A long time ago, I went on a bike ride

-or-

Bike Trip of the Ancients

Here’s how this post started:


Karl responded and generously sent along scans of all his photos from the trip. Those of you with eyes for detail may notice a certain, how to put it, consistency in my dress. At that point in my life I had borderline Cayce Pollard levels of clothing signifier fear. JPUs for the trip consisted of jeans both long and short, a wool jac-shirt and a couple (trip-famous) identical t-shirts. I figure I wore cycling shoes a lot more than I remember – off the bike, I seem to be always barefoot, with w-h-i-t-e feet.

The trip itself? It was organized by Project Adventure (in the person of Karl Rohnke); we loaded up a U-Haul trailer in the parking lot of Hamilton-Wenham H. S., drove up to Montreal, put everything on a CN (thus no spiral tunnels – that’s CP) passenger train, rode same to Vancouver, debarked and rode our bikes home (the North Shore of Massachusetts). An amazing and wonderful trip.

trans canananananada

More photos after the jump.

I’ll lay ’em out chronologically, as best I can.

Riding out of Vancouver.

Leaving Vancouver B.C. - the trip begins . . .in the rain!

The mountains.

Trans Canada campsite - John Pitman running

Crackin’ 50mph. Bell may have been making a useful bike helmet in ’74, but the standard was the completely ineffective leather hair-net.

50 mph+

The plains.

Hello, Mom . . .?

X-country crew - 1974

scan0322

The litter (disposable diapers were the #1 (and #2 – get it?!?) piece of roadside debris).

disposable diaper

The Soo.

Montreal; start of the train trip to Vancouver  1974   Ray K; Chris L; Marl O.

Sudbury. The west side of Sudbury (big nickle mining/smelting town) was a moonscape – the output from the stacks killed everything except the hardiest plants.

Nickel Plant - Canada  1974

No homecoming shots – the last day, we said our goodbyes and took seperate routes back to our respective home towns.

One thought on “A long time ago, I went on a bike ride

  1. That must have been an awesome trip! Thanks for sharing. I drove across Canada in 1974 it was amazing even that way!

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