted to eat a cheeseburger and go to bed. “…No.” I said, wilting.
“We’ll go a little further, and if we don’t see it soon. We’ll… I don’t know, figure something out.” Matt said, a bit too much like a parent talking to a tired child.
We did go further, we walked and rode for another ten minutes, and the road ended. It just ended. The road and houses stopped and then there was a thick forest.
“I don’t see a park.” I said. “You think it’s down that trail?” We looked at a skinny unofficial looking hiking trail leading into the woods.
“I don’t know. Kinda doubt it, but I don’t know where else it could be and I really don’t wanna go down that hill right now.” Matt took off his helmet and pushed his sweat matted hair behind his ear. He looked at the map. “Map says it’s here, but the map also shows the road going further, so I don’t know.”
I took my helmet off and looked around. We hadn’t seen a single soul the entire way up the hill. It was as though the neighborhood had either been evacuated or warned to stay in their homes because there were two young men wearing spandex and helmets on the loose. “Maybe we should try walking down the path a bit.” I said.
“Yeah, let’s do that.” Matt said.
We walked the bike onto the path. It wasn’t easy to maneuver the bike on the tiny path, much of the ground was uneven. The path was wide enough for only a single person at a time. After a couple hundred feet it looked even less likely that we were heading toward a hidden park.
“Stay here with the bike and I’ll walk ahead a bit to check it out.” Matt said.
I agreed and waited with the bike. I smacked a mosquito on my arm and stewed my growing frustration. Three minutes passed and Matt returned. “If there’s a park, it ain’t easy to get to.” He said.
“Maybe this is the park.” I said.
“Maybe.” Matt agreed. “That would suck, doesn’t seem right, but…”
“It’s pretty much dark now. Did you see anywhere up there wide open enough for the tent?”
“No great spot, but the trail kind of got wide enough that we could pitch it right on the trail.”
“You think anyone will come by? Complain, give us a ticket or something?” I asked, seriously concerned that we would be awakened in the middle of the night by a police officer’s flashlight. This seemed, at the time, like a legitimate concern.
“You want to ride back down the hill and look for another campground in the dark?” Matt asked, rhetorically.
“No.” I said. “Let’s just put up the tent, sleep, get up early, get out of here, and move on.”
“We’ll be fine. “ Matt said, reassuringly. “Unless a bum or a bear comes along.”
“Well, if we’re lucky, the bear would come right after the bum and eat the bum.”
“Yeah… That wouldn’t be bad at all. We’ll get up early.”
And that’s what we did. We pitched the tent and crawled into our sleeping bags hungry, exhausted, and covered in sweaty grime, worried that about bear and bum attacks or a combination of the two, and fell asleep within minutes.
cYcLES CHAPTER 7