Since we've gotten back home, a lot of people have asked us a lot of the same questions. Questions like, "Has your body recovered from the trip?", "How does it feel to be home?", "What was your favourite part of the trip?", or "What was your favourite part of Canada?" and "How much money have you raised?"
The first question is pretty easy for me to answer, since I didn't do any riding, I didn't have much recovering to do. Evan, Dave, and Luke have had some time to recover, so they're doing better. Dave even went for a bike ride about a week after getting back.
We're all glad to be home for sure. Getting back to work, school, and social activities. The comforts of home; good food, comfortable bed, and not living out of a backpack and luggage bag. It's also nice to back with our families. It's weird, but the 8.5 weeks we were away felt like nothing. It seemed to go so fast; maybe not fast in the moment, but looking back at certain points it was like, "Wow, we're here already in the trip?", or even "We're home already?"
Some of our favourite parts of the trip were just in the different meeting we'd have with people. Like the night in Moose Jaw, SK, where we met 4 other cyclists going across Canada. We also enjoyed seeing things like the Terry Fox monuments in Thunder Bay, ON and St. John's, NFLD; the RCMP museum in Regina, SK; the Olympic Oval in Richmond, BC; and Fort Frontenac in Quebec City. The natural wonders of Canada were really beautiful too! Places like Mink Creek Falls in Ontario, Lake Superior, both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, the mountains out west and the hills out east. The prairies of the mid-west, Lake Lousie in Alberta, and the St. Lawrence River, which we travelled alongside for a few days. We also really loved all the days where we knew we had a place to stay for the night-usually in beds, at someone's house where they would also feed us. We had planned to camp for about 40 nights of the trip, but by the end, we'd only tented for 11 nights, and a couple of those nights were at hosts' houses! So thank you to all who helped out in that regard. You were such a blessing to us!
We also had a few parts of our trip that we didn't like so much. There was our string of flats on day 2, heat exhaustion on days 4 and 5, Luke's fall on day 17, and Dave's fall on day 21. Several cold and wet days of riding for Luke and Dave during the 11 straight days of riding (days 21-31), the leaking tent in Pancake Bay Park, and the really late night of riding on day 43. Of course, just riding the terrain and doing that many days of riding were a challenge to start off with. We were gone for 61 days, and our actual ride from coast-to-coast took 53 days; only 9 of which were rest days. So in 44 days, we covered 6569 kilometres (4082 miles); an average of 150 km a day! Some days were longer than others, and some days were just average, but the weather, terrain, or aches, pains and bike problems made some of those days difficult.
Overall, the ride was good, and we found ourselves pushed and grown in new ways. We had some great days, and had some rough days, but through God's strength and with His hand protecting us, we made it to the end in one piece!
Live EPIC!
-Ben
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