Fraser texted me today and said “Errr….Have you been eaten?” I responded, “Nope. Too tough. But the truth is that today I vasillated between feeling like a tough biker chick with grease “tattoos” on my calves, ready to take on any mountain to snivelling on the side of the road, to feeling like I’d like to toss my bike over the nearest cliff, stick my thumb out and take my chances with whichever trucker picked me up.
It’s not the mountains. It’s not that we were facing 120km or more today from Canyon Hot Springs over Rogers Pass to Golden. It was that I did not want to be biking all by myself in the mountains. Charlie headed up a long hill outside of where we’d stayed and within 2 minutes he was well ahead of me. He’s a racehorse and he wants to race. Well, all my confidence dissipated in a fit of whiney tears and I told him that I NEEDED him to stay with me. Well, he was excellent and let me set the pace all day. I’m sure it gave him a full day to exercise his patience but he definitely earned some points with me today!
It rained. Hard. We had our rain gear on and when we finally made it up to Roger’s Pass it had cooled down to the point where we needed to layer up. Construction workers were standing on top of their trucks watching 2 grizzley bears in a slide area but I, chicken-hearted as I am, prefer to watch bear behaviour on TV documentaries. We went into the interpretive centre there and the Parks people were so nice to us. They let us make and eat our lunch inside and made us steaming hot cups of tea. I’m sure we were quite something to see, all bundled up in rain gear with water streaming off our clothes. A few people stopped to talk to us including this long tall German fellow, who we’re pretty sure is ready to kill himself. He’s on a bus tour and every other person is at least 30 years older than he. 
The Parks people were very informative including Goldie Rich, who lives in Revelstoke. Charlie picked her as his person of the day and asked her 5 questions. 1. What does Canada mean to you, 2. Describe your community. 3. What are you proud of? 4. What are your regrets? 5. Tell me something amusing. He picks one person every day to interview. Ever the prof. Another Parks person came by. I didn’t get his name but it was great to talk with him too. He does a lot of cycling and talked about that.
When we left Rogers Pass we still had another 80km to do. We’d been told it was all downhill and that just ain’t so. But a lot was. My hands got a bit sore from braking so much and Charlie has a bit of fish tailing going on that I think he should get addressed asap. It was a good ride. I of course, burned extra calories by being hyper-vigilant and I was so, so, so happy to see signs of civilization when we rolled into Golden. We found out the time had moved forward an hour at the Pass. Currently we are eating at aRicky’s All Day Grill and we will soon be biking in the dark to our inexpensive hotel for the night. Tired. Dirty and out of clean clothes. Biking shorts feel like you’re wearing a rubber diaper but they do help, I think.
Goodnight. Sleep well.xxxxxx
Wendingourway:Across Canada by Bike 2017 
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