At long last I have reached the coastline of the Pacific, and for all intensive purposes completed the fist leg of the journey.
Nelson, which is the town were I last left you is a fun place. It is basically full of hippies, cool bars and lots of vegetarian restaurants, so if you ignore the fact that every tree hugger looks undernourished and in desperate need of a hunk of cow to add colour to his face then the place is most agreeable.
I stayed in a hostel which was by far the Hilton equivalent of Hosteling. It was well nice. I met with the guy who worked there and ended up going out for organic beers (what else of course). So because of this I had a good few days there. On my day of departure disaster stuck. This was certainly going to be a day of mourning...
I was packing my bike back up when I noticed some hemp under pant wearing scoundrel had stolen my pot of 'Wriggly Jims bait worms' from the floor by my bike. For those of you who are wondering what I am talking about, basically they are some worms I bought with the intention to fish with, but after laziness, too many mosquitoes and 5500 miles of being travel buddies I had becomes pretty attached to my squirming friends.
The only reasoning I can come up with to why the clepto-hippy would want to steal my worms, is that either he was looking to expand his organic worm farm, or he finally had a hankering for a bit of meat, and whilst his hippy friends were too stoned to notice he took the opportunity to tuck into my bait. Dam him. In truth I must admit that I hadn't actually checked on my worms for a good few weeks, so they were probably more like twiglets than the juicy looking picture on the front of the pot. So not much nourishment for you Swampy.
I left Nelson feeling at a loss from such reliable travel partners, who never moaned about where I was heading or how impatient I am. But I soon got over it with the thought that at least I may have converted some fungus munching do-gooder to the way of the omnivore.
I got to Vernon and up the mountain to Silverstar where the Skillet plot of land was to be my home for about 12 hours. The roads were really twisty all the way there, but it also tipped down with rain so I was feeling rather soggy on arrival. The plot of land is decidedly bushy, and it was tough to find a place to pitch the tent, so I was forced to put it right by the road side. Very quickly curtains began twitching as the plot is surrounded by other houses. Finally a plump man called Lennard appeared, we had a chat and he told me that there were no shops open to get food. he then went into his house and came out with tins of food for me as well as beer. Nice one Lenny. So that night I was again well fed and watered for free.
The next day I was off to Whistler, on leaving the Skillett empire I left a pre-housewarming gift behind the big tree at the front, about 6ft up. So Guy you now are the proud owner of my fishing rod ($10 from walmart, and a bit broken) as well as a little note. I felt I could give the rod away as it no longer had a purpose what with the worms now being part of the criminal underworld.
I had yet another wet ride to Whistler and enjoyed yet another litre of oil with a burger floating somewhere in it at a hick pub in some god awful town. The rest of the trip was uneventful until about 15 km from Whistler, where I secured my second confirmed road kill. I was riding happily along when a pheasant kind of bird thing flew out of the hedge and made significant enough contact with the front end of my bike to in fact become part of the bike (see pic below) The impact was at around 65 mph, and lucky for me I was considerably better off than the bird.
Whistler was nice but again very touristy. In fact the other 4 squillion Aussies that hadn't worked out the road continued to Banff had ended up staying here. I had a good night with a few locals doing the usual drinking but decided I would leaving the next day to reach Vancouver.
I left for vancouver the next morning feeling some what delicate from drinking horrid shots of black stuff. The ride was only a few hours and I had actually tried to be organized and booked a place to stay. I arrived in vancouver, which it seems is actually a very pleasant city. It has a fair amount of greenery which is nice, and isn't that busy so in fact you don't really feel like you're in a big city. There are however, and incredible amount of hobos wondering the street and asking me for my money. The great thing is that they then look stupendously surprised when I refuse to hand over any of my hard earned (actually borrowed) money so as they can buy yet more petrol-scented booze to refuel with. The response to their utter shock at not being handed free money is normally something in the line of burbling and a pungent waft from their tenants super strength breath.
Anyhow, besides the copious amount of hobos littering the streets, the city is very nice, and my view on Canadian people since arriving here is that they are all very very friendly. Also I have even learnt a few useful facts, 1. Australians do live in other parts of the world other than their country and Earls Court, 200 to a house. 2. Most Canadians are very helpful and don't always say 'Eh' after every sentence (every other one is more like it) and finally 3. Not all Canadians are called Steve. (Sorry Noon, our age old theory has been blown out of the water.)
I am just finishing off this section in Jeff and Daniels flat in Victoria on Vancouver Island where i am having a really cool time. The town is like a really nice English seaside town, and Jeff, Daniel and all their friends are showing me a quality time. Tomorrow is Canada day so it should be more fun and general consumption of beer. Excellent. After recovering from a hangover whilst watching Das Boot (5 hours of film is certainly long enough to recover so Das Boot = ideal) A few more days of fun will be perfect before I have to negotiate the USA.
The next post will be state side as long as the lovely immigration men decide I don't look or smell funny, which is tough when you have only had 3 t-shirts to wear in 5 weeks.
bye.
Miles completed: 5530
road kills: 2 (both in flight!!!)
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