In 2018 I rode my bicycle across Western Canada, covering about 2300km. It's been two years and I figured I'd release my journal entries here for anyone interested in what a trip like this does to a person's sanity.
Given that they're real-life jou...
I suffered a poor sleep last night. The European was in and out almost constantly to the bathroom, or so I imagine. And he kept opening and closing his bag, which must've had a huge zipper for the noise it made.
At 05:45 I got up and ate my last breakfast of cold oatmeal before downsizing as much as possible. I emptied my left-front pannier and squeezed it into the right-front. Emptied the Powerade bottles I'd kept for water and tossed them. Threw out my cheap, thin raincoat—great for rolling up tightly, but awful for tearing under tension, like when undoing the buttons. And threw away my little garbage bag before checking out and crossing the street to the station.
I bought a bicycle box and began disassembling my bike. The wheels and front pannier racks had to come off and were simple enough. But the pedals? It occurred to me here that I didn't have a wrench to remove them with. I tried placing the bike in the box with them intact, but the cardboard bent around it into a shape that couldn't be closed.
I began to panic as no one I asked had a wrench set and the minutes ticked by. Eventually a man with a southern accent who'd been watching me approached and said the security guard in the booth outside was a pretty helpful and affable fellow. He might have a wrench to lend, or know where to get one.
This information turned out to be true and the guard handed me a crescent wrench he'd fished out of a drawer. Relieved, I went back to my bike to apply the tool, but it was too wide to fit over the nut stuck between the pedal and the arm it attaches to. I went back to the guard and told him the problem, my bus only ten minutes away from leaving. He searched his drawer again and pulled out a clamp, as he had no other wrench.
I hurried back and tightened it over the nut, still not exactly sure how to loosen the nut of a bike pedal, but motivated by my slipping time to figure it out fast. One came off easily enough, but the other wasn't coming loose. Giving it up, I placed the bike in the box again. It bent a little, but I forced the flaps shut and taped the hell out of them before returning to the counter to weigh it and get tags for it and my bags.
Without a minute to spare, I rolled my luggage on a flatbed provided by the nice security guard and boarded the bus. I'm heading home, Winnipeg!
My whole journey in reverse.
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Made it on the bus just in time.
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