FORT LANGELY, VANCOUVER and PUBLIC TRANSPORT DAY!

To Follow our trip from Day One, click here:  You're Doing What???

It is Day 19 of our trip - The 4th of JULY, to be exact and I can wake up with a feeling of joy because we aren't cycling anywhere today!  It is a quiet day because we are not in the US, so no one really cares that it is the 4th!  We rode into town to get coffee (we are officially addicted to coffee again!) and we find a cool little cafe right on the Fraser River. 

I have been on the lookout for a cool coffee thermos because I left my backpacking mug in the Port Coquitlam library on our day of chaos - TYPE 3 FUN, huge bummer!  I hate to buy something that I do not really need (I have 2 Kleen Kanteens at home), so I have just been reusing a disposable cup, but it is so ratty and torn and leaking.  At this cafe I find a really cool thermos with native art on it and for only $15 so I give in a buy it.  Who knows if my mug is really at the library....and I will love having this thermos as memorabilia from this fantastic trip.

Today is a total day of rest for us, but should actually be called EATING DAY.  It is absolutely terrible that our entire day still revolves around food, food and more food.  It is like our bodies want to stock up on as many calories as we can while we are NOT using them.  We cycle only 6 miles this day, but eat almost more than the days we cycle 30 - 50 miles.  Fort Langely has an awesome little grocery store and we bought a huge supply of food from the deli.  As we sat there eating it, I saw this sign right next to us.

How true it is.  Our lives are actually driven 100% by where the food is.  Food weighs so much that we learned early on in this trip to carry only the essentials....4 apples, almond butter and larabars (and jelly beans!) that is all we carry, everything else we eat in supermart delis and parking lots.  Food can weigh up to 20#'s so it makes a huge difference in our level of exhaustion on long pedal days (and muscle recovery on our rest days - even as rare as those occur.)

We spend a bit more time downtown, playing with an adorable puppy,

watching people getting married at the famous yellow city building, and going to the library...oh, and more eating.  Back at camp, the girls swim in the heated pool and make some friends.  In the evening, the campground is showing Nemo so after dinner we take the girls to the activity center for that.  Shane and I sit at camp and

play cribbage.  We have not played as much as we do at home (daily) because we rarely have energy at night to stay up past the girls, so it is a special treat to be able to sit at camp and relax together!

It is a Friday night and soon enough the campground turns into a ZOO!  That is how Shane and I refer to these campgrounds where people want to party, but pretend they are "camping".  This is a whole other blog post in itself that I will take on later....but it falls under the same category as why we dont camp at lakes where you can take motorboats!   

The girls get out of Nemo and it is 9:30.  Jill wants to go to the playground and Alli wants to go to sleep.  I tell Jill I will ride over to the playground and watch her in a minute so she runs off.  I take about 5 minutes and then get up there.  I can clearly see her playing with the other 4 kids, but I dont tell her I am there.  I just sit off to the side and write in my journal.  I look up and she is there, I write more....I look up and she is gone....It is starting to get dark and I start to panic, which is not my normal reaction so that kind of scares me.

I ride back to our camp and ask Shane is Jill is there, he says she just ran back to the playground.  Now, I can barely see without my headlamp...Jill is running around in the dark.  I ride back to the playground and Jill is NO WHERE!!  It is so silly how frantic I feel, but I cant help it.  She is so tiny, it is dark and I cant find her anywhere.  I ride back to camp and she is not there, it is such a helpless feeling to think your child is lost.  I am on the verge of tears, I go off again looking for her.  Now there is no one at the playground...I debate searching the whole campground but decide instead to get back to Shane.  Jill is in the tent crying.  She is saying, "Mommy, I am so scared you were lost.  I couldn't find you anywhere!!"  What a relief to have her back.  Literally 5 minutes has passed, but it feels like a lifetime.  I wish I could say we dont lose her again, but on a HUGE ferry over to the Sunshine Coast she also goes missing right as we are docking.  We find her of course....she says, "I wasnt lost....I knew where I was!"  Oh, this girl!!

Day 20 - July 5th.  Today we are riding back to North Vancouver.  The people in the campground tell us "Oh, Vancouver....that's only about 25 K (about 15 miles)."  I really should have verified this comment.  We end up cycling 42 miles!!  But, because we thought our day was going to be easy, we spend our morning chatting away at the riverside cafe.  We sat and talked to the couple sitting next to us to the left for 20 minutes, then the couple sitting right for another 30 minutes....then a man walking by asks if he can sit and chat with us and find out our story.....OF COURSE!!!!  We love talking about our travels.  Then we realized that we had promised the girls they could attend the "Cartoons and Colouring" activity at the campground while we packed up camp, so we left all our new friends at the cafe and dropped the girls off for more screen time!

Shane and I got packed up just in time for the girls to be done with their activity.  They were QUITE disappointed as Sponge Bob was the only cartoon they showed, so the Alli said, "That was terrible, I just sat with my back to the screen and colored!"  Jill, I can guarantee watched every second!

We headed off for our "easy" ride to Vancouver.  Halfway through the rain started back up.  It wasnt too bad.  We were so used to cycling in the torrential rain that we barely wanted to put our rain gear on for these sprinkles.  At a playground, the

girls just played right through the rain as Shane and I took a break in someone's front yard.  We decided to pedal as quick as we could to Port Coquitlam and go to the library so I could check for my mug and we could wait out a bit of the rain.    What a great idea, and yes....they had my mug.  I guess it (the mug) got quite a reputation because it is such a strange shape.  The minute I asked if they had a backpacking mug, the ladies behind the desk got SO excited and wanted to know all about it!  I wish I had a more exciting story to tell them....I said, "Well, it is that shape because four of them fit into a backpacking pot!"  It was a good enough answer for them, plus a young gentleman who backpacks came over to over to ask me all about it.  I had no idea that a simple mug could be so exciting!

Next we headed to Port Moody (remember, this was all the location of that terrifying incident on the Lougheed Highway from the post I mentioned about Type 3 Fun.  This time we had our handy dandy

MAP so it was all smooth sailing for us.  We would have to cycle the Barnet Highway, but it was a weekend so we were not too concerned about the traffic.  In Port Moody we planned to get dinner but as we cycled through we could not find even ONE grocery store.  Finally, I stopped to ask a woman walking by and when she pointed to the direction we just came from Shane and I both said "OH WELL!"  We refuse to backtrack on this trip.  Every mile we cycle is so exhausting!!  Instead, we knew that the Rocky Point Ice Cream store was right along our route.  There is nothing wrong with having ice cream for dinner when you are cycling 40 miles, right?  That is exactly what we did.

Actually, I think that is almost the best dinner we could have had because coming up was going to be an uphill cycle to the top of Burnaby Mountain on the Barnet Highway.  Sugar is evil is almost all situations, but at least in this case our bodies would need every gram of sugar almost immediately (hmmm...is that justifiable enough to have ice cream for dinner?)

I dont know if it was the rest we took, or the ice cream we ate or if we are just in better physical

Hills we do NOT have to cycle up today!!

condition, but our ride up Barnet was WAY easier than I would have expected!  The entire ride was uphill, but the grade was so easy that we cruised almost the whole way.  It was nice that it was a Saturday because there was hardly any cars on the road and a wide shoulder so I never felt that anxiety about riding on the side of a highway.  We made our way to the very top and were pulling over to debate whether or not we should follow the bike route sign (almost always it is best to NOT!)

when Shane's back rack basically EXPLODED off his bike!  Again, our angels are watching us closely because it didnt happen even just 3 minutes prior when we would have been traveling much faster and on the highway.  It happened the MOMENT we slowed down to get onto the sidewalk.  Zip Ties save the day...as always!


Shane and I disagreed about how the rest of our ride would be.  I strongly felt that when we cycled out of Vancouver it was A LOT of uphill, so going back we should just coast our way there.  Shane told me I am a hopeless optimist.  This is probably true.  I still wake up every day thinking that our ride will be a piece of cake (or a liter of ice cream, preferably!)  Today, I was actually correct.  Once we got to the TOP of Burnaby area, the rest of our cycle......ALL THE WAY DOWN......to Vancouver....was a blast. 

I could not have smiled more.  The bike routes there are simply amazing, and to just be going downhill...what a joy.  Then, because things were not awesome enough...we rode through a block party.  Some nice lady came up to us and said, "If there are any hot dogs left please help yourselves....I'm sure you are hungry!"  

That held the girls out until we got to downtown Vancouver where Shane went into an asian market and bought us 32 rolls of sushi, Alli got a plate of white rice, and Jill bought 6 potstickers all for $20!  (we are doing SUCH a terrible job of eating Paleo, it is embarrassing!) We ate to our bellies felt like exploding and then made it to the HUGE bridge we had to get over to get to Tony and Wanda's house.  This is the same bridge that I had complained about 10 days ago.  We got to climb UP and UP and UP, but hardly got any down because we dropped into Stanley Park.  So tonight we got to climb up and up and up that same bridge because we were NOT in Stanley Park and then FINALLY were rewarded with the totally awesome and amazing downhill to the other side.  It was so late, I think our latest night cycling this whole trip.  the picture on the bridge was taken at 9:15pm and we still cycled another 15 minutes to their house! 

They were at a party and not expected back until late, but we already had the code to their house (we stayed with Tony when we passed through Vancouver the first time, Wanda was away at work)  and the instructions to make ourselves at home, so we did.  The girls wanted to sleep in the shed alone, like grown ups....Shane and I let them, 3 weeks is a long time to be sleeping with the kids!!  HA!!!

Day 21 - July 6th......We are 3 weeks into the trip and this is the FIRST DAY that I get to cycle ZERO miles!  Shane and the girls have had days off because I offered to ride to the market in Rosedale, but I have NOT had even one day off.  Today we decided to spend the day traveling Vancouver on the public transit system.  It was kind of raining and gloomy and the girls LOVE taking public transit, so that was our plan.

In the morning, Wanda got up and wanted to make us a HUGE breakfast.  She made crepes (which Shane couldnt have) and a fruit salad and hot chocolate and espresso and sausages and eggs.  It was so much food, again, on a day we are not cycling.  The kindness continued when Tony volunteered to drive us to the store to buy our public transport day pass and then drove us to the Sea Bus to start our adventure!

It was pouring rain when we got off the sea bus.  We got to the sky train and the girls could not have been happier.  They did not want to get off...actually,  they wanted to get off one and get off another.  They wanted to get on a Bus and take that anywhere...they just wanted to keep traveling around.  I decided that we should see if we could make it to Port Moody, the place we had ice cream the day before.  They had a great spray park we had now missed out on 2 times (because it had been cold and raining each time) so MAYBE it would clear up by the time we got out there.  I do have to say, I love figuring out public transportation.  We made it to Port Moody in almost no time.  Switching from the sky train to the city bus with almost no delay.  And wouldnt you know it, by the time we made it to the Ice Cream shop (and yes, we got ice cream again!) the sun had come out and there was a free live concert right by the spray park.  it was a win win for everyone!

We hung out there in the beautiful sun all afternoon and then had to start heading back to Vancouver since we had promised to cook dinner this evening for Tony and Wanda.  We stopped at Costco on our way back, loaded ourselves with a box of dinner

supplies, back on the skytrain, easily got onto the Seabus and the connecting city bus back to their neighborhood.  The hardest part was the 1 mile walk to their house from the bus stop.  When we got there, we were blessed to see their children were visiting with their 12 day old baby boy!  You know the girls LOVE that.  

We made a fantastic dinner.  Chatted afterward about everything, Shane and Tony enjoyed some scotch and we planned our morning ride to the bus terminal where we planned to take the bus out to Horseshoe Bay Ferry Terminal.  That would get us around the crazy, awful, hilly, no shoulder Marine Drive that we had come in on.  If we could take the bus it would save us 1.5 hours of riding which would be GREAT because the Sunshine Coast was next on our agenda. 

 If you remember, on our first night, Terry - our host - offered us to stay at his Eco-Lodge in Lund for free, if we just could get ourselves there.  Lund is at the north end of the Sunshine Coast.  In order to get there we would have to cycle our tails off and take only 3 days to get up the entire length of the Sunshine Coast.   Shane and I cycled it back in 2002 and I dont remember a thing.  I think that is because it was SO HARD that I have blocked it out.  The Sunshine Coast is known for it's hills.....I am sure that we are IN FOR IT!!!  If we can cut out the 15 miles of Marine Drive, we could save our legs for the real hills of the Sunshine Coast!

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