Day 53-54

Day 53

Today we rode from Tatoga Lake Resort to Dease Lake, and I dedicated my ride to Oma, Dorrie’s mom. It rained a little last night, which meant mosquitos and various other bugs when we woke up this morning. Our drivers treated us to very cinnamon-y pancakes and hashbrowns. During the first 20 mile segment, I rode with Dane for a bit, which was the first time in awhile I had ridden with him. He’s become the fisherman of the group, and can frequently be found stopped at stream crossings. At the lake last night, he caught at least six trout! The last 40 miles of the day I rode with MJ. We were talking the whole time, mostly about things not related to riding, but occasionally we had to interrupt ourselves to complain about the road. The road went from bumpy to dirt to gravel to deep gravel on a hairpin turn…ouch. And then we had to go uphill in gravel. As we neared Dease Lake though, we started to go downhill, which was a nice change of pace. On the way down, we noticed a billboard for Dease River Crossing, where we were supposed to be staying. I did a double take though when the side said that it was 75 km ahead. I turned to MJ and asked her if she’d seen it too. We arrived in Dease Lake to find out that sure enough, our campsite was 75 km ahead. Oops! Mama Z stepped in to save the day though. She gave us two apartments above her restaurant to stay in today and tomorrow (our rest day). One of them the guys who had done the Challenge had been staying in the last couple days and the other was across the hall. It was great to see the other half of the team today. They seemed to be resting pretty well, eating lots of ice cream and helping do dishes or whatever was needed in the restaurant downstairs. We made dinner in the apartment and hung out for a bit watching movies, playing games and catching up for the rest of the evening.

Day 54

I’m embarrassed to say how late I slept in today, but I think it was until 10a or so. I’m an early riser, so I still can’t figure out how I slept that long. Mike, Evan and I went downstairs and had breakfast in Mama Z’s restaurant. I got a three cheese omelet with hashbrowns and toast. The food was great. It turned out we were breakfasting in waves this morning because when we got downstairs, Peter, Geoff, Scott and Trent were just finishing up, and as we were finishing up, Ivan, Dane, Alberto and Geeta were just arriving. The rest of the team had apparently been down there earlier in the morning. We finished breakfast and Mike and I poked our heads into the kitchen to see if they needed anything done. We ended up doing a bunch of the dishes. Afterwards, we went to do laundry and check email. Around mid-afternoon, at least half of the team ended up back in the apartment watching TV and movies. Never able to sit still I cleaned the kitchen in the apartment, and when I finished Alberto came up asking if anyone would like to come help in the kitchen downstairs. I headed down and ended up making hamburgers. A few of us our going to head down to the restaurant for dinner shortly, and then it will likely be an early night to bed as we’ll be back on the road tomorrow.