Victoria and Mayne Island

I was going to call this trip the Gulf island bicycle trip but I think that could misrepresent the situation so I settled on Gulf Islands with a bicycle. It is a holiday on the Gulf Islands and I will be using my bicycle.

My middle son Andrew and I flew out on Saturday. We got a little surprise when we went to check in our luggage including the bike. I had called WestJet twice and they had told me that long as I took off the pedals and twisted the handle bars they would provide the bag and there would be no problems. When I got to the check in the agent told me that they don't provide bags and I couldn't take the bike on the plane. I protested so she called her manager who was really cool. A plastic bag fitting the bag appeared and all was well. Edmonton must have a low ranking for bike friendliness.

We made to Victoria and bussed into town. The Victoria buses are fitted with carriers for bikes. When we transferred buses we accidentally transferred onto the northbound 72 instead of the southbound 72. We got off in Sidney and got turned around. A woman from Michigan we talked to at the bus stop asked me if Andrew was my grandson. It is a little bit of a dementia land out here. Since then I have been introducing him as my grandson. We were staying pretty close to the Victoria (Emily Carr) art gallery so we walked over to check it out. I love all that Group of Seven Emily Carr stuff. Afterwards we headed back to make supper for ourselves and for my oldest son Christopher who is working as a volunteer counsellor at the Victoria Y camp. I have not seen him since the end of June. When he has weekends off he comes into Victoria and couch surfs at other counsellor's places. He came over with two of his friends Clara and Michael. We had a nice visit.

Andrew and I headed off to Witty's lagoon on Sunday with a borrowed skim board. An interesting fact about myself is that my goal in life is to become a professional skim boarder. Skim boarding is surfing on the edge of the rising water. One runs, throws down the board jumps on it and skims along the surface. If you do everything right you can go about 4-5 metres. If things don't go well you can end up tumbling in the water. It is like gambling. A good ride is worth several bad rides. We took the bus to Witty's transferring in Langford. I didn't realise but the second bus ran only every 2 hours. We lucked out and only had a 15 minute wait. It was still a long trip. Public transit users are always suffering. The bus driver told us the return times for the bus and we were very punctual being at the bus stop. We persisted withe skim boarding for about two hours taking turns. Andrew finally had a spectacular wipe out probably because he was getting tired as was I. He took a while to get up and I thought it was best to cut our losses. We met a retired pathologist on the beach and he knew some of the paths in Edmonton and one of my favourite surgeons, Dr. Halgren who retired several years ago. After a 1.5 hours bus trip back to Victoria we were just exhausted so took it easy after supper.

This morning we were up early and a cab picked us up to take Andrew to the downturn Y for the 7:45 bus trip to camp Thunderbird where he will be for the next 19 days. After dropping him off I headed back to our Air BnB got my gear and bike and cycled/coasted 10 blocks down hill to the bus stop. I took the bus to Schwartz Bay to catch the ferry to Mayne Island. I caught the express bus. It was much easier than biking. That is when I realised that calling this a bike trip was really misrepresenting the situation.

The timing was perfect. I caught the ferry to Mayne via Galiano. I chatted with a woman from Saskatoon who had moved to Galiano 5 years ago and worked in the spa at the high end hotel. I talked to a woman from Victoria who was with her friends from TO. They said TO had been hot all summer. On the next ferry I met George a retired math teacher from Lethbridge.

When we got to Mayne Island I finally had to do some bicycling. From the ferry terminal it was a very steep climb upwards. With fully loaded panniers it was a lot of work. I stopped to catch my breath after a few minutes as I was scared of having a heart attack . The traffic went by. I continued slowly making my way to Miner's bay and the grocery store. I met George again. That is the thing about these islands is you meet people over and over. He has a place close to the Blue Vista. I think he felt sorry for me so he invited me for supper on the sixth. I stocked up with the minimum groceries and continued the cycle to Blue Vista. The uphills were hard and the down hills were fast. It didn't take me too long maybe 30 minutes. I dumped my stuff and biked to my favourite beach on the island for a swim in the Pacific to cool off.Read more