The ride to Vancouver

Sunday, June 29 2025

I Started at eight in Bellingham Beautiful weather, good riding conditions After 43 km I took a coffee break at a birch bay. WhatsApp text with Rieneke. Great! Tried to connect with “find my” with Spencer. But he obviously didn’t have an iPhone. Won’t use the phone in Canada, in a normal way; only with WiFi; WhatsApp or The app “talk 360” with which I can talk with much lower cost to anybody that don’t have WhatsApp. Now sitting in the sun and after drinking my cappuccino I’ll be on my way again! When I planned to go, a guy; Christopher turned up, he did see me going down the road somewhere, he was going on “the Whatcom 100 miles” as far as I understood. We talked some more and we made a picture, I don’t have myself… He lived in Ferndale and worked at the university of Bellingham, something to do with building / construction at the university area.

Now after crossing the border without a problem, I am now in white rock, where I take a small lunch and talked to Spencer to let him know I am in White rock, so Not thát far from their home! The Canadian dollar is favorite for me. €100= Can $160! I can pay with visa. I don’t have Canadian money. So after starting….. a huge hill came up! 23%. It was not possible to climb this hill with my bike. So I started walking and had to stop regularly catching my breath. Later did hear this was the steepest hill in Vancouver. Well, Alex did his best to get this trip memorable! 😜 After getting over that hill, the hills were doable and I lost the right way several times. The route was beautiful and on and in wooded paths / areas.

Sometime later I totally lost the track and ended on a dead end. Crossing illegally a double (very quiet) railway track. This put me on the right track again, luckily! The route went to a flooded area, which I had to hike a bike through for a quarter of a km. There I past a sign with “blocked road”… A little bit further on the road I did find my rear wheel losing air. I did find a small hole, where the fluid of my tubeless tires were filled with. Also, my valve did leak some. I put pressure in the tire and started the worst part of the trip today; a big very busy bridge next to twice three lanes of highway traffic and a hooting train that was passing by. At the end of that bridge the rear wheel was losing pressure again. In the shade I searched for the cause of the problem. No small hole was found, so I did fasten the valve “bold” and pumped up the tire again.

It was late already and I mailed Spencer how to get to them faster? He suggested the train, also offered to get me with a car. In the end we agreed to meet at a Mac Donald nearby. It was very hot, so I bought a large nice and cold milkshake and waited for Spencer.

Within no time he appeared and the meeting again was great! We embraced and talked some before putting the bike up the rack and went to the appartement of Kate and Spencer. We talked in length of our trip together in 2014, where we met and cycled together. There I had a really warm welcome from Kate. A big embrace and welcome with nuts, tea and fruit. We did talk more together about the history together and their present situation. They only married only a year ago. They met and stayed after that together all that 11 years!

After a shower we went to an Italian restaurant and have a great diner! We used a system of car sharing they have here. The system working without a subscription and only will charge the minutes you’re using! A great system of that and the great public transport here; shared bicycles, shared electric step bikes, electric busses! We had the same car system after the diner to get back to the apartment. I went to an inflated large matras and slept well!

Another incredibly beautiful day, with some hardship, which was fine!