This was a three-day, two-night solo bike camping trip that pushed my boundaries in all kinds of ways. Excluding the 54 km covered by the ferry, and adding a bit of riding in Vancouver that wasn't recorded, the actual distance cycled was about 490 km. --- First day (Tuesday July 5) First, my bike upgrade. I built my own front wheel from scratch with a dynamo hub (SON 28) — laced, trued, centred, dished, taped, mounted tubeless tire — finishing the project the day before. The trickiest part was getting the disc rotor not to rub against the pads. There's nothing quite as exhilarating as rolling down the 4th Ave hill at 50 km/h in the dark at 4 am, trusting your own creation! The dynamo hub is a total game-changer, though, in terms of being independent. I can run my phone with an always-on navigation display, take as many videos as I want, and not be stingy with running my lights. Previously, I'd have to carry battery packs and chargers, and still have to worry about where I might be able to stop and plug in for a few hours. Now, my own pedal power just takes care of all that for me! The SON 28 is connected to a USB charger (NC-17 Appcon 3000), which gives me a fancy energy-flow diagram like those on hybrid car dashboards. (Lesson learned: avoid ordering items containing lithium batteries from Europe. The shipment could get rejected by air freight. I reordered it from a US bike shop, and it arrived just in time the day before this trip.) My bike ended up with a gross weight of 25.5 kg, including 1.5 l of water. With so much weight, and since this was my longest ride ever, my strategy was to take my time and enjoy the scenery on the climbs. Oh, even a slight incline is very noticeable. And when climbing out of the saddle, with so much mass so high, the bike sways much slower, such that it ends up swaying with the way your body sways rather than in the opposite direction, so your best bet is to avoid swaying the bike at all. I got very little sleep, after packing, and catching the 257 bus in downtown Vancouver at 5 am to the Horseshoe Bay Ferry Terminal. I took the first ferry of the day, figuring that if I made slow and steady progress, I should be at the Green Point Campground before nightfall. I hit a fatigue wall at 3 pm, somewhere after passing Sproat Lake. It wasn't my legs; it was my lack of sleep. I found myself experiencing micro-lapses in awareness, and was unable to summon the willpower to push on climbs. I soldiered on until I encountered the Taylor River Rest Area, where I took a nap at a picnic table. I was also low on water, and the washroom only had non-potable water, so I scooped a liter of water from the river and boiled myself some tea. Thus refreshed, I continued on. There were a couple of minor mishaps. Two of my front fender bolts popped off on the road; I fixed that using zip ties. At one point, I stopped to splash some water on my face at Kennedy Lake, and left my glasses there. (I stopped because I saw a camper van sporting Swiss license plates. It turned out to be a couple driving down to Argentina. The weirdest thing is, I also saw a white camper with Swiss plates passing by my house on Sunday, so I must have spotted them TWICE by coincidence!) After passing Kennedy Lake, reaching the Pacific Coast, I encountered some light showers, which intensified briefly. At that point, I needed a shower anyway, and I preferred being cold and wet rather than sweaty and wet, so I didn't bother with my jacket. My decision to use fenders was vindicated, though. My nap pushed my arrival time, originally estimated at 20:30, to 21:30. I got there just in time to set up my tent before it got totally dark, and I cooked dinner (boiled carrots, broccoli, and tofu, then Rice-a-Roni) and ate it in the dark. After cleaning up and setting up my sleeping mat, I got to sleep at 2 am. What a day! --- Second day (Wednesday July 6) My friend Lilac kindly came out to meet me at the Green Point campground. We rode the park's bike trail through the forest to Tofino. This ride together was the highlight of my trip! Had lunch at Bravocado: a pasta special (yum! they sold out of that dish soon after I ordered) and deep-fried Oreos (I needed the Calories). After lunch, I backtracked. Weirdly, the trail wasn't fun anymore when riding alone. Every dip, turn, pedestrian, and speed gate became an energy-sapping chore when riding alone with a heavy bike. After the traffic around Tofino thinned out, I switched back to the highway. The original plan was to stop at Ucluelet, but I was running behind schedule. Having had a great morning already, I dropped Ucluelet from the itinerary. Do less, enjoy more. This time, I recognized the early symptoms of sleep deprivation, and took a power nap at the Pacific Rim visitor centre before making the turn into the misty mountains. A huge road works project at Kennedy Lake required one-way alternating traffic. This segment (at the 270.0 km mark) starts with an unpaved 10% climb. With cars behind me starting to pass, and no option for me to stop or zigzag or turn, I charged straight up 20m of elevation, saw a flat spot off to the side, sprinted into it, and double clipped-out before losing momentum. A few seconds later, a woman who was a passenger in an SUV rolled down her window, pumped her fists, and yelled "Woohoo! We saw you do that! That was awesome!!" All I could do was smile and wave, slouched over my handlebars, panting heavily. Her feedback was a highlight, but I wouldn't want to do it again. I probably _couldn't_ do it again — it's one of those feats that can only happen with an adrenaline rush. Then, at Hydro Hill, there's a steep climb that is cut into a cliff. I almost made it to the top, but had to take a break (at 273.5 km). Rather than risk trying to mount a top-heavy bike on a 10% incline with a possibility of a truck rounding the corner at any time, I played it safe and hiked the last few meters to the top. At the east side of Kennedy Lake, I found my cycling glasses that I had left behind yesterday, right where I suspected, undamaged. 🤓 I encountered some rain on the ridge between Kennedy Lake and Sproat Lake. Thankfully, everything east of the Taylor River Rest Area stayed dry. Sproat Lake is deceptive, in that you keep seeing it, but the campground is all the way at the east end. I got there at 21:30, just as it turned dark. I was greeted by a mosquito as soon as I stopped to look up my campsite reservation information. Everything about the Sproat Lake campground made my previous night at Pacific Rim National Park seem wonderful. There were pit toilets and a water tap, but the water had a boil/filter advisory notice, and I hadn't brought my water filter on this trip. There was a proper washroom and shower one kilometer from my campsite, across the highway or under a tunnel, neither of which I wanted to do in the dark with mosquitoes. I set up my tent as quickly as possible, my headlamp illuminating another hovering mosquito every 10 seconds or so. I unloaded everything and hopped inside. I wasn't about to make a blood sacrifice to boil water or cook anything — after all, one nasty mosquito bite in the wrong place can ruin a ride. So, I ate the last of my three Clif Bars and some mini carrots for dinner. Thankfully, I still had half a liter of clean water left from the Pacific Rim visitor centre. I then hit the sack and hoped for the situation to improve in the morning. Any one of those hardships would have been acceptable as a normal part of camping, but facing all of them together just sucked. --- Third day (Thursday July 7) As the sun came out and the birds started chirping, I blinked my eyes open and looked around, and saw… one mosquito hovering outside my tent. Crap. Was that a fluke or a foreboding indicator? Well, I wasn't taking any chances, and assumed the worst. I consulted my navigation data, considered my assets, and formulated my plan for escape. Port Alberni was about an hour away, mostly a gentle roll downhill. So, I would: - Have Gatorade and mini carrots for breakfast - Pack as well as I can while staying entirely inside the tent - Pack the tent - Mount everything on the bike - Make a quick potty stop - Book it outta there, and stop in Port Alberni for second breakfast As I packed the tent, the mosquito situation turned from "just a couple, that's to be expected" to "OMG, let's go, go, go!" At Port Alberni, I found an Ironworks Café & Crêperie. The one in Duncan that I went to on my last camping trip was good, so this is becoming a tradition. I had a seafood crêpe, then sat for a while to catch up on some correspondence. Then, as I was about to wash my hands and leave, I thought, why not also have a strawberry chocolate mousse crêpe as lunch? You know, for performance reasons. At the descent after the 411m Port Alberni summit, I found that my tent and handlebar bag had started sagging, such that my front wheel had abraded the fabric of my handlebar bag a bit. It must have been because I had crossed the rumble strip at high speed and vibrated the straps loose. Also during the descent, my chain had popped out of the chainring beyond the high limit. Luckily, I was able to recover on the fly while descending by shifting to the small chainring. After Coombs, I made a quick pit stop to tweak my rear derailleur indexing, and found, to my surprise, that my rear derailleur cable had frayed at the barrel adjuster, and seemed to be hanging on by a thread. So, from that point on, I would avoid shifting the rear derailleur unless absolutely necessary, at least until I got back to the mainland. At Nanaimo, I tried navigating by memory and instinct. On the plus side, I found a new bike path being built on Metral Dr. with fresh asphalt, and the usage counter was not operational yet. On the other hand, I made a few suboptimal turns, leading me to Departure Bay (the quaint village), rather than the Departure Bay Ferry Terminal, which was further south and separated by a hill. Being in a bit of a rush to catch the ferry, I found that I had a surprising new pedal-mashing ability for short sprints. Three full days of continuous pedaling with a heavy load will do that to you, I guess? I made it to the ferry terminal about 5 minutes before the ticket sales cutoff for the 18:15 sailing. I had been waffling between taking the 257 bus or finishing the ride properly. When the time came to walk off the ferry, I felt the urge to continue. (The extra 36 km on familiar territory just feels like round-off error at this point!) That makes up for the group ride that was cancelled last weekend. I'm only doing it one way, but I'm carrying a load, so do I still get full credit? On the way, I had to stop by my aunt's place to pick up some post-surgical supplies, which turned out to include a walker. So now I also had that to carry home, with the sides folded together and zip-tied in place, and ROK straps tied to it so that I could wear it like a backpack. It feels good to have a bike with all sorts of supplies on it to live off of. But it also feels good to be home.