Peenie Wallie: Day 23 - McLeese Lake Resort, B.C. to Cache Creek, B.C. (Sun 8/10/14)

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August 10, 2014

Day 23 - McLeese Lake Resort, B.C. to Cache Creek, B.C. (Sun 8/10/14)

Above: Tow truck driver getting the bike ready to tow back to Cache Creek from Marble Canyon Park.

Additional photos in the Extended Entry.

(Sun 8/10/14)

Update: I am alive and well and resting peacefully in Cache Creek, British Columbia, Canada, on the Cariboo Highway (97).

Starting Odometer: 22,869
Ending Odometer: 23,051
Miles Driven Today: 182
Miles Driven This Trip: 8,398

Here's a map of roughly where I drove today.

"As soon as I reach the shore, I race through the woods, up the hill to the tow truck driver in my underwear, dripping wet, gasping for breath, and begging him not to leave me to die in the remote canyon."

So, today. Wow. Wake up in the morning and I start getting ready to move. Packing up the gear. Getting ready to hit the road shortly. Ben will be here soon. But at 9:00 a.m., he still hasn't shown up. Decide that I'll run down there to his campsite and make sure he's still alive. He's only about 10 km up the road.

Go outside, climb on the bike, and now I hear his motorcycle coming. I can seriously identify his bike from the sound it makes, after riding for several days together. Now, I hear him coming up the highway, but he's coming from the wrong direction for some reason.

He pulls in and rolls up.

"I was just coming to look for you. I figured the bears had got you. Did you get lost?"

"I went past it, but I found it...."

"Are you hungry?"

"Yeah. Let's eat, eh?"

So I check out and we roll around the lake to a restaurant on the other side of the lake.

Over breakfast, we have some talks about why it's important to travel with food and water. Last night, he ended up going to sleep without supper, essentially. So, we talk about this. You should have food and water on your bike at all times. Not chocolate bars, not salty snacks, not spicy foods, but stuff like trail mix or granola bars. And gatorade or water. So, if you have these things on your bike at all times, then it will save you on the road if you break down, and, if you're in a situation where you roll into town and all the restaurants are closed, you'll have something to eat for dinner. So, we talk about this.

"Is that your bike outside?" A girl across the restaurant want to know. I feel like a rock star.

"Yes it is, why do you ask?"

"You left your turn signal on. And your lights...."

"Oh...that's his bike. But I'll go turn off his lights. Thanks."

So, I go outside and turn off my headlight. Maybe I'm not quite as cool as I thought. But when I come back in, they both have plenty of questions for us about the bikes.

Now, a couple wearing riding gear walks in and sits down at the table behind us. We start talking, so that they forget where they are. Forget to look at the menus. And the waitress keeps coming back to take their order, but they keep shooing her away like a fly.

He saw that my bike had Colorado plates on it, and now, we're deeply involved in a conversation with total strangers. We don't even know their names. But it doesn't matter. They've sensed that we're onto something. That we're not just rolling down the Cariboo highway....we're on a grand adventure across the continent, and they want in.

It's sort of fun to see how other people get excited by our adventure. Like, I'm happy to share it with them. It makes the ride that much more enjoyable. To no be traveling around the world in an isolated bubble, but to race from town to town, from restaurant to gas station, enthralling everyone we meet with our crazed stories from the road.

"You're from Colorado?" he asks.

"Yeah...I'm about 7,000 miles into the journey at this point...or maybe 11,000 kilometers. It's kind of funny because, after I go on these adventures, I always drive home to Colorado and I think 'it's so pretty here, why do I even leave?"' "

He says, "I know what you mean... I went to Colorado a while back. I was down there, and I met this man...we were both in Colorado Springs, as I recall. And he ask me where I came from, and I said 'Canada', and he says 'where in Canada', and I said 'British Columbia", and he says 'where in B.C." and I told him and he said 'well why in the world did you come here?' He spends every summer up here west of Williams Lake. And, it's funny because, I was spending my summer in his area, and he was spending his summers in my area. And we were each envious of the other's home. Isn't that funny?"

"It's certainly enlightening," I offered.

We finish eating, and go outside to leave. We cross the street to buy some snacks and drinks for the road - Emergency Preparedness 101. When we return, the man comes out from the restaurant to meet us.

"You know...just down the road here....a few kilometers south of here is an old indian village. They used to build these special places to live in the winter. They'd dig down into the ground, and then make a sort of top to it, and they lived in these in the winter. It's an open camp. You should go check it out."

So, we thank him and ride off. A while later, Ben spots the sign, and we turn in. We follow a dusty alkaline dirt road down into the Fraser River gorge, and do, in fact, discover the Indian camp he had described to us. As we pull up , we see several Tee-Pee's, and a bunch of people under a pavilion. My assumption is that they're eating lunch, and I go up and start peeking into the Tee-Pee's, only to discover that they're occupied.

And that the people in the pavilion are praying in a ceremony that we've inadvertently crashed.

Now, we're trying to figure out how to leave. I'm sure starting the bikes will interrupt their sacred ceremony, but eventually we just start our bikes and drive away.

Probably, we set back Canadian-Indian Relations back a millennia.

As we're leaving, we pass the man and his wife coming down to the indian camp on their bike...a Honda Shadow, I think.

We start heading south. At this point, it's about noon, and we still haven't really gone anywhere, and we haven't even got gas, and we're both on empty.

At the next gas station, we stop to fill up. I'm still feeling pretty superior for having my gas can. Ben's is empty, at this point, is my understanding. But as we roll south, we're seeing more and more signs of civilization, and as the sun comes up, I realize that I'm roasting.

"I put on all of my riding gear...did you?" I ask Ben.

"No..because I'm not an idiot," is his reply.

So now, we've gone nowhere today, really. I'm wearing way too much gear. Feel like I could faint.

We start rolling south. The plan is to go to Cache Creek, but now, he's starting to crawfish on me.

"We really don't have to go to Cache Creek, do we? I mean...the map shows that 99 cuts off about 9 km north of Cache Creek and..."

"And you don't like to backtrack. OK. Fair enough. You've made your point. We'll see what it's like when we get there."

At the last stop before our turn onto 99, I signal to pull over, and we stop for gas. Ostensibly, this eliminates our need to go to Cache Creek.

"Now, we won't have to go to Cache Creek. Are you happy now?"

"Well...why do you want to go there? I don't understand..."

"Because I went there last time. That's all. It's not a big deal. I'm just a creature of habit, I think."

Then we roll south. At Highway 99, the Sea-To-Sky Highway, we turn west for the journey down past Whistler into Vancouver.

It starts off very arid. Almost like a desert. Think Moab. Then, the canyon gets greener and greener as you get deeper into it. I remember the places I stop and took photos last time. The cabins. The mountains. He was here. He came through here.

Now, Ben isn't behind me, so I turn and go back. I'm not leaving him out here to die. We're in this together. I find him adjusting his clothing or some such nonsense. I decide that I'll remove a layer of clothing, and strip down to remove all of my under-armor. I remove my gloves, one of my jackets, and my riding pants. So now, I'm not wearing gloves. Or any riding pants....just jeans..bare hands...boots...no gloves...and my outer riding jacket shell only.

As we continue riding, I'm finally cool enough that I feel like I won't die. The canyon is still an oven, but I'm not as hot as I was before. So we're riding through this canyon down a narrow winding 2-lane black-topped road.

I wave Ben around me.

Now, it's just me and the canyon. A beautiful ride through this gorge. I decide to reprogram my GPS to go to Whistler. Now, you should know that, as I drive, very little attention is required by the bike. Mostly, I'm taking pictures, programming my GPS, fiddling with the GoPro, or filming while I'm riding with one hand. So, I go into a curve at about 60 mph (100 km/hr), while I'm reprogramming my Garmin Montana 600, and suddenly I inexplicably lose control of the bike. I'm about to crash, and I'm not even sure why or what's happening. I wasn't going too fast through the curve...that's not the issue. I've just lost control of the bike.

The bike starts to go down, and I think..."Oh Lord God this is not fucking happening". Like...it's hard to believe I'm about to crash. And I don't even know what went wrong. The brain doesn't have time to think. I manage to get the bike upright somehow, but now it's about to crash again, and the bike starts to go down again. I have on no gloves. No riding pants. Just jeans. Bare hands. And my riding jacket shell. Not a good time to go down. This is going to suck in a big way.

I've got both hands on the handlebars now. Forget the GPS, of course. I'm struggling to regain control of the bike. To make it through the curve. And somehow, by the grace of God, I manage to get the bike under control. The whole time, I'm just slowing down by coasting. No brakes. I just let off the throttle.

The bike coasts to a stop, and as it does, I turn off to the left, down into the gorge. I'm so shaken by my near death experience that I'm shaking uncontrollably. When I take off my helmet, I'm shaking like a lunatic. I'm seriously freaking out. That's never happened to me before in my life. The experience is shattering. I imagine shipping the bike back to Denver, or just selling it and flying home.

As I look around, I realize that, by chance, I've stumbled into the most stunning lake park you've ever seen, at Marble Canyon Park. I look at the front tire. It's completely flat. So, that's what happened....my front tire blew out. Now...why did this happen? I'm not clear. It has plenty of tread left on it. I just put the front tire on a few thousand miles again. It's brand new.

I have no cell coverage at the park, so that sucks. But, I do have shade, water, and some food. And there are lots of other people at the park. So I've got that going for me. I've certainly broken down in worse places.

Basically, my plan at this point is to just sit and wait for Ben to come back. He's gone on ahead, which is how we ride, but he should come back for me eventually.

I leave the bike by the side of the road so that he won't have any trouble spotting it when he comes back. That's the secret. The bike is what he'll be looking for. If he can't see the bike, he'll never find me.

Now, I wander down to the lake. I would say that it's a river, but somehow it's a lake. Fair enough.

People are down, swimming in the lake. Rowing across on those ridiculous paddle boards. Kids swimming and splashing in the lake. Only I don't have a swimsuit. This was an oversight on this trip.

I'm roasting, and would like nothing more than to swim in the lake, but I don't want to miss Ben when he returns.

Somehow, I strike up a conversation with a couple, and now they're offering me an ice-cold beer, which I graciously accept. He lives in B.C., she lives in Tahoe. They're traveling around B.C. on vacation, taking their beer cooler everywhere they go.

Eventually, Ben shows up, and I'm so grateful to see him. Like...it's so hard to be out here, all alone, thousands of miles from home, without even cell coverage. It's a bad thing to be stranded like this.

"Dude...what can we do? I'm thinking...drive to Cache Creek...find a tow truck...tow the bike back to Cache Creek and get the tire fixed?"

"Yeah...sounds like a plan." So, Ben takes off towards Cache Creek. But he returns shortly.

"Here's the thing....I drove a little distance...found a place, and asked them if they had a towing company they preferred...they gave me the number of a tow company...I called them, and they're coming to pick you up. Be here in less than an hour."

We agreed that he would head on down to Whistler or Vancouver, and I'll try to catch up with him in a day or two.

I was so happy that he came back to help me out. So good to have a friend on the road. I send him on his way.

Now, I'm waiting for the tow truck, but I want to swim across this like in a big way. I check that there's no tow truck, strip down to my underwear, and wade into the lake. Now, I start to swim across the lake. By the time I'm in the middle, I realize that the lake is much larger than I'd realized, and I'll be lucky to survive the swim across. Somehow, I make it across, glad to be alive, now only to realize that I have to swim back across the lake, and quickly, if I'm to meet the tow truck driver.

So I start back across. My arms are like noodles. I'm about 2/3 of the way back across when the tow truck driver shows up and starts honking his horn. Now, instead of the back stroke and the breast stroke, I'm doing the American crawl, swimming as fast as possible, praying to God he doesn't leave me to die out here in this remote canyon.

As soon as I reach the shore, I race through the woods, up the hill to the tow truck driver in my underwear, dripping wet, gasping for breath, and begging him not to leave me to die in the remote canyon.

Once I realize he's not going to abandon me an drive back to Cache Creek alone, I put on my clothes, and we load the KTM up onto the truck. I climb in the cab, and we start back up the canyon, in the direction of Cache Creek.

The plan is that we'll tow it to Cache Creek, I'll get a motel room for the night, and in the morning, the tire place Kal-Tire will get me rolling. That's the plan anyway.

Photos in the Extended Entry.