Day 37 - Blaine, WA to Vancouver, BC

Day Total - 46.3 miles
Trip Total - 1,454.2 miles
Vancouver. The End.

On the final day of the trip, the weather certainly didn't disappoint. It was raining pretty heavily when I woke up, and though it stopped and started a few times, it didn't look like it was going to stop for good anytime soon. I delayed as long as I could, did a little bit of bike work, and finally I rode off into the drizzle a bit after 10 AM. I chose to deviate from the ACA route and cross the border at the Peace Arch, where I-5 goes into Canada. Of course, I couldn't get on the interstate directly - I had to go through Peace Arch State Park to access the pedestrian/bicycle crossing.

As usual, I got a lot of hassle from the Canadian authorities. The initial border guard had me go inside the customs building to talk to another guard. She didn't give a reason, but the man I spoke with inside seemed very concerned that I was going to try to get a job in Canada despite my assurances otherwise. Somewhat surprisingly, they didn't seem too experienced with cycle tourists at this crossing, perhaps because the ACA sends riders to the truck crossing a few miles to the east.

The Peace Arch

It took longer than I expected, but I was finally allowed into Canada once they decided I wasn't, in fact, going to take their jobs. Instead of taking an easterly detour back to the Adventure Cycling route, however, I decided to take the much more direct (and busier) King George Blvd. through the first several miles of British Columbia. Luckily, there was a good shoulder, and it was signed as a bike route. The weather was getting worse by the minute though. The rain had picked back up, so I had to keep wiping my glasses to be able to see. As expected, I was already in suburbia with strip malls lining the road between the occasional housing development and office building.

Then, just after rejoining the ACA route, I got lost. All of the roads were numbered (132nd St., 80th Ave., etc.) so I probably just confused some of them. Regardless, I ended up taking a very windy path through what can only be described as a colder version of India. Almost everyone I saw on the sidewalk was Indian, most of the businesses had signs in Indian languages (Punjabi, I imagine, but I had no way of knowing for sure), and pretty much all of the doctors, lawyers, realtors, etc. had Indian names.

I finally got back on track, only to get very lost again not long afterward. This one wasn't my fault though - new road construction meant that the map was no longer accurate. Once I figured that out, I was supposed to follow a bike route onto a bridge. But then I came up to a sign that - I kid you not - had arrows pointing both left and right as the route to the bridge. I decided to go down the private, dead end road that the map originally suggested. At the end of it, I found the bike path that I was looking for, although there had been no indication of its existence at the intersection.

Of course, I went the wrong way down the path for a good distance before I started to suspect that I had turned the wrong way again. Then I went too far in the other direction. Again, the route had been changed since the map was made. It didn't help that the route would have been confusing even if the map had been accurate. So after a good 20 minutes of riding around lost, I finally got on the Alex Fraser Bridge into Richmond.

From there, I rode along the south bank of the Fraser River through marshy, sometimes industrial areas. It was pretty boring, to be honest, particularly since it was still drizzling and gray. After probably 40 minutes, I reached Richmond proper (more suburbs!), where I promptly made another wrong turn. I did end up at a Tim Horton's though, so all was not lost. I got a coffee (no double-double though, I wasn't looking for a sugar overload) and a sandwich, and then got back on the road. Of course, the route onto the next bridge had also been changed from what the map said, so I had to turn around a couple times.

At the south end of the bridge, I finally saw the sign: "Entering City of Vancouver." I wasn't done yet, but seeing that was completely surreal. It was the home stretch of the home stretch, the final run in. I crossed the bridge and biked through residential areas in the southern part of the city, not even really feeling my legs turn the pedals. The environment was quite pleasant, with quiet streets, well-signed routing, and perhaps most importantly, no rain. I climbed over the shallow hill in something of a daze, and as I crested and then descended, the low ridge, the streets started to get busier, with more businesses every block. Traffic picked up, and I turned right onto Cypress St. - that is, the final turn on the Adventure Cycling map.

The end was sudden. I came to a T-junction with a park and a tall totem pole on the other side. "Section 1 ends at the corner of Cypress and Ogden in Vanier Park," the map told me. The sign for the cross street read "Ogden." I had done it. I was at the northern terminus of the Pacific Coast Bike Route. I stood there, basically in shock, for a few minutes. I tried to process it, but it was impossible. Even now, I'm having trouble describing what I felt at that moment. The previous five weeks, almost one and a half thousand miles, all the hills, the headwinds, the rain, the traffic - the journey to this very point where I was standing. It was all there in my head, but my mind was blank.

Back to business, the tour wasn't completely over. I still had to get to the Vancouver Downtown Hostel. I got onto the Burrard Bridge to downtown, and then I got horribly lost yet again. I had no idea where I was; I would follow one road for a few blocks, turn, follow that road for another few blocks, and turn again, all the while hoping I could find a street name I recognized from a glance at the map earlier in the day. Finally, I saw Thurlow St. and turned left. A couple blocks down, I came to the hostel.

That was it. The end. I unloaded the panniers for the last time as I put my bike into the storage room. It still hasn't really hit me. Almost like flying distorts your concept of distance, so does cycle touring. I can remember each day of the tour, but it's impossible to process them all together as a whole right now. All of a sudden, I just won't be biking every day. I will no longer be a member of that weird fraternity of cyclist on tour. The sights, the routine, the hardships - they're all a blur. This was, without a doubt, the most difficult thing I have ever done, both physically and mentally, and now it was over. More importantly, it was completed - I had done what I set out to do from day one. I still can't fully appreciate that fact, and I'm sure it will take time. The most that's happened in the few hours since I arrived is that I have gotten a couple sudden adrenaline rushes with the realization that I'm actually in Vancouver.

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