My eldest nephew Trevor is now more than a week into his post-graduation adventure: travelling across Canada by bicycle. Based on his intended route and best guesses it is aproximately 8000 km from our coast to St. John’s, Newfoundland. He’s booked a return ticket from there in early September, which means he’ll need to average around 100 km per day (allowing for a rest day every week or so).

He let me to join him on the first few stages of his ride, starting with a 3-day warmup a couple of weeks ago: Tsawwassen to Victoria (so that he could “bag” the Mile 0 marker); Victoria to Thetis Island via the Mill Bay ferry; then back home for his SFU convocation on June 8. The following Monday morning (a week ago today) we set out again together along the Lougheed Highway, arriving in Kamloops (via Hope, Lytton, Spences Bridge, Merritt and Quilchena) four days later. And on Friday morning Trevor set off — solo — from Kamloops heading east, while I turned around to make my way (via the gorgeous Nicola Valley again) back towards home.

It was the most time we’d spent alone together in, well, probably ever — but I’m not sure that I know the inside of Trevor’s head any better now than I did when we set out; he’s a taciturn kind of guy (although I do know now that, faced with a wall of ice cream flavors at Cooper’s Foods in Kamloops he will, if pressed to make a choice, pick Maple Walnut). I seem to remember, though, that I was inward-looking and somewhat solitary as a younger man as well. And I look back, now, upon my own initiation into long-distance bike touring — from Athens to London across the summer of 1980 — as transformative. Even a small deflection near the beginning of a life’s trajectory can result in an enormous divergence from one’s youthful goals.

Trevor and I have picked up a handful of shared memories that we will carry forward: struggling up Jackass Mountain in the Fraser Canyon while a continual parade of semi trucks ground past us in their lowest gear; savouring a perfect milkshake — cold, sweet, indescribably delicious — when we stopped to catch our breath at the Kanaka Bar Café; fighting headwinds up the lower Nicola Valley, an effort that was balanced somewhat by the glorious tailwind that blew us the final 20 km from Merritt into Quilchena — and a chilled beer and substantial hamburger in the saloon of the wonderful Quilchena Hotel.

I’m tickled pink that Trevor’s taken a shine to cycle touring, an activity which has brought me enormous pleasure in so many settings and over so many years. It meant a lot that I could be a small part of his grand adventure; so if you’re reading this Trevor: thanks again. I’m looking foward to following the blog postings as Trevor makes his way towards Newfoundland: it’s a vicarious way of cycling across Canada myself.

And it hasn’t escaped me that, by accompanying Trevor on the initial stages of his journey, I have, in effect, begun a Cross Canada bike trip of my very own. According to my calculations I’ve done 665 of Trevor’s 8000 km route to St John’s; which means that I’m already 8.3% of the way there myself…