2 Munro’s, 3000 Miles, 3 Intact Clavicles

It’s been a while since my last update; over a month, 3000km, two time zones and a clavicle breaking crash ago in fact. Oops I might have given away the plot twist, I guess you’ll have to keep reading for the details…
When we last spoke I gave 7 life lessons I’d learnt from our journey so far, as I write to you now from the other side of the country I’ll add one more. Canada is big, like really big! We weren’t completely naive in our planning. Like any good travellers we’d looked at a map, but knowing and understanding distance are two different experiences. Understanding aches a lot more, trust! For those that haven’t been following on our website I’ll pick up where I left off in the last blog post.
Northern Ontario provided us with our first real fitness test. This was twofold, it provided plenty of hills and we stepped up our biking intensity (from an average of 60km a day to over 100km daily). We even smashed out our first 100 mile day on our way to Thunder Bay; funnily enough we didn’t fancy going quite so far the following day. The further north we ventured the more remote we got, traversing stretches of over 100km with the only sign of civilisation the tarmac below us. As the days pressed on we became settled in our new routine and were enjoying the isolation. We passed through brilliant sunshine, driving rain and thunder showers but kept hammering at the pedals. After a few weeks in the Ontario wilderness we managed to check off many wildlife encounters. Most notably bear, moose and beaver, unfortunately for the photographer in me this was not all at once.

After Ontario we crossed the provincial boarder into Manitoba, this was like venturing into a different world over the space of 20km. We left the mountains and forest behind and found flat expanses with few features in sight. It was nice to have a change in scenery but the openness made finding a discrete camp spot somewhat more challenging! We crossed Manitoba in just over a week broken up by a short city break in Winnipeg where we enjoyed the Canada day celebrations.
The border between Saskatchewan and Manitoba was far less abrupt, we passed somewhat seamlessly from one flat farming province to another. By that point the temperature was rising daily, at the peak we saw a road side information board hit 40 Celsius! Turns out heat + biking + zero shade is not the best combination, needless to say we had a couple of sweaty days. One especially stifling afternoon we decided to treat ourselves to the luxuries of AC and wifi. Upon arrival at our motel we found the usual ‘wtf, bikes, across Canada, you mad?!’ this time it was followed by ‘Oh you’re headed to Vancouver, you know the whole of BC is on fire right?’. We did not. It turned out we were biking from a state of emergency due to flooding in Montreal towards a state of emergency due to forest fires in BC. We also endured record breaking temperatures in the middle. What are the chances right?

As we headed further west we crossed into Alberta and started to see more signs of the fires ahead. This was both in the glimpses of news broadcasts and in the ever thickening smoke hanging in the air. We’d been expecting to see the Rocky Mountains grow from the horizon a few days before we reached Calgary, this was not the case. The smoke grew so thick that it began to blot out the sun, so concealing the mountains was child’s play. It wasn’t until we joined the road to Canmore, our first mountain town, that we started to see towering silhouettes appear around us. Then 40km out of our destination disaster struck. Dad slipped off the side of the narrow road. BAM trip changing event. He didn’t need an X-ray to know, he sat up and after a couple of profanities told me that something in his shoulder was in more pieces than it should be. We pulled out the first aid kit, put his arm in a sling and flagged a car down to take him and his bike to Canmore hospital. Due to lack of space I followed by bike and arrived at A&E to find dad being bandaged up by a nurse. Long story short he broke his left clavicle. Fortunately after a discussion of surgery it was decided to be unnecessary so he was discharged in a matter of hours. As camping was no longer an option we booked a local hotel room; in the beautiful mountain town of Canmore this turned out to be ludicrously expensive. Throughout the process the couple that drove dad hung around in the waiting room to see if they could provide any more help. They ended up driving us to the hotel to get dad settled and then took me to the pharmacy to fill his prescription. They really went above and beyond and turned what could have been a logistical nightmare into a relatively pain free experience, logistically pain free that is, there was plenty of physical pain on dad’s part!
I now write to you from our hotel room where we have been sitting next to the phone for three days getting incrementally closer to the insurance company arranging a flight home for dad. Luckily this accident occurred right at the end of dads biking trip, we were only one day out of Banff where he was going to continue by car with my mum. As he can’t now drive and doesn’t fancy exploring the mountains in a sling they are cancelling that portion of their trip and will hopefully be reimbursed.

Once I’ve seen dad on his way home I’ll be continuing my bike journey westwards to Vancouver as planned. I thought I was going to be venturing on this next leg alone, however a few weeks back I managed to talk sense into Jonny (one of my friends from home). Within the space of 48 hours he’d booked three week off work and bought flights, that’s what I’m talking about! He’ll be arriving in the next couple of days bearing the gift of a go pro on loan from my brother. You best believe we’ll be making a ‘Henry and Jonny do the Rockies’ vid. If anyone else out there is feeling the FOMO rising and fancies an adventure I’ve decided that I’m not ready for the world of work so I’ll be continuing south from Vancouver. Details of that to come in a future post.

