June 24 - Bellingham WA to Sechelt, BC, cont'd
We got to the ferry with 30 minutes to spare, time enough for Subway sandwiches, and to get lost trying to find the right boat. With three different ferry runs from the same terminal, that was easy to do. Nine of us made it, the other six, we were sure not only would be late, but also drenched by one of the periodic downpours hitting southern BC that day.
Once on board, we played "cloudspotting", trying to guess if we'd dock in the sun or the wet. Since none of us knew where we were going, nor which direction we'd bike once we landed, it made for great fun, which was shared by a biker in his late fifties/early sixties, trying to instruct us on the correct route out of town. He was slow, methodical, and repetitious. Everyone who approached asked "What'd he say; what'd he say?", to which this fellow would repeat his entire spiel, word-for-word, like some retired history professor. All I got from this was that (a) there was a road to Gibsons, out of which (b) there was a giant, prolonged hill.
I quickly lost the pod out of the ferry dock as I stopped to take off a layer of clothes (the sun had indeed come out). In Gibsons, I found LeeLee and Tom, who pointed me in the right direction, straight up a hill. Tom hung back to pedal with LeeLee and I motored on alone. Just as I passed an abandoned barn, the skies opened up. Should've stopped in the shelter, I mumbled as I splashed along the Sunshine Coast.
After about five miles, I came to the outskirts of Sechelt, with no let up in sight for the rain. So I waited it out under the eaves of a mini-mall, looking right out at the Strait of Georgia. Through the gully washer, the wavelets were bouncing in sunlight.
"Now I get it!" I thought. "The coast is in the sunshine - that's how it got its name." Tom and LeeLee pulled up, and I rode with them into camp, across a short isthmus from the strait to Porpoise Bay. Greg, Dave, and Steve were already there, firm in their belief that not only was this the right place, but the trucks and the sag were not there either. We huddled in the protection of the picnic shelter, plotting how to put the tents inside for the night.
Just then a BC Parks rangerette came by, and we engaged in protracted negotiations about where to sleep (Group Site? Biker Field? Nyet! to the picnic shelter!). In the end, the trucks arrived, tents went up, food got cooked, and most of us got dry.
Jim, Pat, and Alf; John and Ken, late arrivals all, rolled in , insisting they'd missed the puddles on the Lion's Gate, the downpour on the sunshine coast, and had a great time at an ethnic restaurant for lunch to boot. Another victory for the tortoises, I guess.
That night, it rained, and Ken learned the cycle length for the bathroom dryer was exactly, precisely, and repetitively 28 seconds.
Miles: 46.5 Total: 196 Vertical: ?2400 feet. Flat tires: None reported.