Today I got T W O flats. Thanks universe.
The morning started off very well and I was psyched for today’s scenic ride. I had loaded everything on my bike, opened the garage door, and started to roll my bike outside. As soon as the bike moved I knew something was wrong, and realized the front tire was completely flat. So that wasn’t a great way to start the day. I patched the tube, got the bike all setup, and then reloaded the bags. About an hour later than anticipated, I was finally ready to start cycling!
I stayed the night at a friend’s house, which was located most of the way up the hill leading out of Golden. It sucked riding up it the day before, but meant I had a head start on what would be a day full of climbing.
Only a few kilometres out of Golden, I reached the notoriously windy and hilly road that follows Kicking Horse Canyon (I think that’s what it’s called??). There was construction on this section of the highway so the two directions of traffic had to alternate passing through. This basically meant I had most of the road to myself, because the construction didn’t take up a full two lanes. There was also a weirdly large amount of time between the alternating of traffic, so I had most of this section of road to myself. It’s a particularly dangerous road to cycle, so I was pretty psyched!
Coming down the other side of this big hill was pretty unreal because there was still almost no traffic. I took up a full lane to myself, and bombed down the hill. It was all going well until I reached a sign for “10 mile hill.” I was just praying that the hill wasn’t actually 10 miles long… i guess I should’ve prayed harder.
While the bill sucked, the scenery didn’t. I was climbing out of the floor of the canyon, which meant crossing a huge bridge. In a car there’s no place to stop near the bridge, so I’d never had the chance to check it out before, but on my bike I was able to stop all over the place and check it out! For some unexplainable reason I’m fascinated by significant bridges.
After a lot of cycling I finally made it up 10 Mile Hill, and made it to flatter roads. At this point I was back out of the mountains, and the ride felt like I was just killing time until I could get back. I started to get a little bored, but soon made it to the entrance to Yoho National Park! I was cycling straight into the last section of mountains I’d have to ride through to get to Calgary. These are also the mountains I’m most familiar with, so I was excited to see them from the speed of a bicycle rather than car.
