Although today was my last day to sleep in, as it is my last day of solo travel, until the foreseeable future, I was up at 0645. I briefly toyed with the idea of rolling over and going back to sleep I instead got up and started my blog.

It is very easy after a day in the saddle to have a couple of tasty adult beverages with dinner, watch a bit of boobtube, or some light reading, and veg out at night. It is also very easy to suddenly find yourself many days behind on the blog. It is always a balancing act to keep the blog interesting, but also keep the daily time investment down.

My plan this year is to concentrate on writing, use images from the interweb, and populate the entries with videos after the fact. This blog site doesn't handle video very well, and my VIMEO account's quota is used up with editing CSAPS videos right now, so I am going to try to reduce my daily workload. Hopefully you enjoy my writing more than images and video as the latter will be provided sparingly.

I wrote the Day 0 pre-amble and assembled my distribution list, took over 4 hours. I finished just a few minutes before 1100 which is check out time. I loaded the bike, pretty happy with my reduced gear pack, in about 5 minutes and departed right at 1100.

Here is the restaurant & motel, nothing fancy but filled the belly, sated the thirst and rested the head for under $100!





From Revelstoke to Summerland was listed as 243 km by Google maps, and also, curiously, listed at taking 3 hrs & 19 minutes. I continued on Hwy 1 westbound until I came to Sicamous (Sick a Moose) so it was easy to remember where my turn off was to go southbound on 97A. Traffic was light, speed was around 120 clicks, storm clouds threatened all around but in the end I only got lightly rained on for about 30 seconds in Enderby.





I passed through Vernon easily and was making exceptional time, the whole 3h & 19m thing was the farthest from my mind until I got to Kelowna, now and forever more referred to as Clowna! The highway had lights every 100 years, oops Freudian slip, every 100 yards, timed to stop you at everyone, then go through 4 way turn cycles. Extremely frustrating!

What made it more frustrating was that there was a HOV lane. High occupancy vehicle. This allowed vehicles with 2 or more people in it, motorcycles and electric vehicles with some sort of decals are allowed too. I have used HOV's with great success in 'merica before, most notably to get through Atlanta, GA & Phoenix, AZ in short order. In 'merica there is maybe a handful of vehicles in the HOV with you, 99.99% of cars on 'merican interstates have one passenger.

I got through Atlanta in 45 minutes at 85 mph while the traffic to my right, all 8 lanes of collector + 8 lanes of expressway, were stuck in bumper to bumper gridlock. Two things are different with Clowna HOV, it is full of 'Save The Planet' Canadians in Electric cars with every seat filled, and it is in the curb lane position. The lane position means anyone turning right has to pass through it as does public transit.

(Speaking of public transit I stumbled upon this story of a bus in China that you can drive under! Read about it here.

I have been told that URL's don't always resolve into clickable links, has something to do with Java Script on your 'puter, so if it doesn't you can copy/paste.) Since writing this a month ago, I have learned how to make clickable links thanks to the excellent Help function on this blog site.

These 2 things completely negate any benefit of the HOV lane, yet everyone is doing anything they can to get into, I think it is psychological, so I use reverse psychology and go to the left lane. The net result is prolly nothing, but it may have been a small victory. I see the time of day on business signs as traffic trickles by them and I see now where the Google Maps time estimate comes from. When it was all said and done it took me about 3.5 hours.

It takes a long time but eventually we clear Clowna and the road turns back into a 2 lane divided highway so we put the hammer down. It has been at least 6 years since I have been here but the way to Agnes & Bill's (Sister & Brother in law) is still etched into my goldfish memory's mind and when the first traffic light comes into view I know it is my turn off.

OK, OK, it's 1 turn, I shouldn't be bragging about this like it is some navigational triumph, but anytime I can remember something from long ago, it gives me hope!

As I pull up on the driveway the garage door opens and I am warmly greeted. I have a sammich and a beer in hand in less that 5 minutes.

We sat at the kitchen table for some time catching up, and then the conversation naturally changed to my plans for the trip, or in my case the lack of planning for the trip. It became apparent we needed some maps so we had a quick trip to the local AMA office. At home we scrutinized my 'plan' and determined it didn't hold as much water as I thought; instead of starting at Port Hardy, we'll get to the coast farther north around Stewart. My dreams of island hopping aren't going to work out.

Luckily Bill was pretty 'in' to my idea of trying for the Arctic Ocean (by tour company) or the Arctic Circle (by motorcycle), so we are going to meander our way up to Anchorage, wander around and time our arrival into Fairbanks to coincide with the shuttle to Prudhoe Bay.

The McClures retired, for the evening, somewhat early, by my standards, which allowed me some time to write and post the Day 1 submission. I was in bed by midnight, ready to get up at the Crack of Bill for the next few weeks. Our compromise is 0900 departure so I really only have to get up at 0845.

Maybe 0850!

Revelstoke to Summerland
243 kms
3.5 hours in the saddle