Étienne's Buccaneer
by Étienne Hossack

Étienne sent this in at 6:36 pm on the day of the ride. There was no title. EF

I thought that this would be a not-so-great permanent, but it turned out to be super fun!

Riding at the front with an amazing tailwind, in the sun, what could be better? I ate well, drank well and felt superb.

Leaving Steveston felt familiar as always - especially after the populaire - and out to the Alex Fraser was fairly normal (though I wasn't entire sure why the route had to stay on Westminister as opposed to taking the safer underpass....)

I have never actually been on the East side of the Bridge so that was interesting for me, but as always the entrance/exit ways suck a ton, so I can't say I was super thrilled.
Riding out to Fort Langley was quick, with nothing too surprising or exciting. The King George hill is always a fun one to go up, but we hit a fair clip going down. At the Campbell River Control it was all business as we arrived before they had even had a chance to set up!

Into Fort Langley proved exciting as the pace was quick and I had fun dropping off the back to pull my friend in every time the pace got high. Keep things interesting you know :)
On the way back from Fort Langley it was similarly whizz-y, the rolling hills were the only things to slow our crew ever so slightly. We got in some waves as the South Delta Riders's club ride went past the opposite direction.

Returning to the Campbell River store, we were able to catch Manfred & al. as the control was just closing up, and got our cards signed there before the remaining 4 of us headed back to Steveston. The return part on the King George and then Coleridge was zippy and exciting, and we punched it up the 125A climb.

... And then of course came my flat. Joy of joys.

So while the other three went speeding off I hastened to my usual flat business (I'm probably reasonably quick these days), before beginning my 50k time trial to the finish through Surrey and Richmond.

Surrey was slow, catching every. Single. Light. On the way over, with little chance to put the hammer down. Finally reaching Nordel Way was satisfying, and after a quick wrong turn BEFORE rather than AFTER the Tim Hortons, I was cursing my body climbing the bridge, trying to find our leaders to little avail.

After navigating the wondrous off ramp again, it was pain time down River Road. The winds were pretty nasty, but I managed to average something like 33km/h over the entire section.
Halfway along I ran into Ryan who seemed to have allowed the wind to beat down his will too much, and enlisted him to shelter me from the strong headwinds to catch some rest over the final parts of the ride.

When we reached Granville Ave. there was a... military marching band?... going on and the entire road was closed, so we, in confusion, turned with the rest of traffic before ducking through some parking lots and doing a few KMs of sidewalk riding before reaching the front of the procession and proceeding onwards.

I kept trying to drop the hammer on the last section of railway but the darn lights! Those Lights!

All in all we almost caught up to Keith and Ian (of course we would have on a 300 :P), and arrived only 2 minutes the slower at the end!

A splendid day for a 200!

Strava for you social folk: http://www.strava.com/activities/129631718

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April 12, 2014