August 17, 2021
Day 6: Are we up for the challenge?
Qualicum Bay to Living Forest Campground
We gave ourselves a challenge today to ride 70 km's to our next campground. This might not be a big distance for a lot of you folks, but for us it would be a first. We would see how we were all feeling once we arrived at Lantzville.
Our electronics were running low on battery and I was a bit worried about not having a map to navigate us through the streets of downtown Nanaimo. Not only that, our helmets were low on battery too and we've come to rely being able to communicate easily with them. "Turn right up here" or "Watch out for that pothole" etc. I feel that these helmets were one of the best investments in equipment we've made. They are Sena helmets and took a bit of getting used to, such as, "I can hear you breathing heavy - can you turn your volume down?" to Rob swearing softly, "What is she bleeping doing now?" I can hear you Rob!
They have fairly good range, built-in radio, blue tooth compatible and they allow you to hear what's going on around you unlike earbuds. They also have a good battery life but it was at this point in the trip that they started to beep the low battery warning.
We were needing to stop in Parksville at a Canadian Tire to pick up a butane canister for Debb and Gary as their little canister already ran out. It was only 10:30 and an easy, beautiful ride up to this point. We decided to skip the Nanoose detour and stay on the Island Highway for another 13 km's until we could turn off at Lantzville. The traffic was busy but with a wide shoulder it's not hard, just extremely noisy. I was dreading the long climb to come. Afterwards we all agreed it didn't seem as hard as anticipated. Must be getting in shape! The long downhill that came afterwards was fun and the Garmin had us going 51 kph.
We had lunch at a Tim Horton's near the turnoff to Lantzville. We were feeling pretty confident we would make the distance so a call to Living Forest Campground was made and we continued on our way.
Getting off the Hwy meant we would be tackling more hills and there was a particularly steep one on Uplands Drive that had me pushing although Debb dug deep and kept on rolling. I have to mention here that Debb was unable to access her granny gears the whole trip, a problem for sure, but kudos to her, she just put her head down and carried on. At times she was going so slow I thought she would topple over but she didn't.
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Once we made it onto the E&N Trail, we had a slight downhill and a tail-wind! Bliss! We were motoring now. We followed this for another 9 km's before stopping to ask a fellow cyclist the best way to get through town. I think we either weren't listening well enough, or we became confused, because shortly after we found ourselves on Hwy 1, white knuckling it through downtown Nanaimo. There was no shoulder, no bike path that we could see and an un rideable sidewalk. It was scary dangerous and it had us pushing our bikes through a very seedy looking part of town.
If we were able to look at a map, we would of noticed a lovely bike path one street over that would of led us directly to our campground. Ah well, it's all part of the experience.
We arrived to our campsite by 3:30 in the afternoon and we all felt we had a little left in the tank. This campsite had electric so first things first was to charge all the electronics. Second most important chore ~ buy some brownies to celebrate our excellent effort. BTW, we received a 10% discount on our site as unassisted cyclists. Bonus!
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