Riding4Research Day 22 Pine Pass>Bear Lake, BC 98 miles

An amazingly hot and stagnant day for being so far north (55 degrees).
I am now squarely out of the taiga and into a pine forest that feeds
a couple of the biggest mills I have ever seen.  In the warm night air
from this overpriced campground I can hear the largest sawmill I have
ever put eyes on, its about 2 miles away and I can hear the heavy
equipment moving mountains of lumber.

And these lumber trucks blew by me all day long.  At least I had a
shoulder to rely on.  That’s a good thing in a section of this continent
that is pulling a lot of stuff off the top of the Earth and also
underneath it.

The water I pedaled by today mirrored the extreme weather (and with
extreme forest fire dangers, first I have ever seen).  I pedaled
by a couple large vegetation-choked lakes that I needed to swim in
anyway. The cold shock power of those Yukon lakes is gone but it still
felt great to cool off, even if fleetingly.

Tomorrow, fingers crossed, I make it to Prince George.  The bike
is creaking and groaning despite my best attempts to oil it where
the noise is coming from. ure hope it’s not the bottom bracket.

Given the paucity of crazy things to photograph today, I thought
that I would finish the post with some unique things I’ve seen on
the road so far.  Ten for now, in no special order:
1. Interesting metric-English conversion (see photo)
2. A dog in a boat being towed by a truck.
3. A canoe paddle (that I traded for 2 stale chocolate chip cookies)
4. A tennis racket
5. A daredevil fishing spoon (had to keep it!)
6. A pickup truck driving down the road at 60 mph with 200
feet of flagging tape trailing behind it
7. A guy driving a utility trailer down the road with one tire missing
8. A woman who gave me a club soda yesterday without stopping her car
(in bike racing they call this the sticky water bottle trick)
9. Men’s and women’s underwear (but not in the same spot on the road)
10.Two bottles of sunblock (which I am using liberally)



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