The day started with breakfast out by the truck. Following breakfast we checked out of the Gage Residence, loaded our bags and headed off to the totem poles for the official group photo. Susan, her cousin and husband (Margaret & Gordon) and friend Deana met us there to send us on our way. It was really nice seeing them all at the start!

My Garmin has an odometer but since I couldn’t figure out if there was a way to reset it to zero I took a photo to show the reading at the start (1731 km).

The next stop was the beach for another ceremonial dipping of the wheels, then we were officially on our way. By the time we left the beach we had already splintered into several smaller groups. The group I was riding with tended to vary in size as we caught up to other riders or riders pulled away. Cycling through Vancouver involved lots of starting and stopping at traffic lights along with dealing with heavy traffic. At one point a pedestrian yelled “Don’t you know you are riding down the busiest street in Vancouver?” It’s always nice to get a newsflash from a local!

One highlight of the day was a little cheese store that we stopped at. Apparently our group of about 10 at the time was the only one to stop there: most others hadn’t even noticed it. Besides cheese they also had a little coffee counter where some of the group bought coffee and pastries. I purchased some cheese and a chocolate milk which I enjoyed sitting at one of the tables outside along with my second peanut butter sandwich of the day (the first had been consumed earlier at a stop in a little park).

We arrived at our campsite near Mission around 2:30. Our total distance today was about 85 km. Once again we lucked out on the weather as the forecast had been for showers. We didn’t get any rain and by the time we arrived at camp it had turned quite nice. Arriving early on the first day allowed us time to leisurely set up our tents and re-organize some of the stuff in our baskets on the truck.

I didn’t get a chance today to post yesterday’s blog and without Wifi tonight, today’s and yesterday’s post will have to occur tomorrow. I am sitting in the rec center for the campground as I write this. You will likely notice a change in format for my blog. When I don’t have Wifi access I can compose my post offline using a WordPress app then post it when I have internet access. The downside is the handling of photos is a little different. I can select the photos I want to post so they will upload automatically when I do have Wifi access however they will only appear at the start or the end of my post. I also can’t add captions to them. Despite the shortcomings it does allow me to keep up with my posts and just means I have to stop somewhere during the day that has Wifi. Uploading my post at that point then only takes a few minutes.