Tuesday, August 9 Day 24     Fred’s for breakfast and I devour tater tots, bacon, French toast, 2 eggs, 2 toast, & 3 glasses of orange juice. I am still hungry. I can now confirm that I am fully recovered. It’s been three days since Grand Forks. Everyone says their good-byes and Scott sincerely says if I am ever up this way again, I always have a place to stay. He is a decent man. I probably haven’t written enough about him for all he has done for me the last few days but I will say that. Fred also says anytime I am in the area, that I always have a shingle to call my own. He hands me his card. It’s for hauling rubbish or junk or whatever you want him to haul in that pickup we borrowed.     "Anytime, give me call," he says.     Vancouver grows smaller in the mirrors and 19 dollars Canadian gets me across the ferry from Horseshoe Bay to Langdale. My first glimpse of the Strait of Georgia as I head north is an impressive wow. I have never quite pinpointed what it is about the ocean but it always leaves me transfixed. As the ferry gently glides across the bay, I see the houses stuck into the sides of the islands and into the coast. I stand at the bow and stare at the water passing under the boat. I am all alone on this voyage of solitude. I wonder about guys like Marty and Orse, I see why they team up. Although Mark still takes the cake. I can’t imagine three months straight. For me, it’s been an over three weeks of traveling alone.     While standing on the bow, a couple approaches and we start chatting. The conversation ranges from about the trip, the bikes, good roads before the ferry arrived and so on. So it’s not as though I am the world’s most fascinating loner. I do like to chat with people whenever I stop. But most of the time, it’s just the motorcycle and I. And there are times when I do just want to be alone. I don’t want to talk to anyone. I just want to be alone with my thoughts and myself and enter into another world. There is no noise here. There are no freeways, no cell phones, no screaming kids- just I, this little mobile traveler smoothing across a stationary land.     Off the ferry and up the Sunshine Coast I ride. Finding a little park, I pull in and sit along the ocean watching the world go by. I see now why they call it the Sunshine Coast. It was so rainy and cloudy to the south earlier today and now all that has cleared up as though it never existed. My black leather jacket is soaking up the rays. Childish voices are a pleasant banter resting in the background. Others play among the rocky beach banging stones and another is searching for the perfect one to take home. Logs and stumps litter the shore and the children never stop moving.     In the distance, probably about 40 miles away is Vancouver Island barely visible though the ocean haze. This is indeed another world and I am watching it go by. I am so free. I feel very much alive. I could stay here forever but I must know what’s around the next corner.

Waiting to board the ferry

One of the highlights of this trip will be the ferries. Right now I am standing on the bow of the ferry crossing over to Vancouver Island from Powell River. It takes one and a half-hours to cross, and it’s the third ferry ride of the day. The sea is very calm and the sun has dipped below an island. I can see a group of kayaks along the edge of one of the islands as the people slowly paddle in the calm seas. The sky is finally clear after two weeks of rain and only a few clouds are highlighting the orange glow of sunset. The allure of the sea is something very much alive up here. I can see why it attracts so many. Normally every place I go, I wonder if I could live there.     I am told winters are rainy and mild because of the ocean. The most beautiful of sunsets is modified by the glow of the calm waters passing beneath the ferry. What a journey this has played out to be and to come to this as a finishing point. I can only hope all goes well for the rest of the trip south.     Everything can change so suddenly. A few hours ago, the relaxing moment at the park was quickly shattered by a blunder on my part. The park was well below the surface of the road. The entrance dropped down rather steeply say twenty feet to the level of the park. It could be compared to an intersection in San Francisco. As I pulled up the steep entrance to leave the park, I rolled to a stop at the stop sign, something I have done a thousand times on this trip. This time, I put my left boot down, hit some oil and lost my footing. The top-heavy bike tumbled over on its left side. Remember the gas cap I lost way back in Dawson City? All the fuel spilled out of the tank I had just filled onto the roadway combining with the oil.     I instantly was seething for dumping the bike; this thing is extremely heavy and takes a lot of effort to put right side up. I reached down, grabbed hold and slipped on the wet oil falling to my knees in the wet gasoline. Each time I tried to right the bike, it was as though I was standing on a sheet of ice. The slipping only added to my anger. As cars pulled up behind me, not one of them stopped to help. They simply went around and pulled out onto the highway.     I see now that a pretty dangerous situation had developed. I was standing in the middle of a wet pool of gasoline that now covered the entire lane and was running downhill spreading across the entire lane 10 feet behind me. My boots were wet, my pants had soaked up some and the smell of gasoline was thick in the air. The gasoline and oil was so slippery I couldn’t even stand.     I was becoming increasingly enraged at my predicament and began sweating profusely. I didn’t know what to do. Five minutes went by and all my feeble attempts to the right the bike failed. I couldn't push the bike upwards so I began to drag it. I realized I could drag my 700-pound behemoth off of the patch of gasoline, just enough to get a footing. I went to the other side of the motorcycle and tugged at the front wheel, then the back wheel sweating all the more. Meanwhile, I was blocking traffic in this lane and everyone was still going around me.     Someone must have called the Highway Department, or it was a lucky coincidence, because a bright orange pick-up showed up just as I was devising a way to get the bike upright. John, the highway guy walked over and helped me right the bike while the other guy poured sand all over the slippery gasoline. Even with the two of us, we still slid all over the place. I was still seething with anger, extremely embarrassed, and wanted to be as far from there as I could be. Sometimes life is just like that I suppose.     Now a few hours later, here I sit, from one extreme to another. This has to be the most tranquil moment of the last three weeks. It feels as though the entire world besides this doesn’t even exist. I haven’t read a newspaper in the last three weeks. No job, boss, traffic, crime, city, noise, parents. Certain moments in your life are so unique, I think this is one of them in mine. When you have the chance to drop out of normal reality, society at large, it really gives one a chance to reflect upon ones life. Traveling alone across North America really opens up the senses.     I stand on the bow of the boat for an hour and a half straight as the sun drops down illuminating the sky a brilliant orange. The wind drives the taste of salt onto my lips and the gusts blow at my short hair. I just stand there staring into the sky as the sun fades. No one bothers me and I bother no one. Slowly the sun drops behind pinks and orange wisps of clouds and the first star appears very low in the sky. This has to be one of the most majestic moments of this entire trip. I face into the whipping wind staring off into the horizon.     Once the ferry reaches Vancouver Island at Little River, I ride north through the darkness in search of a place to sleep. Heading for a provincial campground marked on the map, I arrive, and they want 15 bucks Canadian. A whole 15 bucks, I exclaim! No way! It’s too much money to me so I turn around and keep riding north.     The new tires did me in. All of my gas has been charged so no cash exchange, it makes that really easy, but I am just a poor college kid. Wasn’t even willing to spend 15 dollars, which is probably only 11 US. In fact, I won’t even know how much this trip has cost until I get home. I worked a seasonal fireworks job nonstop the last two months, days, weekends, evenings, averaging 80 hour weeks for most of the month leading up to July 4th. Even worked a 110-hour week during July 4th. How’s that for overtime? Soon as the season ended, I packed my bags, grabbed some dough from the cookie jar and off I went. Maybe I will just keep riding till the day before school starts and just show up the first day, 9 a.m. fresh right from the trip. I look forward to school actually; the semester starts in a week.     I turn back out onto the road and head north, just riding and looking for a place to sleep that won’t cost as much. Another Provincial Park is marked on the map but I miss it in the darkness. A third one is a ways up the road, so I head for that one next as the late evening wears on. I find the turnoff finally and the sign says 16 km. 16 kilometers on a dirt road at night, now that sounds fun. I ride on but 500 meters later; the road dead-ends rather abruptly. There is no bridge in front of me. Why didn’t someone put a sign at the main road? Frustrated, I turn the bike around, point it back to the main road and ready to leave again.     I am on a dead end dirt road in the middle of the forest in the middle of nowhere. I flip out the kickstand right then and there and don’t even bother to pull off to the side of the road. I roll out the sleeping mat and sleeping bag and crawl in right there in the road wiggling in between the rocks. I am asleep within minutes.