Reunion at 100 Mile House…

One of the many posts I have not been able to write as yet, but has remained on my mind ever since we completed the ride that day, is the one we made from Whistler to 100 Mile House…

One of the things we had to get used to on the way up to Alaska, was the many RV’s and caravans that we had to overtake on the sometimes narrow and twisting mountain roads…

Now that we were back in the “modern world”, road-markers are in kilometres again… No more confusion until we crossed back into Alaska….

The reason is fairly simple…

Not only was I able to meet up with Shane and Christine Jordaan, two dear friends from Swaziland, but I also got to see their two delightful children, who I had last seen as toddlers more than 6 years ago…

Shane had been our Forest and Estate Manager back in Swaziland, and had been responsible not only for the harvesting and re-planting of trees destined for our sawmill, but also all aspects of the enviroment that went with this task…

His last major project, as I recall, was to build us a nine hole golf course and clubhouse in the little valley that was located close to our centre of operations on the farm… This course is still being played on today, and last I heard, was even attracting people from far and wide to come and play there…

John and Amy had been so excited by my imminent arrival, that they had not only decorated the paving leading to their front door with elaborate chalk drawings welcoming the Gypsy Biker, but had also spent much of the day waiting for me on their bicycles, ready to lead me to their home…

Our ride up from Whistler was fairly uneventful as I recall… With only a short 300 odd km stint ahead of us, we left the village much later than we normally would have, and then headed north towards Pemberton and then on to Lillooet, where we refueled before making the last run from there to 100 Mile House…

The first Black Bear that I managed to get a photo of… Within a few days, we would be zipping right past them without bothering to stop…!!

The road had climbed steadily up into the mountains, for much of the ride to Pemberton, ran alongside the Green River, which connected Green Lake to Pemberton Lake…

Highway 99 loops it’s way from one side of the Green River Valley to the other, making for some great riding….

It was on this road that I saw my first Black Bear, and would during the course of the morning see a few more.

Each time one appeared in the undergrowth on the roadside, we would stop and try to photograph it…

For the most part, they were fairly skittish, and would disappear just as quickly as they had made their appearance…

Cars traveling in front of us would also slam on their brakes to see the Bears, and we had to be careful not to run into them… Bloody tourists…!!

It quickly became apparent that British Colombia was sparsely populated once you left the environs of Vancouver and traveled north…

Trevor and his on board photographer…!! I often wished I had someone behind me to do the same, which would allow me to concentrate more on my riding…

Small towns, some of them hardly deserving the description, were scattered dozens of kilometres apart, and we would often breeze right through or past them without even realising that they were there…

Trevor referred to this stretch as the Duffey Lake road, and it was one that he had been very keen for us to ride, and with good reason…

The scenery was spectacular… We were traveling on the western edges of the Rocky Mountains, through what was mostly either Indian Reservations or National Parks…

We were either riding down an avenue of thickly forested hillsides, or between huge soaring peaks, that rose up on either side of us, and whose crowns were often covered in snow…

The road surface was conducive to high speed and with hardly any traffic to contend with, we could sit back and enjoy the scenery…

This was the Canada I had seen in many photographs and looked forward to the next few days when we would be encountering more of the same…

After Lillooet, we rode alongside the fast flowing Fraser River, before turning east through the Marble Canyon Indian Reserve, to where it joined highway 97, which ran north all the way to Prince George and joined the Trans Canada Highway…

Mountains, rivers and valleys… This was one of the highest points we would ride through before the road dropped down and followed the broad valley that would take us all the way north for days to come….

We had made good time and in less than an hour, would be in 100 Mile House…

We rode over a range of low hills and then down into the outskirts of 100 Mile House, sometime in the early afternoon…

Although we had been told that the ride over the mountains between Whistler and our destination would take between four and five hours, we had made it in just over three hours…!!

We had taken the twisting roads at a steady clip, tucked up closely together, with either Trevor or myself leading, and Mark mostly content to bring up the rear…

It was only the second day that we had ridden together, and soon we would get into the habit of spelling each other in the lead, and taking turns to ride shotgun at the rear of our little group…

As was our custom, we completely ignored the “No Parking” signs while we shopped for lubricants…

Having arrived a full hour before we had advised we would be there, we tootled around in the small town, first looking for a cargo net for Trevor’s bike, before going off in search of beer and wine to take with us to Shane’s house…

Unbeknownst to us, was the fact that news of our arrival had already spread through town, and both Shane and Christine knew that we were there…!!

Shane’s office was on the hill that led down into the town, and as the three bikes had rolled down into the valley, his secretary had called him to let him know “that the three bikers he was expecting, had arrived”…!!

While we were trying to figure out how we could pack the wine and beers onto the bikes, I looked up and saw a large white pick-up rolling to a stop a few yards away…

The driver’s face was very familiar to me…!!

It was Shane, whom I had not seen for many years…!! As he walked towards me with a big smile on his face, I could see that he had barely changed… We might just as well be meeting on the main street back in Pigg’s Peak…!!

A wonderful welcome to 100 Mile House, British Colombia…

Bike around the Globe and a “Welcome Gypsy Biker”…

After a big hug, and being introduced to Trevor, Chenty and Mark, Shane advised us to follow him to his home nearby, where Christine and the kids were anxiously waiting for us…

I remember sporting a huge grin on my face as thoughts of them brought back happy memories of that faraway place I had called home for more than 20 years…

John and Amy were waiting on their bicycles on a quiet lane near the house and as we rolled up to them, waved wildly to us, and pedaled alongside the bikes, “guiding” us to where Christine stood waiting…

I could not wait to get my helmet off and give her a big hug… Not only was I hugging an old friend, but the contact with her here, thousands of miles from where we last saw each other, brought aspects of my past sharply into focus…

It was as if I was greeting all of the friends I had left behind in Swaziland…

The artists…!! John and Amy Jordaan pose with final drawing which says, “The road ends her tonight..”

Those thoughts melted quickly away, as I saw the chalk drawings that John and Amy had made to welcome me to their home…

I tried to keep my emotions in check as I read the words attached to the drawings of a bike and rider riding around the globe; another of a big heart with the continents etched into it; yet another showing a tank view of the bike rolling to a stop outside their front porch…,

The words “Welcome Gypsy Biker”; “Well Done”, and “The road ends here tonight”… had my heart singing and my vision blurring…

In many parts of the world, I had been welcomed by TV and radio stations; news reporters and groups of fellow bikers; good friends and family members; and while all those events had been filled with laughter and smiles, this welcome struck a very different chord within me…

My mind flashed between the drawings I was seeing, and those that were made for me long ago by my own children…

It seemed a lifetime ago… And in many ways, it was just that…!! Another life, in another time…

I remember just standing in front of Christine and the children, shaking my head in wonder at the fact that we had been able to arrange to see each other again…

The years since we had last seen each other seemed to slip away, and minutes later, after changing out of our kit, we were sitting out in the garden, “catching up”…!!

Christine, Jon and Amy, with the guy who the fuss was all about…!! 

British Colombia is timber country, and over the next few weeks, we would encountering these logging trucks on a regular basis…

Shane described the forestry work that he now did, tramping around in the surrounding mountains, studying the plantations of forest that were either due to be felled or planted, and then drawing up programs for the landowners to implement…

He described the long hikes he made with only his dog for company, the many bears and other wildlife he had encountered, including Puma, and I wished I could have spent a day out in the bush with him, so exciting to me were his descriptions of what for him was all in a day’s work…

Looking up at the surrounding mountains, and then back at Shane, I could see how he had remained fit and trim…!!

In typical South African fashion, we soon had the BBQ going, while Christine prepared salads to go with the meat that Shane was “braai-ing”…

I remember John, Amy and I passing a rugby ball to each other while Christine and Shane relayed some rather “unusual” aspects of my former life to Trevor, Chenty and Mark…!! Some of these stories got their eyebrows up around their hair-lines…!! I had to grin as I recalled some of them myself, and the reputation I had acquired for being “a hard man”…!!

“I can see how he could be like that, having spent so much time with him…!!” Chenty said with a smile, “But I think he is past all that now…!!”

John and Amy astride the Big Fella… I could see that they were itching to get in the saddle and feel what it was like to be on “a very big bike”…

And then Christine said one of the most gratifying things I had heard in a very long time… She spoke about the change she had become aware of in me, since reading my blog from the very beginning of my journey… She said she could see how I had evolved from the sad and anger-filled man who had set out a few years ago, to the calmer and more open-hearted one I had become… Or something to that effect…!!

I can’t remember her exact words, but I do know that they had me nodding my head in quiet agreement… In that moment, sprawled out on the lawn amongst a small group of my very good friends, I knew that my journey had been worth all the efforts I had made thus far… Christine brought it all home to me in that instant…!!

Even so, I knew that I would always be “a work in progress”, which after all, we all are… Christine’s recognition of the changes in me strengthened my resolve to continue to strive to be a better person, and for that, I will always be very grateful to her…

Our bikes stand waiting for the next chapter of our ride to Alaska…

After a wonderful dinner, and a few bottles of wine, we retired to our respective bedrooms, and for me, a sleep of deep contentment… Before I fell asleep though, I wondered if I should not let Trevor and Mark ride on ahead, so that I could spend another day with Shane and his family… I would have liked to do just that…

But then I remembered that in our first two days of riding, we had covered only 650 km, and the next day we were due to pick the pace up and ride over 700 km to Smithers… Prudhoe Bay was over 4 000 km to the north of where we now were, and trying to make up 700 km to catch up to them again, would be a tough task…

My reluctant decision to stay with my “Posse”, later  proved to the right one, as over the next 5 days, we would cover more than 3 200 km to get to Fairbanks in Alaska…!! If I had tried to do that in just four days, after spending an extra day in 100 Mile House, I would have had to ride myself “ragged”…!!

The following morning we were up early, and enjoyed a fine breakfast with the family… Then we packed and loaded the bikes in preparation for our ride to Smithers…

Our last photo together… Shane, Christine, John and Amy with me at their home in 100 Mile House, British Colombia…

I enjoyed the fact that my friends from Vancouver had got on so well with the Jordaan’s and before we left, invitations to visit Trevor, Chenty and Mark on Salt Spring Island were flying fast and furious…!! It gladdened my heart to hear this, and I hope that Shane and Christine will find the time in the future, to visit with my riding buddies…

With a final round of hugs and kisses, (and a photo shoot of course), behind us, Shane, Christine, John and Amy, wished us a safe journey and waved us goodbye…

My heartfelt thanks to all of them for making the few hours we were able to spend with them, such memorable ones…

Love you guys, and hope our paths cross again in the not too distant future…!!

©GBWT 2012