Tuesday June 23, 2015

An interesting ride out of Vancouver. We met a guy who directed us to a different route than we were going to take, it had a few hills but a good cycle lane all the way.

We opted to take half of his suggestion and then carry on the route we wanted to take. Our route took us up East Hastings Street. A full block of homeless people. Ralf stopped to take a photo and a man from a “drop-in” centre came out to chat to us. It was very interesting to discover that this part of East Hastings has always had homeless people “moving” here. For the past 20 years this has been the place to come to if you are homeless, need to buy and/or sell anything including drugs etc. The new City initiative is for the police to move them on every day, the street sweepers come in and clean the area up and then the homeless come back. He doesn’t know why. In his opinion, he thinks the city should spend their money finding out what these people need and help them that way, rather than spending money on street-sweepers.

Yesterday I thought Vancouver appeared to be getting it right. Today I see they have the same problems as other big cities around the world. Although, they do have a light rail system which travels well out of the downtown core of Vancouver – to the airport and to other cities – like Burnaby.

Urban sprawl is prevalent, the only thing that separates one City from the next is a park.  Really, we went from Vancouver to Hastings to Burnaby and at each area there was a park, which sort of separated the different municipalities.

We headed out on the busy Hwy 7 – the Lougheed Highway. It had a good shoulder most of the way and at one area detoured cyclists away from the construction area through a parkland trail.

Because the highway was busy, I didn’t really enjoy the scenery very much. I have no idea how Ralf got this photograph of the bridge without any cars.

We were following the Fraser River for a short while, which was pretty.

When we got to Maple Ridge we stopped to check the map, Highway 7 went through the Town and had a By-pass. A fella stopped and asked if we were lost, we then chatted to him for about 20 minutes. A fellow touring cyclist who has cycled around BC and down over the Sierra Cascades into Oregon and Washington. We told him about warmshowers and the great people we met through that organization, hopefully he will sign up as a host.

We stopped in Port Coquitlam for lunch. Pam, who was originally from Mexico had overheard Ralf talking to a young boy outside of the superstore who was asking where we had come from with all our gear. Ralf had told him we had visited 7 different countries. Pam overheard and was so excited, she came over to me and asked me all the usual questions. “You are so impressive” she kept saying, “can I give you a hug”, “you look so fit and healthy”. I felt like a superstar.

Ralf had gone into the store to get lunch and Pam was still talking to me when he got back. We have actually cycled through 12 countries, if you include Scotland and both Irelands as separate countries.

We are staying at a campsite just outside of Mission BC, the Sun Valley Trout Park. They actually give biker rates – the going rate for a tent site was $37.00, we paid $25.00. The lady said we could stay in the Rec Room which has air-conditioning. We have our mats on the floor and we are nice and cool. This week-end the Cross-Canada Bike Ride stays here. This is an organized bike tour which actually cycles cross-Canada in 71 days. I think we will be taking a little longer.

Last week-end was the start of GOBA (the Great Ohio Bike Adventure). We have taken part in GOBA a couple of times and we recommended it to a fella we met in Australia (Ken). Ken decided to make the trip this year from Australia to rural Ohio, Dick sent me a picture of them having a beer together – cheers guys.