First Few Days on the Road -Vancouver to Mission to Hope

Wednesday,May 20
Mel and group headed out of Vancouver on a sunny Tuesday boosted by the music, the energy and the support. Riding with Mel are Gio Alfano, Tom Prinster, and Mark Edwards, and accompanying Mel for the first five days of the ride through to Kamloops. Ben, our son, was with them for the first day. In the meantime Lindsay and I,in the support vehicle, were guided by Kevin Read to the "SOC", (in Xerox lingo that's the Service Operations Centre) where we met up with Mark Edwards who doubles as the driver of the second support vehicle. First destination was Mission about 85 km from Vancouver - a fairly comfortable ride to start off. Easy for me to say from the leather seated comfort of the drivers seat. There were a few showers off and on throughout the day, but it could have been worse. At the end of the day we stayed in style thanks to sponsors Sandman Hotel Group.
Day Two took the riders from Mission to Hope, another 85 km down Highway 7. In the support RV we do the leap frog thing - let the riders get ahead for a while then catch up, overtake them by a few kilometres and find a suitable place to pull off somewhere ahead and wait for them to come by. When we passed them they seemed to be flying - especially down one particularly steep hill. At least it was down. Mark actually rode up it first on his way back to meet the guys. First flat tire of The Ride was Tom's. The day before he got a staple in one of his the tires and thought that would be trouble - but the staple stuck good - it was something else. And I'm pretty sure there will be many more something else's on this long journey.
The end of the day found us in a beautiful campground in Hope - the Wild Rose Campground hosted by Bev and Roy Hickinbottom. If you are ever out this way, be sure to look them up.