What went wrong?

Friday afternoon reminded me of my epic 4-flights journey to meet Lina in Chile... though to be fair, this was much easier. I drove to Ladner, and parked my car next to some nicely-mown lawns. I kept my fingers crossed that the residents weren't the type to be offended by strangers cars parked in the street all weekend. I pulled my bike out, and set off for the ferry. My progress was slowed slightly by a family of ducks crossing the road, but other than that all went well. Then I got on the ferry to Victoria for the first time in ages. It was strange as I used to get that ferry on almost a weekly basis. I avoided having to eat ferryburgers with my "contents of the fridge" sandwiches (peanut butter and cabbage... not so bad really). Then, a nice ride along the Lochside bike route to Victoria. I was early, so rolled around town, checking out what had changed since I was last there. Some things had come and gone... but not so different really. I checked that Floyd's was still there, as I was planning a huge breakfast there for Saturday morning.

I met up with Lina and her classmates, then we rode to the beach for a spontaneous picnic and a bottle of wine. We avoided anyone seeing our open alcohol container by keeping it in a paper bag. Who knew that really works? Dinner was washed down with a ride in the dark out to Metchosin and Nikki's flat. Nikki was in residence and we talked about bike racing (what else?) for a while and fell asleep. The morning came, we drank coffee, said our goodbyes and headed off for Floyd's. Yum, yum, yum. I think that says it all. Full of fried goodness we rode out to the ferry and got on our way to Saltspring Island.


We got into Ganges just in time to catch the end of the market. The highlight for me was being shown the "8th wonder of the world" by a man who looked just like a living garden gnome. He played the didgeridoo and span a bamboo stick in front of our eyes which make a kind of kaleidoscope-strobe effect. Trippy. Man.

In the garden center, we set up the comedy tarp-tent. I'm glad it was a warm night...


We got a pretty good night's sleep considering out tent was more like an umbrella... and decided to spend Sunday on Saltspring. We had been out to the Treehouse cafe on Saturday night to hear some live music, and were ready to check out the lunch menu... but needed to waste the rest of the day first. We went in search of the elusive public-access-to-the-beach and eventually found it near Ganges. On the way in we found a lonely bike stunt... a collapsing 12-foot ladder drop. I didn't ride my road bike off it.


Down on the beach, Lina filled me in on the details of altitude sickness, and we pondered the true meaning of all the acronyms she had learned. It's so annoying when you remember the acronym, but not what it actually means.


Lunch time came, and we rode back to the Treehouse to eat s fine yam quesadilla. Yum again. We weren't the only bikers on the ferry back to Vancouver...


We never found out who they all were, but there must have been 80 bikes on the boat. Good stuff!