May 8/06
Day 4 446 Km
Cache
Creek to Single Hwy E. of Kamloops ~120 KM ~ 8:00 Hrs.
Lots of
up hill today. Very slow going until the final approach to Kamloops
then - ZOOM -.
"Six
Mile Hill" outside of Walhachin
(or was it Savona)
turned out to be 6 K's but what a view from the top. We took a few
minutes of film & panicked when we thought Doug's bike had been
stolen. It turned out it was just perfectly parked behind a trash
can.
My
computer deely packed it in. It had been working sporadically but the
pick-up finally failed. Bought a whole new apparatus @ Canadian Tire
in Kamloops. I half hate paying for the full deal when all I needed
was a bit of wire some Chinese child assembled for 4c.
Dave
picked us up at the end of the divided highway & we went for
beer, corn & pork chops @ Dave & Rebecca's in Salmon Arm. I
think we saved about 80 Km of cycling but I'll have to find out for
sure later.
I
remember being very tired this day. We had turned east and lost the
tail wind that had been following us for the first 3 days of the
trip. There were a couple moderately steep climbs, or so it seemed at
the time, and a lot of long shallow climbs. Not really too wearing in
and of themselves but there just wasn't that rest time every ten
minutes like there had been earlier, going through the up & down
of the Coastals.
A few
kilometres short of the # 5 junction (Kamloops- Merrit Highway) we
met 3 riders (2 girls & a guy) who had spent a week coming from
Vancouver the long way; via Pemberton. They told of taking a half day
to climb one hill that was 15 Km's long at 12% grade. Later in the
trip I would have fantasies of climbs that easy.
When we
hit Highway 5 we had had to get off - No Bicycles Allowed. So we got
on the bike route and headed down the hill, stopping at a gas station
for a snack and Canadian Tire then swooped down some more until I
thought we must be at the bottom of the hill. I took us back out onto
the highway only to find that we were less than half way down. Too
late now. We had a good run with the traffic for about 2 miles before
we got to the turn off. We took another quick break and Doug finally
got in touch with Dave. We headed east along the divided highway and
the tail wind that had been missing all day finally caught up with
us. We pedelled hard for about an hour. I was really tired and would
have stopped but Doug wanted to make it to the end of the divided
highway so Dave could turn around as soon as he saw us instead of
having to continue to an exit.
We got
to the end of the divide and stopped and Dave & his son showed up
within 5 minutes. They had the cube-van from work. Doug and I were
loaded in the back along with our bikes and gear and a couple of lawn
chairs and a couple of chilled mugs and a beer-ball and a big fistful
of pepperoni. I couldn't have been happier if I had been sitting on a
warm beach sipping rum drinks with little umbrellas in them.
I have
still don't know how much distance we cheated that day but I didn't
feel the least bit bad about it.
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