Introductions: Who we are and why we're doing this
"So What did you do over the summer?" asked Fiona
"Lots, where should I start?" replied Kirsten, "We started with Alison's university graduation in early May. Callum was in Canada doing a work term for his university so he joined us in Vancouver as well. It was great having the whole family there.
Then Lyle finally retired in mid-May, at about the same time as the inside of our house renovation in Canmore was nearing completion. Once we got the sea-can unpacked and our furniture moved back into the house we headed out to the coast. We ended up in Victoria at Mile 0 of the Trans Canada with our bikes in early June and we then started pedalling east!"
"Deb and Rick were there to see us off as we headed back towards the ferry. It was a beautiful ride to Sydney and a really pleasant ferry crossing to Tsawwassen. We then pedalled into Vancouver to stay with Alison for the night. We got up the next morning, had a huge breakfast at Jethro's, Alison's favourite breakfast place, and then we pedalled....."
And so it started.
Kirsten and I have both harboured a longstanding dream to cycle across Canada. Our original vision was to do this with the kids on our tandems when I turned 50. For a variety of the normal 'realities of life' reasons, this didn't happen. The vision morphed into doing it when Kirsten turned 50, and once again reality bit. Then it was going to happen to celebrate our 25th anniversary. Nope, not this time.
So when the company I had worked at for 33 years was acquired and I had the opportunity for retirement at 55, we took the plunge. That's what the rest of this journal is about: a recently retired couple (now) from Canmore, in their mid 50's, with one kid just finished Uni and another one with a year to go, setting off to cycle across Canada
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We're approaching this tour just like the other (much shorter) ones we've done. We have a start date and place established, a final destination as a goal, and a rough time frame for completion. Everything else in between is highly flexible. We will get up each day and pedal in a generally eastward direction until we can't pedal anymore. Hopefully what stops us is the Atlantic ocean in St. Johns. Along the way we hope to visit many friends and family and also make many new friends along the way.
As we've been telling people of our plans, several of our friends have said they's like to join us for portions of the trip. We're good with this! So from time to time as you read on, there may be more than just the two of us on this crazy adventure.
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