Tuesday morning we were before 10am at MEC to hopefully get the trailers. We were crossing our fingers, and finally they were here! We unpack everything right in front of the main door and assembled them in half an hour. Then we had to get back home to send 43kg of gears down to Phoenix before being able to leave. But yeah, there it started… Putting the trailer on the back of the bike was quite…. how to say… surprising! It’s heavy!!! It’s really heavy… How are we gonna do it. But let’s give it a try for the first day to Canmore on a paved road.

We left Crystal & Shannon who hosted us during almost one week (thank you so much for your hospitality and all the good time & parties we had!) and started cycling toward Canmore on the 1A. About an hour later we got a huge rain with thunders…

It was raining so much that someone stopped and asked if we needed a ride somewhere ;-) Thanks but we have to go through this rain and to Canmore on ...

It has been an interesting few days, trying to get used to being back on a bike. Marco has been a very patient teacher, helping me out with my biking skills. I’ve fallen off every day, but yesterday’s was the worst so far. I approached a small steep hill in the forest, but didn’t have enough speed to get up it, hit a root with the front wheel and fell backwards and to the right back down off the hill. I landed on a solid wooden wall, with my ribs taking most of the impact. I even managed to dent the new bike - what an idiot! I managed to continue riding, but with some discomfort, and this morning, I’m not doing too well.

Other than that, preparations are going pretty well. We had our first team teleconference yesterday morning, and all sounds well in Scotland, where Ollie is getting ready to fly out on Thursday.

Here in Calgary, we are hoping that the trailers have arrived in the shop so that we can pack them up and get all our ...

[caption id=”attachment_135” align=”aligncenter” width=”571” caption=”Simon & Marco with their bikes”]& Marco with their bikes” src=”/images/2009/06/2009-06-10-18h44m52.JPG” title=”Simon & Marco with their bikes” />[/caption]

Simon bought his bike today! So we are almost set, just missing the trailers which are supposed to come on Monday. We also bought a lot of different things to have some spare parts for the bikes, clothes, accessories for the bikes. It was a full day for Simon VISA card who paid everything ;-)

Simon also discovered the pros & cons of using cleats as everyone does on the first ride… But the bike doesn’t have any scratch, neither Simon!

Simon will be riding a Specialized Stumpjumper Aloy Hardtail M5.
I will be riding an Orbea Alma Team Carbon.

J-9 … not many days left!

Simon arrived on the 8th from New-Zealand and picked me up at the airport on the 9th. It was great to see him again and to finally arrived in Canada to start this adventure. It wasn’t as cold as I was thinking and today is again a sunny day.

The initial status is like this: 2 men, 1 bike, 0 trailer - so it could be better but at least it’s starting somewhere. We will look today for Simon’s bike again and the trailers will come beginning of next week since MEC messed up with our order.

Yesterday evening I mounted my bike :-) A pleasure to see it! Pictures will come later after today’s ride.