A summer of spinning (probably quite slowly).: 4 and 5 July

Courtney to Lantzville 94km

Lantzville to Salt Spring Island 70km

The ride from Courtney to Lantzville was long, wet and frustrating. But first massive thanks to Pascale, Paul and Nancy. I stayed with Pascale in Courtney despite the fact we had never met, she is house-sitting for the brother (Paul) of my good friend Nancy!! She was so friendly (so was Jack the yellow lab) and helpful, we chatted until late and she even offered to give me a ride to another bike shop in Comox in the morning to get their opinion on the gear situation. Paul has a beautiful house with a view of the Comox glacier from the deck.

Simon's bikes tuned my gears again and suggested I needed new chain rings too but they didn't have any and I wanted to push on. I won't bore you with the details, the gears were good for a while before the problems returned, along with rain, a less than generous shoulder on the highway and rush hour traffic. It was a long day, riding with a trailer is a whole different ball game and I probably didn't eat enough. By the time I got to Lantzville I was totally done. Fortunately Penny left me a note and I had time to have a shower and collect myself before she got home!! She brought some yummy dinner and we had lots of tea and good conversation.

It was still raining this morning, at least I had a chance to dry things off a bit and get my bike shoes ingeniously warmed by Penny. After more tea and a hearty breakfast I decided I needed to get going. It was hard, I would have loved to stay longer with Penny. I stopped at another bike shop (Oak Bay Bikes in Nanaimo), I think I am up to 4 in as many days now!! An incredibly helpful chap (he was British!!) diagnosed a damaged cable shifter (due to the handlebar bag) and offered to replace the cable and fix the shifter whilst I unpacked the contents of the handlebar bag and filled the nooks and crannies in my big bag.

I don't want to tempt fate but my gears have been working very nicely. The handlebar bag was so useful but having a full range of gears is arguably more so!! The rain stopped, I found a nice bike trail beside the highway and life was good!! I even spotted a Dorman Road.

I made it to the ferry at Crofton via a nice route off the highway through Chemainus. Heather met me at the ferry on Salt Spring Island and offered to take my bag, it felt like cheating but I was tired and she mentioned a hill with a 16% grade. See photo below for the proof, I made it but with my bag I am sure I would have been walking (or crawling!!). Heather has a cool place and cooked up a superb dinner of wild salmon followed by homemade Nanaimo bars which she had been promising me since I first emailed her about staying, they were definitely worth the ride and I might have had more than one ;)