Basecamp Vancouver

The journey begins in Vancouver. Yesterday my bike and I flew into Vancouver. It was an incredibly stressful journey. Having to hand over my beloved bike to a man who looked like he hates his job handling outsize luggage at Gatwick did nothing to set my mind at rest. Getting up at 4am to arrive 4 hours early for a flight that is then delayed by 4 hours did not help. Having a devil child kick the back of my seat for 12 hours at least gave me something other than my bike to worry about during the flight. I bought a book with me called The Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Garrard. It's the account of a survivor of the ill-fated 1912 Scott expedition to the South Pole. I'm not comparing my journey with that of Apsley Cherry-Garrard but it was a pretty bad flight.

Upon landing in the surprisingly pleasant Vancouver airport I faced up to my next worry. I was a little concerned that my unconventional trip may provoke some intense questioning from the Canadian border guards. I tried to get in the queue for the friendliest looking guard and then stepped up nervously fully prepared to be sent home to spend the next 4 months at home crying. The guy asked me what I was doing in Canada. I just about managed to stutter, 'I'm cycling to Mexico.' 'Where's your bike?', he demanded. It was almost as if he expected me to have ridden off the plane straight through customs. I told him I'd bought the bike as luggage on the plane and he became all smiley and wished me luck. I was in Canada.

I found my way to the outsize baggage collection point and within minutes my boxed bike appeared. I carefully inspected the box. It looked good. I was very happy. I then got talking to Hannah, a German lady who was cycling to San Francisco. She was not so lucky with her bike. After waiting with her for quite some time it became apparent her bike wasn't coming. Her English wasn't too good and I felt for her as I can imagine how I would've felt if there had been a problem with my bike. We spoke to a baggage guy who checked on his computer and told us in a matter-of-fact way that there hadn't been room on her flight for the bike. Without any apology or admission that this could be some sort of problem he told her the bike would come on another plane tomorrow. She was planning on cycling from the airport. That wasn't going to happen so we shared a taxi downtown. We discussed routes in the taxi and swapped numbers with a view to possibly meeting up en-route.

I arrived at my fairly crappy hotel, unboxed my bike, saw that it was all ok and fell into bed.

The next morning I woke at 5am and began assembling my bike. All went well until I realised the front derailleur had been pushed out of alignment during transit. Never having had to adjust a derailleur I got stuck in and tried to fix it. I spent around 5 hours making adjustments, conscious the whole time that I need to be able to fix things like this myself. I managed to make it rideable but couldn't quite get it right. Aware that I had to get it sorted within the next few hours in order to set off tomorrow morning I decided to take it to a bike shop. I rode a few miles to a place called The Bicycle Doctor. I cannot recommend this place enough. A very friendly mechanic made a couple of quick adjustments and made me realise that I had been trying to adjust it to an impossible level of perfection. The mechanic was very excited about my trip and didn't charge me for the work He told me how he'd recently worked on the bike of a guy called James who is attempting to break the world record for cycling around the world. I'd read about this guy here. He's averaging 120 miles a day, about twice my intended average. The mechanic was clearly excited to have worked on James' bike, I can understand why, his achievement is incredible.

Having been given the all clear by the Bike Doctor I headed over to the Mountain Equipment Co-op to buy some fuel for my stove. Someone behind me shouted, 'Surly!' I turned around to see a man with a near-identical bike to my own. I'm starting to realise that owners of the Surly Long Haul Trucker (my fairly unusual bike) are nearly always excited to see each other. The fellow Trucker was a lovely French-Canadian man from somewhere I'd never heard of in Northern Canada. We talked for ages about our planned tours. He was very excited about my trip and gave me some good advice about the Canadian section. We exchanged contact details and will no doubt trade stories and photos in the coming months.

Having everything finally set for launch tomorrow, what I'm about to do is finally starting to become a reality. As the plane came into land yesterday we flew over a series of mountainous, deeply forested islands. The landscape looks so wild and forbidding. Tomorrow night that's where I'll be sleeping. I'm frightened. I'm excited. I'm excited and frightened.