TOM AND NATE CROSS CANADA

We would like to thank our families, friends and everyone who has been following our journey. Your ongoing support and encouraging words meant the world to us on this venture.

We reached Medicine Hat, Alberta on May 20th, where the life on the road, and the persistent loneliness of the journey began to get to us. Sleeping in a different place each night, eating at junkie restaurants, and missing everyone back home really began to make the task of getting on a bicycle that much harder each day. We gave it a few more days, then a few more, but ultimately decided to put the remainder of our trip on hold.

Through this endeavour, we have learned a great deal about ourselves, and without a doubt have solidified a friendship that will surely last a lifetime. We have also arrived home safe and sound and in these respects, our journey has been a successful one.

Our decision to put this on hold should in no way discourage anybody from attempting this same trip in the future. There is a lot of information out there about people that completed this journey, but little information on those that did not (…yet). So feel free to contact us with any questions that you may have.

Thank you to everyone once again for all of the support,

Cheers,

Nate and Tom

Also on the agenda today was a visit to the Tom Baker Cancer Center in Calgary, Alberta.  Special thanks go out to Dr. Rao Khan, and Nathan Becker for showing us around the cancer center, and rallying the grad students and faculty to donating over $600, and beginning a national cancer center challenge. Thanks again everyone!

Well, after getting a great night’s sleep at the Four Points in Calgary we were ready to hit the town… buying supplies and eating steaks… medium rare. Now that we are well clear of the mountains we can’t wait to start putting in some long distances enjoying the straight highways.

We are in Calgary, Alberta today, we have crossed a timezone, crossed a province, and biked over 1200km. We have met some amazing people along the way, and we have decided to take a recovery day before tearing through the prairies. We will be visiting the Calgary Cancer Center today and thoroughly updating our site. Stay tuned!

Today was a long ride… It was a nice day though soo it was relatively uneventful. We were getting in the groove by now plus Vernon has a Denny’s. WOOOOO.

This day was also supposed to be easy… I guess it wasn’t as hard as it could’ve been… some lava might have made it a bit tougher… Part way through the ride we were given a tour of the Kelowna Cancer Center which was awesome. The region that they serve is gigantic so to see how they treat all of the patients was very interesting. Thanks again.

This is a funny story… While in Kelowna we really wanted pizza for lunch. We had almost given up looking for a place when we found Twisted Tomato. After ordering a large ‘za Nate looked over and thought that the chef looked like the one and only Chef Lyon from the hit TV show Chef Off. We asked the server and it was! An awesome surprise to say the least.

This day we took it easy with a short 45km ride… Spending the day with the Vaykovich’s did us a world of good. Thanks again guys.

Although the terrain today was far more forgiving than the day before it was definitely far more difficult to deal with… The second half of the ride from Princeton to Keremeos was supposed to be easy pedalling… it wasn’t. The howling headwinds definitely put a kink in our pace and we later found out that the mayor of Keremeos apologized for the brutal wind… OH WELL.

This day was fabled to be the most difficult in the entire cross Canada ride… ascending 1.3 vertical km in only 70 horizontal km… it probably was. Arriving at the summit of Allison Pass felt better than a fresh mountain burger. Shouts to FBD Racing.

No one thought we could do it… perhaps even us. But we did! It was about 160 km reaching grades of 12 % in some places (very very steep). Needless to say we were pooped when we rolled into the chainsaw carving capital of Canada.

Thanks again to the Boyce family.