“I’M KIND OF GETTING NERVOUS.“ I WHISPERED INTO THE DARKNESS.

My boyfriend settled into bed beside me, I shift slightly to face him even though I can’t see him. I know he's still awake, I'm always asleep before he is.

“You’ve traveled overseas alone for eight months.” He pauses and laughs almost silently under his breath, “your not even in a foreign country, you're going to be fine. “

I knew that, but I couldn’t help but still feel nervous. I had just come back from a trip to Whistler to shoot photos for the World Ski and Snowboard Festival, driving and living out of my shit-box of a car in parking lots, and I was much less nervous about something going wrong then than I was now. I know just as much about bike mechanics as I do car mechanics, which is to say nothing at all, and I’ve taken better care of my bike than I have my car without a doubt. I should be confident, but the looming presence of this trip still makes me nervous.

Come morning the tone changed. The alarm goes off at six, I turn it off every ten minutes until almost seven. My morning ritual. I hop in the shower, sit down at the coffee table to check my emails, and put on some music to calm my nerves. There are usually at least ten emails I auto delete each morning, but one catches my eye;

“ViaRail: Travel Advisory! Train 5”

Shit. A short and polite three paragraphs tell me my train has been canceled due to "operational issues", it turns out a fairly large tree branch had crashed through the window of the engine. Nobody was injured, actually, there were only a total of three people on the train.

The train is typically 1-5 hours late on a good day. A sad reality of public transit in the north, But what am I supposed to do? They said they would be sending a bus, but after a quick call they informed me a bike won’t be able to be taken on the bus however, the train may be fixed, so I could potentially still catch it. Okay. I check the ferries, and their schedule is equally confusing and limited as Via's, so I call them too, I just want to speak with an actual human rather than try to understand the internet schedule. After an hour on hold, I find out the next ferry is on Thursday morning, as is the next train.

“Oh my god, nothing lines up!” I throw my hand up in frustration and laugh,

Ben offers to drive me to prince Rupert instead, leaving Wednesday so I’m not having to spend two days waiting in prince Rupert for the boat to leave. But there might be a boat tonight that would leave me the day to drive, except the boat schedule said something odd about today, so after another hour on hold with BC ferries.....There’s no boat tonight.

There’s something to be said about things going wrong, it makes for a better story, right?

WEDNESDAY APRIL 25TH:

Waking to a sky full of blue and the sun beating down, we packed the car with the bike and bags. As spring goes in the north, this has been a good one. Little rain and mild temps, a delightful surprise that stretched all the way to the coast. We drove the morning, reminded the whole route how beautiful the coast up here is, the brackish water; dark and ruddy against the bright green and yellow of the new skunk cabbage lined all the pools along the roadside.

We arrived for lunch, walking around the bay briefly before checking out the location of the terminal. I had planned on simply finding a spot nearby to pop up my bivy and settle in for the night. There where patches of quiet trees between the industrial areas, but Ben’s suggestion won, and he drove me back into town to stay at the Pioneer Hostel. It was safer, and a more leisurely start to what was going to be a hard trip.

No need to rough it right off the bat if I didn’t have to. I used my time to relax, having watermelon down at the wharf, picking up the odd thing I had forgotten and taking a long hot shower before bed.

The 30km ride went quick, greeting me to my stop for the night was a sign saying; “welcome to sunny Tlell! Not a sky in the cloud!” I had to do a little loop just to check and make sure I was reading that right. The irony was perfect, it was in fact, a day without a cloud in the sky. A little further on from; “Tlell unincorporated” was a campground. I had forgotten to fill my 3L bladder for cooking water when I was on the ferry and started to worry about finding half decent water. I weighed my options, figuring Tlell must have something, not knowing it is essentially Naikoon provincial park and the odd home.

When I arrived at "Mist Meadows Campground." the map said there was three water taps, relief washed over me. The stars where aligning and I could just settle in and not have to worry about rationing what I had. Except when I checked the first tap,

Empty.

The next followed suite, and the last. I moaned and kept pedalling. Port Clements was 22km from here and if tomorrow was as hot as today, I would need the water in the morning for both my meals and hydration. I had to swallow my pride and pedal to the nearest house.

I tentatively waited at the end of the drive, hoping to see someone out on the porch. It didn’t look good, I thought. Someone lingering around the edges of the property. Some vagrant on a bicycle. Whatever, I didn’t feel like being dehydrated just because I couldn’t ask a stranger for water. She came outside before I could come to the door, her fluffy Samoyed barking away. After explaining that I had planned on camping at the park but the taps weren’t working she welcomed me in to use hers. Thank god for Josina! We chatted briefly before I took of back to camp. Cooking up dinner on the driftwood and coming back to the sheltered picnic area in the park to sleep. I popped up my bivy in front of the small wood stove and lit a fire, hoping the burning embers would give me comfort as the wind rustled every leaf and bush around me.

FRIDAY APRIL 27TH:

“While I’m on this trip, I’m going to stretch.” I confidently told Ben a couple of days before we left, both of us stretching after a workout…

“Like, morning yoga and deep stretches before bed. Because if I don’t, I’ll probably fall apart.” I laughed. Ben aptly pointed out the fact that I hadn’t really done any training for this. He wasn't entirely wrong, I’d actually done negative training, having been sat in a car for over a week right before and drinking a fair bit of beer while in Whistler.

I pull over to a side road, now halfway between Tlell and Port Clements to take off a layer. I haven’t stretched at all yet, no yoga in the morning, no deep stretches before bed. Nothing. I figure I could do it now and that may help my already sore muscles battle the invisible but ever-present headwind. But of course, I didn’t.

I hop back onto my bike, the chorus of frogs in the ditches cheering me on.

I biked towards Tow Hill probably too late in the day. I made contact with Ben to have a short “I’m alive. I’m here. I wanted to hear your voice.” phone call. I truly needed it, just hearing him made me feel slightly more re-assured in this whole thing. Maybe I’m exhausted and hungry. Yeah, I am exhausted and hungry.

But the further I biked towards Tow Hill the more the sun went down. And down. And I kept biking. And biking. It felt like I was going into the abyss. Houses dwindled and I started to worry that while I was simply just trying to get to camp I would pop a tire or break my chain and I would have no way out of it. I tried talking to myself, telling myself “it’s fine”, “you're almost there” and “You're okay, you have everything you need”, but as per the norm, talking to oneself doesn’t really comfort a person. I worked myself up more and more. I don’t even know why, I had food, water and everything I needed, I was dry, I was for all purposes fine. I was anxious for the sake of being anxious, but as soon as I was going to lose hope, I was there. I pedalled into the Agate Beach campground, wind HOWLING against the shore and laughed pathetically, tears not only from the wind but the dirt welling in my eyes. There was a windowed shack with other people’s stuff in it, they left a note saying they would be back soon. And as I dropped my bike inside and walked to the shore of smooth round pebbles I burst into tears. Laughing and crying and staring at the beautiful sunset. I am fine and I made it.

I wandered the beach, the gale force winds pushing me around as I scanned for agates. To be honest I knew what they were but I’d totally forgotten, so I just looked for pretty rocks. There where several other people camped in the spots further down the beach, A pair of them bike touring caught my eye, but they were huddled between their tent and the wood wall around their tent pad, so I let theme be. It felt good to not be entirely alone, even the van that passed me coming out was here. I had hoped the whole bike ride that I wouldn’t be the only one.

After all the snot exited my nose and literally flew off my face, I figured it was time to hunker down in the sheltered cabin. I cooked up my dinner and tried to stretch as much as I could. Everything felt swollen. My knees popped and cracked when I knelt down and stood up. I didn’t even want to think about my putting my butt back onto my bike seat. Even my lungs ached from the almost 100kms I put in today. When I think about it, I don’t need to legitimize the fact that my lungs aches after battling a headwind for that long!

My body and mind both beg for sleep, but the wind is keeping me awake. The plexiglass windows are all shaking, and I swear when I was leaning on the wall to eat it moved as well. All night I heard the wind bending the tin roof, threatening to rip it right off of the wood. I’m just thankful that I’m not having to be right in the path of the wind on its own, I’m sure I would wake up 30 meters from where I originally was the next morning.

SATURDAY 28TH:

I think solo missions are like running. For me, it takes about 3kms to get to the point where I’m not just wanting to throw in the towel and walk back to my car. After three kilometres my body and brain starts to accept the fact that this is what we’re doing, might as well enjoy it. It’s been about three days since I started this trip in Rupert and I’m starting to feel like I’m getting into the groove of it. The shelter I slept in last night didn’t blow down in the wind, even though it kept howling. The morning was still sunny and I was dry. And I’m only three days into a week here.

I wandered around the beaches and rocky outcrops for the day, trying to find nice rocks to replace the weight in food I had eaten. I made it up to the lookout for Tow Hill, a lush green boardwalk up through the trees. Hiking at sea level is far more enjoyable. The wind died down slightly but the tide came in full force, most of the beach was now being battered by shore dumps. Each crash sounded like an avalanche hitting a wall, but the sun still shone, and it was still warm.

One of the hardest things for me is letting go of time. Letting go of a plan or a frame at which I should be doing things. Its the one thing, or at least one of the easiest things, to constantly have some control over in your life. I find it comforting, having a plan, not saying that without one I cant keep it together but its nice to have boxes to tick in my head. Trips like this give me more than that, they give me the opportunity to just let go and see where the wind takes me. In this case literally.

After reading, wandering, napping and painting I figured the best spot to watch the sunset would be from the highest point around. The wind having died down made sitting at the edge of the cliff bearable, but still noisy. Eagles screeched overhead, hanging effortlessly in gales like kites. The sun dipped slowly, burning a brighter gold the closer it got the the horizon. The waves became ribbons of light, ebbing and rolling their way to the shore. All the trees warmed in tone and the salt spray created a mist through them. It was an incredible vantage point, Naikoon Park stretching out to the left, nothing but marsh and wilderness could be seen. Not even a house in the distance. I really was biking into the abyss...I thought to myself, more so in wonder than worry now. The scale was mind boggling.

SUNDAY 29TH OF APRIL.

It was hard to tell if my body was becoming as tired as I thought it should be, or if each bag just felt heavier than when I packed them back in Smithers. Regardless of which, I clipped them back onto the rack of my bike. Preparing to leave this little shelter I called home for the last couple days and head to my mother's friend's house to stay the night and feed her pets. It was a huge step up from the glassed in shelter and picnic table bed I had been on before. But that spot had made me incredibly thankful for even just a wall to block the gale force winds. They never stopped, only lessened once and a while. I ended up hiding in a little bay most of yesterday just to have some peace from it. It was my little cabin in the woods where I was able to overcome my fears and doubts, therefore I felt like it would always have a little place in my heart. But a comfy couch and bath were still miles better.

It seemed my timing for leaving was on point, as I started down the dirt road with my heavy load on small road bike tires, I soon after ran into a grader. Most of the road was churned up into loose soft dirt and rocks. The worn and flattened road I had come down two days earlier was long gone, leaving me to carefully maneuver the small section left. I wasn't trying to make the best time thankfully, I stopped to take photos of the beautiful road. Clumps of moss hung like clubs from branches, each one their own little island of ferns and greenery.

- 6:44PM

I just saw a guy on the beach closer to Masset, there’s a river carving out the sand and flowing into the ocean. He asked me

“Who do you think is winning, the river or the ocean?” I laughed slightly and replied,

“The river for now, but I think the ocean might make a comeback!” He obviously didn’t get my tidal joke. I laughed awkwardly and quickly went back to my beach-combing and picking up bits of plastic that shouldn't be on the beach.

Apart from the odd awkward human interaction, I’ve had some fruitful ones. For example:

I just met the parents of a friend of mine, I didn’t know it at first, but by sheer coincidence and luck, I struck up a conversation with a lady watching the kite surfers on the beach. We talked about what the heck I was doing out here alone on a bicycle, and moved along to our interests. Lo and behold after some clues were presented and the fact she had a daughter who was a snowboard coach in Torino currently, I asked if it was Chelsea. I had hoped to stay with her here in Masset but the timing didn’t work out. But who would have thought I’d run into her mom while beach combing? She invited me in for tea and I chatted with her parents for a while about bears and biking and art. It was nice, having felt a little lonely the last few days, only getting in a quick hello to the odd passerby. This was the human interaction I lacked, thankfully it returned. And when I said my goodbyes and headed out into the sand dunes of the beach, I left with homemade cookies in my pocket.

I filled my one night in a house with meals cooked on a stove, walking around in socks, scrubbing myself clean in a candlelight lavender bathtub, and watching Kiki’s Delivery service on DVD. The old cat stayed curled on my lap and I slept on a soft couch with a pillow. Creature comforts should not, and will never be taken for granted.

Riding Solo on Haida Gwaii - Bike touring the island.