BC12 on TGV
Tour of Greater Vancouver - Permanent #30 Report
by Bob Koen

I finished off my quest for the much coveted BC12 pin yesterday. I earned it too. It was certainly the nastiest 200 km ride that I have done. I chose the TGV 200 because it's possible to take public transit home from just about anywhere on the ride. I did that due to the bad weather forecast. And bad weather happened. I was about to give up in West Van when the road got completely snow covered. But I rode on planning to leave the route and quit at my house. But the roads on the Vancouver side of the Lions Gate weren't snow covered so I carried on. The road out to Iona was covered in slush which rusted up my chain badly and caused so much friction that my average speed dropped by about 5 km/hr. The rest of Richmond had only wet roads. I got first tracks through the powder on the approaches to the Alex Fraser bridge. Then when I climbed up into New West the roads got so snow covered that I had to detour off of the route. The side streets were icy and very slippery and I knew that the bike path under the skytrain would be too snowed up to be rideable. So I rode down Kingsway all the way to Boundary road instead. That was nasty but it was the only passable road in New West for a bicycle. By that time I didn't want to give up and take the bus home after all the crap that I had ridden through to get to that point.

Thank God that's done. Now I don't have to go for a long ride again until decent weather happens.

Ride date: December 13, 2009
Go to: Route 30 (205 km)

Go to: Permanents results

December 14, 2009