Day 1: Home-Chilliwack

So Day 1 is in the books!  It was a great day and a lot of fun to reconnect with old friends from last year's ride.  Because Kim is an official volunteer this year she had to be at Crescent Beach early this morning therefore I decided to ride from home to Crescent Beach.  It is only about 17km's and a friend of mine, Clarke, swung by my house to pick me up and ride with me to the start line.  There are obviously a lot of people I don't know on the ride but it is great to see a lot of familiar faces, people who did the ride last year.

The weather was awesome today.  There was a bit of a headwind so I tried to make sure I was drafting other people (1 or 2 day riders) as much as possible.  Having done this part of the ride 3 times now there weren't too many surprises.

I want to thank my awesome family for coming out again and cheering us on half way through the day.  Everyone is always wondering who all these crazy people standing on the side of the road are and I am always proud to say that those people are MY family!!  It is always a huge boost to the riders to see you all there, so again, thank you!

There were over 100 people riding today, 5 of us who have CF, 3 of those who have had double-lung transplants, including myself.

In regards to the ride, it was for the most part quite flat.  There were 2 hills that were kind of steep but luckily quite short.  I felt pretty good and I am looking forward to tomorrow.  Tomorrow is about 2-3 hours of flat riding into Hope and then we begin to climb, and I mean climb.  We head up the Hope Slide, most people hold a personal hatred of that climb, and then continue up to Allison pass.  You can read all about it in the description below.

Here is a link to a short video from today's ride.  I will try take more video in the days to come, I was having such a good time talking and catching up with people I kind of forgot to take more shots.

ps. I told you the elevation map would get more entertaining.