I'm kind of ashamed to admit that I've been living in Vancouver for almost four years and have never spent any meaningful amount of time on the Island. My only trip to date was to visit the Naked Bicycles workshop last November for my fitting, but that doesn't really count because my entire day was spent on the ferry, in my car, or in Sam's shop. I'd never gone over for the Robert Cameron Law race series or any of the fondos either. With a surplus of vacation days to use, I decided that last week was as good a time as any and booked a four-day weekend visit.
I didn't really have a set itinerary for this trip; there were no events or races going on and the only research I did beforehand was asking all of my coffee connoisseur friends for their recommendations. I knew I was going to do the Broadstreet Cycles Thursday chill ride and the Victoria Wheelers Saturday ride. Other than that, My plan was simply to roll around and explore.
The benefit of leaving on Thursday morning's first ferry meant that I was able to enjoy empty Vancouver roads, avoiding all of the morning rush hour traffic and giving me the opportunity to make the most of my first day of vacay. The downside: waking up at 5am to guarantee enough time for breakfast, loading, and any of the last-minute hiccups that always happen when travelling.
I'll be honest: I didn't take many photos of actual riding. When I'm rolling around here in Vancouver, I'm usually with people or groups that I know well on roads that I'm intimately familiar with so I have no hesitations reaching for my camera. I was a stranger on strange roads with strange people during this trip, so I decided to play it safe, especially on some of the more *brisk* rides. Despite what these images may lead you to believe, I did, in fact, ride my bike and did not just drive around placing it in front of things for the photo op. There are also a bunch of photos on my Instagram feed of some of the coffee stops I made to Second Crack, Bows & Arrows, Hey Happy, Habit, and Caffe Fantastico.
So instead, I'll leave you with this random collection of photos from the trip. What was pleasantly surprising was a bit of a resurgence of my eye for capturing images beyond all things bicycle. A little bit of street photography here, a little bit of architecture and urban there. Some land/sea-scape thrown in as well. One of my favourite things about traveling is finding cool graffiti so be warned, however, that there's still a surprisingly high percentage of my bike against a wall.
Long story short: I'm sad that it's taken so long for me to do this. I'll be back.
