August 4, 2012 – It’s a day for lots and lots of water. Sunny and hot, stay hydrated. Poor Wall-E is just too small and really needs a straw tho’

I, on the other hand, think I drank a gallon or more today. One of my co-workers and her boyfriend were riding their bicycles to Squamish and I’d said that we’d try and meet up with them for lunch at a local bakery/restaurant. You might think it’s impressive they’d ride their bicycles that far, but for these two that isn’t even a short ride. They are endurance riders and regularly ride in timed races that are between 1000 and 1500km, or more. Last weekend Kirk and I rode about 600km on the motorcycles and then I read about Cheryl & Nigel’s weekend in the news. The really funny part is that Cheryl said “Yeah, but when we ride downhill it’s easy, you still have to control the motorcycle and manage it more than we do.” Um yeah…so let’s talk about ‘uphill’ Cheryl? What they do is impressive, that an afternoon ride of 120km or more barely breaks a sweat for them is equally impressive. I’m not so impressed by some of the other bicycle racing (on and off road) anymore.

So we figured they’d be there at noon, and the ride takes us about 30 minutes, give or take, so we headed off around 11:30am. Turns out that half the Lower Mainland was also heading that direction. We figured it wouldn’t be bad today, that most of the weekend traffic would have been yesterday afternoon/evening.

We were wrong!

The sheer volume of traffic on the Sea to Sky bottlenecked things both after Lion’s Bay and all the way from Furry Creek to Britannia Beach. It was nasty and hot, and the drivers on the road were erratic in their speeds at the best of times. Needless to say, by the time we made the Sunflower Cafe, Cheryl and Nigel were probably halfway to Whistler. But we had a fabulous lunch there anyway, before heading back towards home, with a stop in at Porteau where we shared a shady spot and chatted with another rider, and drank more water.

We had thought we’d ride to Whistler, we’d even toyed with riding up to Merritt, but a quick look at the weather and seeing temperatures of 37oC quickly changed our minds. Much better to hang out near the ocean and catch the breezes that cool things down to a tolerable 26oC.

We had to be home by four anyway, since the fellow who built our new mattress was coming by to adjust it for us. So while we waited for him we washed the bug carcasses off, cleaned and lubed the chains, and polished everything up shiny and nice And drank more water.

So now a BBQ, then jump on the scooter, which we can slip into the West End with, tuck in a back alley close to the beach, and find a spot to sit and watch the fireworks.