I will no longer be updating my Sea to Sea blog as of the end of September 2008. If you’ve been a regular reader over the course of the past year I suppose I invite you to continue reading what I consider to be my “regular blog” on my “regular website” as I have returned to what we referred to all summer as “regular life”. You can get to there by clicking on www.krabbe.ca
I got the OK from the physiotherapist to get back on the bike after taking a solid 2 weeks off. I’ve done two sweet rides since getting the OK (and raced my first XC race of the season, which resulted in a sore body and did a bit of aching muscle recovery in there too).
The first bike ride was a late afternoon cruise through the river valley on the fixed gear. I filmed three segments of video on the trip and basically now have videographic proof that Edmonton is the best place in the whole world to live between the 10 of September and the 20th of October each year. Other dates are up for debate, lots of Colorado, Wisconsin, Upper New York State and Washington State are in pretty close contention after riding my bike there this summer.
This weekend I also had the opportunity to pay a visit to Rocky Mtn House. Intervarsity Groups from around Alberta have a tradition of meeting up out at Pioneer Ranch camp on Crimson lake on the third weekend of the school year and having a sweet weekend away from school before the homework crunch begins in earnest. I wasn’t exactly up for a day paddling a canoe and didn’t want to risk the possibility of slipping and bracing myself against a fall while climbing a ridge so I opted to take my bike out and go for a ride. I offered to drive a group out to 2 O’clock ridge at the west end of Abraham lake and then proceeded to bike all the way from there back to Rocky Mountain House. The scenery along the whole drive out was spectacular and figured I would be able to see the most of it if I rode point to point instead of doing a loop. I hopped on the bike with my camelback (first time ever riding with a camelback) a couple roast beef sandwiches, 3 bananas and a few sweet and salt bars. The sun was shining and for the first 90 minutes or so I had a light tailwind to push me along. I averaged 35 kms per hour for the first hour, loving the opportunity to ride in the aero-position and looking at the green and gold countryside roll past.
All told the trip was 160 kms, yet another century to tack on to the stats for this summer. That makes 18 century rides for 2008, a tough record to break! My ride time was sub 5 hours (4:50 ride time, 5:19 under the gun), I didn’t quite match my performance in east colorado with the total time under 5 hours (4:48 ride time, 4:56 under the gun). The lack of support vehicles meant I needed to stop in at the grocery store in Nordegg to stock up on water (and a pepperoni stick) before heading out on the stretch of road with no services for 92 kms!
This was my first ride this season with aerobars on and I didn’t really consider the ramifications of that until I had proceeded to get an achy lower back and neck. It typically takes a few rides to get those muscles used to the aero position and they typically happen early in April so I’m not in good enough shape to bite off a century anyways. This wasn’t exactly the case, I probably rode aero a bit too much for the first half of the ride as I needed to hop off the bike and stretch out my back with about 40 kms to go.
I found a video on my SD card that I hadn’t watched… ever. I filmed it on the morning of the day my “original” camera this summer broke. When I transferred that SD card over to my new camera it was formatted differently and was never retrieved and can’t be viewed on the Canon, it can however be viewed on a computer so when fishing through that folder on the PC I remembered filming it.
It’s a song/prayer/hymn that was sung at Roseland Christian Ministries in south Chicago while we were passing through there. It’s not the greatest at capturing the moment but if you’re in doubt as to whether or not it was a powerful experience ask any of the cyclists.
And a few other things I’ve realized never made it onto my blog following the summer. My net gain for each thigh circumference was 2.3 cms (almost an entire inch!) and 1.6 cms on the calf. The total mileage covered by myself is 7105 kms and ride time of 250:56 hours:minutes putting my average pace for the summer at 28.5 kph. I also found myself featured in another Youtube video thanks to Stephanie Webb from way back in Washington State while we were horsing around on the slackline waiting for church to start. It’s a shame this video didn’t start 3 seconds earlier because I made a sweet jumping start onto the line which is only captured right at the end. So be it I guess:
I gave a presentation at my sponsoring church, River Park CRC, in Calgary Alberta on Sunday morning. I think it went well, plenty of people thanked me for sharing so that’s nice. It came in two parts, first me having a bit of time to talk and then during the offering I had a few ppt slides to show what day-to-day life was like while on the road. I thought I had covered the bases pretty well with the slides but when watching them during the service I realized it looked like I was generally riding with a group of about 10 people. Not quite the case, the average for the summer was probably closer to a group of 2.7 considering how often I rode alone of with just one other person.
At any rate, driving back north to Edmonton that afternoon it really started to seem like the Sea-to-Sea bike tour was part of the past. Something it hadn’t felt like before. It was more along the lines of “just finished” even two weeks later.
I’ve included here what I said (or at least what I thought/planned I was going to say) during my 7 minute slot.
Last summer the news of the 2008 Sea to Sea bike tour made its way into my email inbox. I was intrigued by the idea of getting on a bike and heading out across north America. It would be a summer of riding every day – a pretty serious challenge that I felt like I’d like to tackle, I would have the opportunity to live with a group of other people, other cyclists and other Christians. It was going to be good. The tour also had tied up in it the idea that we’d raise a bunch of money, that we hoped to raise awareness and funds to combat poverty. I was happy to have the issue of poverty along for the ride. It gave the trip a real purpose and for that I was grateful.
Arriving in Seattle – the summer’s ride started to play itself out – after so many months of anticipation it was living up to every expectation. Right away on Day 2 we climbed more than 5000 feet of elevation and it really felt like we were thrown headfirst into the adventure. I made great friends from all over Canada and the States and we were really soaking up the riding aspect of the summer. We found ourselves putting in extra miles for the pure joy of riding our bikes.
Early on it was really true however that the issue of poverty wasn’t doing much more than being “along for the ride”. While I can’t speak on behalf of every rider, the general sentiment around camp was just “Bike Bike Bike Bike Bike”.
It took more than 2 weeks for things to begin to shift. Answering the question “Why in the world am I biking across the country?” was something I found myself doing as I tackled 100 degree Fahrenheit weather and miles upon miles of sagebrush. The more times I answered the question while talking with someone the more I began to really identify with my answer. “We’re riding in support of the poor. We’ve been raising funds for organizations to tackle some of the underlying causes that keep people who are poor trapped in cycles of poverty. There are 150 cyclists on the road today from all over North America who are doing the same thing because it’s something we believe in. – Poverty and injustice cannot go unaddressed.”
I was riding by myself into Salt Lake City on one Saturday morning and got passed by a local cyclist out for a ride by himself. I decided to catch up with him and we spent the next 5 miles talking – about the cycling community in Salt Lake City, about the bike ride I was on and about poverty. Leaving Salt Lake City we had a huge hill to climb and I had spent a lot of that day’s energy just trying to keep up with this local. The Sea-to-Sea rider who I had joined still had fresh legs and left me behind on the hill. Normally I would have felt lousy to get dropped right at the start of a 10 mile ascent but I didn’t care. That conversation had been worth it.
I continued to ride far more than necessary for the next few weeks, tacking on trips up ski hills and over mountains, we took roundabout ways across Nebraska and spent a portion of a day lost in Chicago. I spent more and more time each week talking to locals in coffee shops, restaurants and gas stations about why we were riding our bikes across the country. We were on the biggest newscast in Chicago one evening and the next day it seemed as though everyone we met along the road wanted to stop and chat for a bit. The reasoning behind our ride was becoming more and more important, although in reality I hadn’t quite made the shift in my head, poverty was still “along for the ride”.
I was riding another Saturday morning, the day we were to ride into Grand Rapids, with a group of guys intent on going quick. We were flying down the road and I wound up on the pavement. I had a few parts of my body bleeding, my helmet had a pretty good crack in it and my right shoulder didn’t look quite the same as my left. I was off to the hospital in a vehicle for an X-Ray and suddenly the reality set in that I wasn’t going to have biked every inch from Sea to Sea.
With the conclusion that I hadn’t broken my shoulder and I had a separation rather than a full blown dislocation I was allowed to ride the following Monday. I could continue but I was resigning myself to a stretch of 40 kilometers in west Michigan, I wouldn’t ride every inch of the tour. I would be struggling to finish the ride each day and I would be one of the people around camp needing a helping hand more often than I would be able to offer one.
I finally had priority number one nailed down and it wasn’t going for a bike ride. It was participating in the tour, it was being a part of the wave of attention that swept across Southern Ontario the next week and onwards to New York City. Having been part of a huge fundraising effort and now participating in a cross country awareness event was more important than the cycling. It was the participation not the peddling of the bike that was my response to God’s call
Defend the cause of the weak and fatherless; maintain the rights of the poor and oppressed. Rescue the weak and needy; deliver them from the hand of the wicked
As the tour began to come to a close, my shoulder became a bit less of an obstacle. I still had a few fantastic days on the bike but they were just bonus. My perspective had changed and I was excited to have the opportunity to continue Christ’s work when the tour wrapped up. My favorite discussions became not “bike bike bike” but what are the ways the tour had changed how us as cyclists are going to think and live.
Finally I want to say thank you to this church. I want to thank you for your prayers for my safety this summer, and your prayers that I would be challenged and grow. I also want to thank all of you who sent encouragement notes my way at some point during those 9 weeks. I also want to thank those of you who contributed towards the fundraising of the bike tour, River Park Church made a big impact on the $15 400 raised towards my goal. The final tally from the summer isn’t exactly complete but between all of the riders it’s somewhere near 2.2 million.
The traffic to this website hasn’t really slowed down much since the tour wrapped up more than a week ago. My guess is that lots of the cyclists on the trip got home and are suffering a bit of SeatoSea withdrawal and as a result are poking around online and reminiscing on the memories by reading one another’s blogs. Well I’m in the same boat and have found myself poking around on Flicker and looking at some of the 5000 photos posted there once or twice already. At any rate I just wanted to give a quick update on my shoulder since returning to Canada.
I had my first Physio-Therapy appointment at the University of Alberta’s sports medicine center this morning (it was along the time schedule of Pete VanNoord, Barb Mellema or John Vandersteen… ie. earlier than I would have liked). I have been taking it uncomfortably easy since returning to Edmonton. My arm’s been in the sling for most of the day each day. I have avoided the temptation to do all my unpacking at once. I have been riding my bike a bit, my commuting bike (Fixed Gear) and have been doing so with one hand only. My cervelo has remained in the box (which is partly due to the fact that I’m missing a few parts). My room still has a bunch of boxes in it because I just didn’t want to overdo it right away.
So the message from the physiotherapist is basically that I’ve had enough rest with the shoulder and need to start using it more. I do have a “classic” separation of the AC joint and the step deformity in my shoulder is going to be there for life. I likely do not have a torn rotator cuff (which was questioned by a family friend surgeon) as I still have a significant amount of strength in there. If I can build strength in that shoulder over the next few weeks she’ll write off that possibility but if not she says she has excellent connections through the Glen Sather Center to get that fast-tracked. The separation was so “classic” that she went and got the student interns there to come have a look at it and then showed how pushing my shoulderblade in at the bottom made the step go away. So all the while I’ve been saying that my clavicle is “up”, that’s not as true as this one bit of my shoulderblade that pokes through the middle of my shoulder is hanging too far “down” and makes the collarbone look like it’s too high. Luckily that little demonstration didn’t hurt so bad… some of the other stuff did and wouldn’t have been so happy to have the whole thing replayed for this other guy.
Basically my prognosis is: No running allowed. No swimming. No riding my racing bike but I am allowed to commute as I have been doing. I’ve got to make an effort to sit up straight in my chair with my shoulderblades pulled together and down my back as much as possible plus some similar motions I’m supposed to do every hour of the day. I’m still to wear the sling when transporting myself from place to place but am not supposed to keep the arm supported when I’m at home or doing something. I also have a bunch of strength building exercises to do once a day. The prognosis was good and she’s happy that I will be swimming once again eventually as it should build more muscle in the area. My shoulder bulk is WAY DOWN! from the beginning of the summer (especially in the last 2 weeks I’m sure) and even though building those muscles back won’t erase the deformity it should make for a better shoulder in the long run. I guess I’m not allowed to go the Duathlon route… Triathlon was pretty much a prescribed activity for the long term.
If you’d keep the healing process in your prayers I’d be appreciative. I jarred the shoulder quite bad yesterday and it is still capable of causing a boatload of pain when it’s not happy but on a day to day basis I’m completely off painkillers and it’s not more than a mild ache.
The discussion about wrapping up the tour began in earnest on Monday of the final week. At that time it seemed so early to be thinking about finishing things off. I just was recovering ability to shift gears with the correct hand as I recovered somewhat from the bike crash earlier on. While it seemed early to start thinking like that it wasn’t too early at all and now that I’m “off the tour” and won’t wake up tomorrow to a full day of bike riding I’m so grateful that we began that discussion as early as we did. The end was a highlight rather than a downer. When we were camped at Samson State Park (Wednesday Evening) our small group discussed what we’d be taking from the tour. While we did a bit of discussion around the theme the question we were really answering wasn’t “what have you learned” but rather “what did you learn that you’re going to actually remember”. The difference is huge. After spending 9 weeks on the road out of normal routines, normal activities, normal circles of friends, normal sleeping schedules and normal diets… I’ve learned an outrageous amount of stuff.
To start listing all of the little things that I’ve gleaned from this experience is a waste of my time typing and a waste of your time reading. The wealth of experience that the past nine weeks gave to me is very valuable but not all of it really counts. Some of the things I learned while on the trip aren’t particularly valuable back at home even though they were valuable while out on the road.
Back to last Wednesday… our basic conclusion was that it’s going to take a couple weeks and likely a couple months before we can look back on the tour as a whole and identify exactly what it meant for my life.
I’ve written now and again about things that I feel like I’ve really had the chance to grab hold of this summer and I feel like really only a few of these thoughts are fully forming at this point. At this point in time I feel like I can really only give those brief glimpses as to how I’ve personally benefited from the trip. I realize that I basically just said what I feel like I’ve learned about and not even what I exactly learned about it. I just haven’t had enough time yet to process many of those thoughts but do hope to do so and will likely write here in the future some reflections as they become more fleshed out. Or in the world of Len Reimersma, when I’ve got three points about each one.
One other video that’s worth showing though displays the state of my front rim after the bike crash. While it’s mostly funny (the movie that is), that crash really did affect the way this summer wrapped up for me. As I believe I’ve alluded to; even though the crash was lousy it wasn’t all bad.
The tour wrapped up with a bang on Saturday. I’m going to just give an overview of the riding day itself and will write a bit more as far as reflections on the tour as a whole are concerned at a later date… probably within the week. I’ve switched time zones so it’s past midnight according to my internal clock and have to move my stacks of junk from Calgary to Edmonton tomorrow (Monday) so do hope to get to bed sometime soon.
Saturday we awoke to misty conditions and I headed out of camp with Eritia Smit expecting to be quickly caught by Nathan Beach and Josh Nyenhuis once again who were waiting up with Jim Amels who was joining us again for a final day of riding (he rode Denver to Grand Rapids on the Tour). Setting off in the mist wasn’t bad at all as it kept things cool once again and probably knocked down a bit of pollution from the air as well. True to the pattern of the tour Eritia suffered another flat tyre within the first bit of the ride. This one broke the nice even number of 25 for the summer as she padded her record (most flats by one rider) with yet another notch. While we sat at the side of the road and pumped it up again I fully expected the others to catch us… maybe we’re just too fast.
We had our first of four noteworthy climbs for the day and cruised along a beautifully paved road on the downhill before meeting our first locals out with snacks and drinks for us. It was here that Josh, Nathan and Jim caught up and we climbed “climb #2″ and began the long descent towards the Stumblers Inn. It was curvy, lined with trees and went awfully quick. If you know me or have gotten to know me via my writing this summer you’ll know those are synonyms for fun, fun and fun. From there on out we were basically in one city or another one for the rest of the day. Another church had refreshments halfway down a really steep hill and after stopping for watermelon and cookies we opted to climb back up and do the whole hill in one shot. The cheers were great when we went by as they all knew what we were doing. I once again didn’t have my speedometer but Eritia clocked mid seventies on hers as she followed me down the hill. Now that’s not all that impressive considering the pitch of the hill but consider first that this is in town on a small street so the speed limit was 30 miles per hour. We were speeding by nearly 25 kph or 50% over the speed limit!
The houses proceeded to grow in size as we climbed the last hill of the day and up top there were some fantastic mansions that must have overlooked something, but I didn’t see it. More city riding and another stop for refreshments were crammed in there before we were to approach the “staging ground” for the day where our police escort would start. Having 2 hours of time to cover the next 3 miles we stopped for pizza as was pretty much commanded by one of the locals when he said “New Jersey’s Pizza is way better than Chicago’s Pizza”. I have to admit it was pretty fantastic pizza for 11 o’clock in the morning and did actually compare quite closely with the deep dish pizza we had in Palos Heights Illinois.
After gathering all the cyclists together in a parking lot in an industrial park on the outskirts of Jersey City we were to be police escorted for the final 10 miles to the beach at Liberty State Park. I filmed this video of the mass while waiting to get going; there are a lot of us there in case you forgot how many 200 is.
The ride into the State Park and the beach was great fun and while we weren’t rolling at a very quick pace it wasn’t painfully slow either and the 10 miles seemed to be over in a flash. I filmed 4 videos over the course of the ride. One part as we made our way out of the industrial area. One part as we entered town and all ran a red light with the Policeman’s permission. Another video as we entered the park and I pulled off the path and filmed almost all of the cyclists roll past. The final video is of us at the beach gathered together before hitting the water. Len made a few remarks and we said the Lord’s Prayer together just as we did on the shore of the Pacific 9 weeks prior.
That’s it for tonight. I also stocked up the final photo gallery with shots from the final ride as well as added a couple more photos here and there throughout other albums from the summer. Here are a couple highlights from the beach:
I stopped by the computer this morning to check if those 2 videos I began uploading to Youtube last night actually ended up online. I guess “eventually yes” is the answer so here they are: #1 is coming down a big hill out of Canaan PA. #2 is a time lapse of us unloading the gear truck upon arrival in Sussex NJ.
This morning is quite exciting… everyone semed a bit nervous as I made my way through the gear truck to grab my bike shorts etc etc. Packing up my stuff was rather easy this morning as my tattered ground sheet from my tent went to the garbage and not to the bag. Also the broken chair I’ve been sitting on since Boise Idaho ended up with a same final fate. That makes for a bag that’s much easier to do up the zipper! Last night was wet and pretty much everything is soaked but there is no rain falling at the moment and the prognosis is for a final day with little rain.
Friday of Week 9 is a day that people have been talking about now and again ever since leaving the Rockies at the end of Week 4. Today’s ride included the greatest elevation gain of the whole tour in a single day (our detour up Mt Evans was significantly more but was optional). After my 3 hour nap the day before and quite a bit of sleep again at night when things at camp started to get moving around 5:30 am I just gave up trying to sleep, got up, packed up and was in line for breakfast at 6:05 am. I had quite a few comments to deal with from all of the early risers who I like to give a hard time to… and good for them, they were right, it was too early for me to be up.
Josh Nyenhuis, Eritia Smit and Nathan Beach were to be my riding partners for the day and we rolled out of camp around 7:40 am. The very first thing we did was climb a 200 foot hill that was probably an 8% grade and I said to Nathan that this ride was going to be going down in the history books. 30 years out from now when I look back on this tour I won’t be able to remember every day but this one is one I’d remember forever. Indeed that continued to be the case for the rest of the day as there were so many amazing bits and pieces slapped back-to-back-to-back-to-back.
The hills were steep on the uphill and on the downhill and even though we left rather far back with respect to the group we had passed the vast majority of riders within the first 50 kms because we were taking very few stops (well – no stops I guess). After climbing a 1000 foot hill out of Carbondale PA we blasted down through a little town called Canaan which had a huge jail. From there for the next 22 kms the downhills were ever so slightly longer than the uphills and it seemed like I could ride at a blistering pace forever. I still have no computer so I don’t exactly know how fast we were going but it felt faster than whatever we were actually doing. The trees were overhanging the road, the sky was overcast and it was easy to keep the body temperature down. The road was full of curves and I had a fantastic group of riders to push the pace with. I filmed a video of the descent which hopefully will end up on YouTube sometime in the not-so-distant-future.
The road changed from the little two lane with no shoulders and no traffic to a larger highway for the next big portion of the ride. The hills stretched out a bit longer than earlier in the day and it was finally possible to get into climbing mode on each one rather than the pseudo-sprint method of doing the short rollers that we’d been using all morning. Nathan and Josh are on the “leaner” or “more slender” or “lighter” end of the spectrum. (I’m trying to avoid the term skinny because it’s not appreciated even though it might be somewhat accurate.) That means they dropped both Eritia and myself on each of the climbs and we’d catch them on the downhills. Eritia because she is the most aerodynamic person when all tucked in, and myself just because I’ve got body size to my advantage and don’t flutter like a leaf in the wind.
Those longer rollers came to an end with a blazing fast downhill into the town of Milford that went on for a whole 5 miles and I’m sure we did most of it between 50 and 60 kph. We then had a nice flat-ish section along the bottom of the valley and our team of 4 locked into a big line behind myself as we cruised along in the upper 40s (according to the only working computer in our group of 4!). We then checked off our last state-line of the summer entering New Jersey just on the edge of town.
The last stretch into the town of Sussex included a big climb up to High Point which is the highest place in the State. It was about 3 miles of sustained climbing somewhere between 6 and 7 percent. Almost made me feel like we were in the early weeks of the tour, I forgot what it was like to have a hill go on and on for more than a few minutes. All good things come to an end though and we did summit the pass and were greeted by a little girl (5 yrs perhaps) Anika who was giving out cookies and watermelon and lemonade as she waited for her Mom, one of the other cyclists, to arrive. We probably could have coasted all the way into Sussex from the top of that pass but that wouldn’t be quite as fun as hammering along the road and expending every lastr bit of strength that the day of climbing had sapped from us. Again we tore along down the road with Pieter Pereboom who also does well with the downhills as he’s got body-size to his advantage just like me. I was behind him for a stretch of the downhill that really was crazy steep and could smell his brakes smoking.
New York wrapped up this morning after about an hour of riding. The weather was cool and the sky was overcast but no rain was actually falling out of the sky although I was prepared with my windbreaker for it to start.
Stephanie and myself were riding along at a good clip and joining other groups for bits and pieces of the road for about the first 50 kms. At that point the road split and the planned route continued flat along the river and the other road went up a hill accopanied with a sign that said “No Trailers Longer Than 102 ft”. Well that seemed like quite an invitation so we pulled out the map and made a detour up and over the mountain instead of continuing straight and flat. The detour paid off and even though we probably added more than 1000 feet of climbing and about 4 miles to the day the view from the top and the great descent made it totally worth it.
The campground had 2 showers and enough hot water for about 20 people… But I was one of the early ones and did get my 30 second splash in the warm water. I then took a 3 hour nap which wasn’t supposed to be 3 hours long but that’s just how it turned out.
The meeting this evening included a bit of sharing from a few riders as well as celebrating communion together. Pastor Len shared a revised version of the parable of the workers in the vineyard. Here’s a link to Wikipedia’s description of the parable. I’m sure you can imagine that the modification was one where some riders began out at the Pacific Ocean, others joined in the Mountains and still others caught hold of the tour near the Grand River. Well the point of the story is that the celebration is the same for us all, that we’ve each in our own way ahd the opportunity to work in God’s field and gratefulness is the response not bitterness. There has been a significant amount of effort being poured into making the end of this bike ride end on a high note rather than a low one. It’s tough to see things winding up but at the same time we have so much to be grateful for and happy about that the sadness that will come with the end of cycling is going to pale in comparison with the joy of seeing this journey through to completion.
