What drives one to ride a 1000 km brevet? In this case, a major selling point was the fact that the start point, at the Breka Bakery Cafe, was merely a 10-minute downhill roll from home. With options to start at 3 am, 4 am, 5 am, or 6 am, I could, in theory, get out of bed at 06:40, get dressed, report to the start point before 07:00, sit down for a nice breakfast, and then start my ride. It wouldn’t be a smart way to use my 75 hours, but knowing that such a strategy was within the rules was comforting — the idea calmed me down enough that this brevet was my first one where I slept soundly the night before (for all of 4 hours).
Of course, the fact that the route promised some spectacular scenery was another good motivation!
Saturday
I did manage to wake up early enough to have breakfast at home. At Breka, I found Vincent Deslauriers inside, so he checked me in even though he was not officially volunteering at this event.
As I found out, I was the only one to choose the 6 am start option. Barry had started at 3 am; Murray at 4 am; Douglas and Xiangzhou at 5 am. Despite our disparate start times, sleep schedules, and hill-climbing performance, all of us except Barry would end up leapfrogging each other and occasionally riding together over the next few days, and this dynamic over the entire weekend made it one of the most fun brevets I’ve ridden. As I arrived in Hope, I found Douglas and Xiangzhou leaving from lunch at Dairy Queen. I skipped lunch to ride with them out of Hope.
After a few minutes of climbing together, I decided to see if I could catch up with Murray. At Boston Bar, I saw his bike outside a market. He was just leaving from his resupply stop, so we rode together for a while.
I then rode ahead and tried to find Barry. That never happened, though. I ended up riding solo to Lillooet, except for a brief reunion at the G’wsep gas station in Lytton.¹
After picking up dinner and the next day’s breakfast at A&W, I checked into the 4 Pines Motel. As soon as I walked into the motel office, the innkeeper exclaimed, “Oh, it’s you again!” He recognized me from my stay there on a bikepacking trip a month ago, and also told me that he had seen me on the road at Duffy Lake around noon the following day.
Since I had ridden through some light rain, I had to take the time to wash and dry my gritty clothes.
Sunday
I set my alarm for 06:15, and woke up naturally at 06:10. Perfect!
At Fountain Valley, I found my old doggy friend! I got a nose boop (well, almost — I don’t know why I get so snotty when I stop cycling) and a handshake. I shared a bit of my watermelon cake.
Onwards into Marble Canyon, another one of the anticipated highlights of this ride. I keep trying to take photos and videos of it (as I did last month), but the camera never does it justice, and this time I needed to focus more on riding.
One of the interesting aspects of traveling through the wilder parts of Canada is meeting other people who are on their own adventures. Riding through Marble Canyon, I was passed by a giant camper vehicle with German license plates and a car with Korean license plates, which piqued my curiosity. I later found the camper vehicle parked at Hat Creek Ranch, so I stopped there too.
While sitting on the patio to eat my ice cream cone, I overheard a couple speaking some German to each other. Time to retrieve my mediocre rusty language skills and find out their back story!
There was a noticeable headwind on the climb to Clinton. I was glad for that! The drag is relatively benign when riding slow, but the airflow cools you down, and I can look forward to a tailwind on the descent.
Rolling into Clinton, I found Murray and Xiangzhou at the control point, and I learned that Douglas was ahead of us.
I left a few minutes after them, then passed them at the Hat Creek Ranch.
At the Juniper Beach control, I saw Douglas start climbing out just as I reached the bottom of the descent.
Murray and Xiangzhou arrived at Juniper Beach shortly after me.
The weather today was interesting! In Clinton, ice pellets fell for a minute. On the way to Juniper Beach, I saw a dramatic cloud with some visible vertical streaks. Returning from Juniper Beach, we rode through some shiny puddles: evidence of an intense localized cloudburst on an otherwise warm and sunny day. Of course, when we descended into Ashcroft, which sits in an air-trapping valley, we experienced a temperature spike to 32 °C.
I left Ashcroft with Douglas.
After dark, I started getting drowsy and had a hard time pushing. Since I slowed down so much, Xiangzhou caught up with us when we reached the Boston Bar control.
Monday
It was now 01:00, and I really needed to take a nap. For that, I picked the Old Towne Inne, 1 km down the road, which I knew had picnic tables from getting a milkshake there last summer. Douglas and I took a half-hour power nap on the well sheltered deck, then continued on: a place at a lower elevation would be warmer and less breezy. (I’ve learned from my past mistakes: bring more clothes. Wearing a long-sleeve wool jersey, a short-sleeve wool jersey, an ultralight rain vest, an Alpha-insulated jacket, a soft-shell rain jacket, and insulated gloves kept me just warm enough to fall asleep.)
I soldiered on until Yale, where I declared that I would go no further without sleeping again. Yale is at km 700. I could, in theory, sleep in until noon and still have 21 hours to ride the remaining 300 km. No problem! I have plenty of time to sleep, just not a good place for it.
I found a table to sleep on, using a glove as a makeshift eye mask. Douglas wanted to continue on to Hope, so we parted ways here. He is an absolute gentleman for sticking with me all the way from when I started feeling tired at Spences Bridge to Yale, making sure that I would be safe, while he was still going strong and could easily have ridden faster alone.
That nap lasted 90 minutes until I woke up again, probably from my legs feeling cold.
Still feeling groggy, I stopped again at a cafe in Agassiz for tea before tackling the Agassiz-Rosedale Bridge.
Noon is when I normally start feeling awake, so now I’m back in action!
Colin Fingler had my dotwatching link, and he decided to join me at the Lindell Beach control (810.5 km) for a tour of Columbia Valley and Cultus Lake.
Soon after descending into Chilliwack, I regretted not taking a preemptive nap at Cultus Lake. I searched in vain for any shady bench or table, at any park, in front of any store, church, or community centre. I saw no acceptable options on the route! From that point on, it was an endless expanse of farms full of 💩, and houses whose front yard setbacks were the size of a city park such that it would be inappropriate to trespass. Being tired and unable to muster more than 17 km/h against a mild headwind for three hours put me in a really foul mood.
That nap lasted 40 minutes, but it was the first one under comfortable conditions, so it was very effective. Just as I started rolling again, Xiangzhou caught up to me as I turned onto 0 Ave. We would end up riding together all the way to the finish!
Xiangzhou and I made great partners for the final 125 km. I provided navigation experience through the tricky bits in Delta with inadequate signage. He pulled a fast one along the entire length of River Rd in Richmond, and showed no mercy when crossing the Canada Line Bridge.
We finished together on Tuesday at 00:46, and I was too tired to dismount properly. There are no style points in randonneuring, so tipping over to the non-drive side is an acceptable way to finish.
¹ As I later found out, Barry apparently overslept and missed his 3 am start (or 4 am, with the grace period), and therefore never started. In my mind, then, I would have caught up with him at some point if he had been there. ⤻