My 6 day, 900km solo bike tour from North Vancouver to Canmore, Alberta was cut short when I was found unconscious on the highway just outside of Merritt.
I left North Vancouver in the afternoon on a Thursday and spent half the day trying to avoid traffic jams and construction sites. I consulted my iphone for directions often, and made ambiguous turn after ambiguous turn though residential neighborhoods to find my way safely out of the city. I must have looked lost and confused, since a man with a bike loaded down with garbage bags of cans and a beard that looked like it'd been around since the '80's stopped peeing off his bike long enough to turn and ask if I needed help. I make friends everywhere I go.
I took highway 7 out to the valley and realized that I was starring in my own horror movie when I became the girl riding alone on a country road who stops into a near deserted gas station and asks the man behind the counter where the closest hotel is. He directed me another 20 km up the road to the Sasquatch Inn.
Not having cable tv at home I'd been daydreaming most of the day about a hot shower and night in bed watching some seriously mindless tv, however the Sasquatch Inn is something very different than what I'd been daydreaming about. Upon arrival I couldn't find a lobby and finally wandered into the bar to ask about booking a room, the bartender found a key for a room, wondered out loud why the duplicate key was missing and finally sent a woman who'd been drinking at the bar next to me to show me where the room was. And it was Karoake Night. The room had no phone or tv, but it did have a sink next to the bed. The sheets were clean and luckily I was so tired I didn't have to lie awake staring at the drooping water stained ceiling tiles.
The next morning I set out again with roughly 170km to cover and the Coquihalla to conquer. The Coquihalla is one of the most scenic highways in BC and is also the most direct route from Hope to Kamloops (via Merritt), on my way to Canmore. Somewhere before Hope I discovered that bib shorts are quite inconvenient when you need to pee on the side of the road. I spent a few exposed minutes tangled in my shorts and jersey, to the delight of passing truckers.
I rolled through Hope, the Chainsaw Carving Capital, and headed out on the highway. The highway was great, - it had a wide shoulder and the truckers all gave me lots of space, even changing lanes whenever they could. I saw wildlife, stopped and took photos and was generally loving my trip.
Near the snow tunnel the condition of the shoulder of the highway started to deteriorate and I was happy that I was a mountain biker as the climb became more technical. The pavement was not only broken or missing, it was full of loose gravel as well. I found myself not only dodging pee bombs (bottles of pee that truckers throw out their windows) and grates, but also doing so while the shoulder narrowed and trucks passed unnervingly close to me.
I was relieved and excited to reach the summit (4081 feet) as it was by far the most climbing I'd ever done on any bike and also the most I'd ridden in any given day. I was still about 35km away from my stop for the night and had a lot of well-earned downhill in front of me. I took a short break and headed on. I'd just passed the sign for my exit, approximately 270km into my trip and was travelling at about 50km/hour when I crossed the rumble (vibration) strip on the side of the highway and felt my bike start to loose control. That's all I remember.
I woke up surrounded by strangers and covered in blankets. I didn't know who I was, where I was or what I was doing. I was missing a shoe and when I tried to point to my bike I realized I had a broken collarbone. Slowly things came back to me as the police and then the ambulance arrived. I am grateful to the people who stopped for both not running me over and for getting me out of danger by moving me. By the time I was loaded into the ambulance I was feeling a little more like myself and had a brief argument with the attendant about which one of us had to call my mom. He lost: never argue with a girl in a neck brace on a spine board.
Two ambulance rides and two hospitals later I was admitted to the hospital in Kamloops for a few days while I recovered from two breaks in my collarbone, a broken rib, road rash and a brain bleed. My helmet saved my life. It wasn't all bad though, I finally had cable TV!
It turns out that I'd overloaded my panniers for the rack system that I was using and when I hit the rumble strip at speed it caused them to swing into my rear wheel. The police found my spokes about 15 feet from where they found me, my helmet, shoulder and hip all showed evidence of sliding about that far on the pavement.
Five weeks after my accident I'm tentatively back to road riding and looking forward to testing out some mountain bikes at InterBike. As bikers we are all very fortunate to be a part of a special like-minded community. With this being my first injury I feel incredibly lucky to have been cared for by so many people who not only understand injuries and have been injured themselves, but also understand all the pieces of the healing process.
Stay tuned for next summer and the last 630km from Merritt to Canmore!
