Adventuring with Herbert Putkey

For our honeymoon, Theresa and I decided to do a week of riding on the Kettle Valley Railway. The KVR was build between 1910 to 1915. It was an amazing piece of engineering, especially famous for it’s trestle bridges in the Myra canyon near Kelowna. The railway was overcome by the highway, and now the railbed is mostly a gravel path that is part of the Trans Canada Trail.

Since it was our honeymoon, we signed up with Great Explorations - they supported our ride by moving the gear between campsites and providing all of the meals and 2 guides, Wendy and Dave.

The planned ride was from Beaverdell to Coalmont.  Because the Beaverdell campsite wasn’t in great shape, we camped about 25km further up the trail. The first day half of us rode the extra km from the campsite, which was a pretty long day. We stayed at the hydraulic lake campsite, and bathed in the resevoir!

The second day of riding was through the Myra canyon. There were great views of and from the Trestles. This was definitely the busiest part of the trail - we hardly saw any other cyclists except for here. We stayed at Chute lake that night, with a bajillion mosquitoes, and had our first experience with Fire Pie.

The next day we rode to Summerland. This route was mostly downhill, which was good because it was pretty loose trail. We stopped at the Hillside Winery on the edge of Penticton for lunch and wine tasting. After that, Theresa and I stuck to the road to get to Summerland, while the rest of the group stayed on the railbed. At the Peach Orchard campsite that night we had a visit from The Kettle Valley Brakemen, who gave us a musical history lesson about the railway.

The fourth day of riding was from Summerland to Chain Lake. We (except for Rick) shuttled up to Faulder to skip about 12km of climbing. Perhaps we should have shuttled a bit further - the first 5km of trail was the toughest of the trip. The path was like riding uphill at the beach. Our planned meet point at Thirsk lake had unfortunately been closed due to a re-damming of the lake, so there was a lot of confusion. The group I was with were all out of water, but managed to meet up with Wendy at Greg’s cabin and bike rental place across from Osprey Lake. The Chain Lake campground was really nice, with the campsites right on the lake, and hardly any other campers. I was also able to demonstrate my skills with an axe.

The final day of riding took us through Princeton to historic Coalmont. The views were great throughout the day - a couple tunnels; rolling hills above Princeton, and riding through a canyon to Coalmont.

Theresa and I struggled a bit on our cyclocross bikes, and would use mountain bikes if we were to do it again. We still had a great time, though, largely thanks to the camaraderie of the group.

I’ve posted the pictures here.
 

Chris and I had a great time at the 2009 Ride to Conquer Cancer.

View our pictures!

As one of our training rides, we went to Fort Langley and cycled to Abbotsford, Chilliwack, and back. (Map)

You’d think that the cycling would be a highlight, but Brad wanted to take pictures of roadkill.

As we made our way through the farmland, we were told to “Geeett ‘Eeerrr Dooone!”, saw a lot of Sunday morning church services, had ice cream and picked a fight with a driver (well, I, Theresa, picked a fight - he was too close to my beloved!).

See our entire bike ride, including Brad floating on air (watch for it!).

Back to NY for another 2 week trip. This one straddled the Easter weekend, which I wasn’t too happy about. Our company keeps a bike at the hotel we stay at, so I managed to get in a couple of rides on the Bethpage Park bike path  The path is quite nice through a forest and around a couple of small lakes, and is entirely separated from the road. On the second day, I did the same path, but biked from the hotel instead of driving there, which added about half an hour each way.
http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/873605/best_bike_trails_around_long_island.html

From new_york_april_09

I also went in to Manhattan on the Saturday. Unfortunately the weather was cold and wet. I went in to the Natural History Museum, which was interesting, but packed with people.

First bike ride of the year for Sharon and Dad. We went over the Lions Gate bridge and into Stanley park. It was a bit cold, but nice and sunny for most of the ride. The dark clouds came in and it actually started snowing right at the end. Fortunately we were inside with our hot chocolate when the heavy snow started falling.

From bikeRide_march8_2009

Theresa and I had our first “long” ride. We had to go to Granville Island, so we biked there on Saturday. The weather was cold, but dry and even a bit sunny. The ride was 40km, and took about 2.5 hours (of riding time). It’s quite a bit slower going through the city with all the stopping and starting, but we were both pretty tired by the time we got home.
I mapped out the route on bikely:
http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/Round-trip-to-Granville-Island

Well now I’ve done it. Just signed up today to raise $2500 and ride from Vancouver to Seattle (over 200km). So, that’s about $2400 more than I’ve ever raised before, and about 150km further than I’ve ever ridden in a weekend. Shouldn’t be a problem!

So far I’ve created my personal web page on their site - I think the rest should take care of itself.

Theresa is doing the ride as well, and a couple of friends from Ultimate (Brad and Kalan). We’re trying to get organized to raise our money and do a bit of training together, so hopefully we can all come up with our minimum donation by June.

Theresa’s first ever bike race. She put her training to the test on a technical course. Stephane was racing at the same time in the open beginner category, and Steven had his Men’s B race right after.

Click on the picture to see the album.

We decided to make the labour day weekend extra long, and went to Saltspring Island for 5 days with Chris and Monique. We parked our cars at Carolyn and Patrick’s in Tsawwassen, and then rode to the ferry - just barely making it. We biked around the many hills on the island, and also spent an afternoon kayaking around Wallace Island. We left our bikes on the beach (a long way from the water at the time), but when we came back the tide had come in, and we couldn’t see the beach at all! Fortunately our bikes were about a foot from the water, so everything ended up okay, but we all had visions of having to dive into the ocean to get our bikes up.

We stayed at Maple Ridge Cottages on St. Mary’s lake, on the north end of the island. It was a bit rustic, but a pretty good spot for Mexican Train Dominoes…which I dominated. Anyway, the weather held (despite a downpour in Vancouver as we were getting ready), and we had a good time with 8 tired legs.

Here are all the pictures.

Another weekend, another bike ride. We decided to take advantage of the free transit on Sundays (for family members of pass holders), and took the train to main st. From there we rode out to UBC, around the peninsula, and then back home along our usual kent st bike route. Theresa made a map of the route here. 40km! Our longest weekend ride yet.