Victoria on a Bike

Ride 44 - 11 November 2019 Distance 31.9km (Distance to date 1420.2km) Time 2hrs 31mins (Time to date 108hrs 46mins) A few weeks ago, I was discussing my challenge and progress with friend Blair.  In talking about my challenge, I told him my self imposed rules; anything with a street sign and a name on the map is a road that must be ridden..............then Blair said with a grin 'so you'll have to ride down Fan Tan Alley?'  Thanks Blair. For those of you who aren't familiar, Fan Tan Alley is Canada's narrowest street and is a popular tourist destination in Victoria.  A local claim to fame is that it was featured in Bird on a Wire featuring Mel Gibson and Goldie Hawn!!!** ** I sat through 10mins worth of You Tube clips to link to and failed to find the scene.  10mins I'll never get back. It's just under a meter wide and normally pretty busy with people and w alking a bike would not cut it (especially after I nearly killed myself up Mt Doug to avoid

Ride ** - 9 Nov 2019 Distance **.*km (Distance to date **.*km) Time *hrs **mins (Time to date **hrs **mins) So I think as the end is getting near, I'm losing focus a little!!  At this point, I have broke the back of my ride and completely taken my foot off the gas.  Admittedly I still have a few hours of riding left to do, but I have sufficient time and few plans in the next two months.  Job Done.  Right? Much of the ride was around industrial estate.  So on a saturday it's a little creepy ............I tried not to think why all the people I saw were hanging around there in skimpy outfits.   I got brave getting this close to a Seagull! One thing I did see lots of is murals.  It brightens up the area, but there's no disguising an industrial estate!  A selection of murals shown below Funny Story A few months ago I popped into a hardware store to ask if they sold foam for a cushion. After telling me they had no foam, the shop att

So I think I've had my 15 minutes of fame.  Man, it was quick. I was interviewed by the local paper............. and I was FRONT PAGE news!!!!  That's right, Victoria on a Bike was the biggest news in Saanich .  (We don't need to mention that this week's biggest news in Saanich was 20 people going on a 5km bike ride!*). Front Page The madness didn't stop there.  Next I received a call from CBC Radio and asked to be a guest on the All Points West radio show. This is the only evidence I can offer that I was on the radio! What's next you ask?  Well after all the attention my website had 60 hits (out of a metropolitan population of  >300,000), so I guess nothing is next and things will carry on as normal! * Incase you doubted me

Ride 42 - 2 November 2019 Distance 83.4km (Distance to date 1355.6km) Time 6hrs 7mins (Time to date 103hrs 29mins) With time running out, I needed this.  A big day in the saddle.  6hrs and 7mins!!  (that's  time  moving!).   The day started with a bang.  My team mates at Human Powered Racing were joining me for a couple of hours, so we had 12 of us out painting the streets!!   To make it a bit of fun (and avoid a hazardous mobile road block), we split into teams of four and made a race of it.  But not a typical race, each team had the same area to cover; the challenge was to do it in the shortest possible distance, with time not a factor.  I imagine this was hard to compute for triathletes! I'm proud to report my team won.....looks like I have picked up some utterly useless skills in the past 10 months! My first company, after 10 months of solo riding! When I moved to Victoria six and a half years ago, I was pretty consistently told I didn't want to li