Tuesday, August 2 Day 17
I am picking up the Canadian accent. It’s very slight, but
you just add "eh" to every fourth sentence and you are a true
Canadian. No one would ever know.
We go out for breakfast and chat for the last time. Greg
again insists on paying for the meal. I think they sense that I am totally broke
although I haven’t said anything. Maybe the sleeping in ditches stories are a
dead give away. I am trying to be as frugal as possible although I am not sure
if I told them that. It’s time for everyone to get back to our lives and go
our separate ways.
Greg is headed east to Edmonton and is leaving this morning.
I suppose I’ll head south or something like that. I called Scott, the guy I
met in Whitehorse and he said come on down to Vancouver. The three of us say our
good-byes to a most fun weekend. Lyle hands me a picture of himself with his
mountain bike. He insists if I know of any available babes in California to send
them up his way. He even asks if I want to stay longer, the place is open to me.
But I can’t, two days away from the bike is now getting longer by the minute.
I can feel the need to cover major distance.
"Come back anytime!" Lyle says.
I head south for Prince George on Highway 97. I want to cover
some distance but don’t get far. I am held up along the Pine River by an
accident that is blocking the road. A minivan has been hit a bus. The smaller of
the two, the minivan, is on it side looking like a hunk of metal. It doesn’t
look like a minivan anymore. There are firetrucks and cops everywhere. At least
it’s not as bad as the exploded camper a few days ago. As I am waiting for the
wrecker to clear the road, a guy pulls up beside me on a Yamaha Venture just
like mine and waits with me.
"Nice bike," he says smiling.
I stop at Bijoux Falls, a waterfall pouring out of a
mountainside. I look at it, drink it in, file it in my brain somewhere but can’t
stay. The desire to cover some major distance is eating at me. I want that
exhausted feeling. You know that feeling at the end of the day when you lay your
head down and say, today was a very good day. I want that.
Miles and miles roll beneath me. Nearly 200 miles later, I fill up
in Prince George and just keep heading south to Quesnell. I missed the Bill
Barker Days here by about a week. It’s a four day long shing-ding where
everyone gets all dressed up in period attire and lives out the frontier and
gold rush days. There is even a qualifying event here for the Iditarod Dog Race
in January called the Gold Rush Trail Sled Dog Race.
Alexandria, Marquerite, Juda Creek all pass by. Outside of
Williams Lake, I pull into Lac La Hoche Provincial Park. Lac La Hoche means Ax
Lake which is nearby. The name is supposed to have come about when a French fur
trader dropped his axe through a hole in the ice covered lake. The campground is
just outside of 150-Mile House. The strange name for a town originated because
it was 150 miles from Lillooet on the old Caribou Wagon Road. I bet that at one
time everything up here was just a wagon road.
I pull into a campsite and settle in walking across the highway to a tiny
store no bigger than your average gas station. In it, they sell a little bit of
everything. I settle in at the campsite writing and looking at the maps. Being
back on the road settles me a bit in wanting to cover major distance. I am
trying to convince myself I’m not too much in a hurry since the wipeout.
I just want to ride. |
