Can you imagine seeing your bike cartwheeling down a highway at 100km/h with a huge lorry bearing down on it? That’s exactly what I saw this afternoon. We’d strapped our bikes to the bike racks on top of Kat’s car so she could take us back up to Lake Louise to start our trek west. We’d just got on the highway had hit 100km/h when there was a clunk and we turned around to see my bike literally bouncing around on the busy road. As I ran back to retrieve the mangled remains of my pride and joy a large truck narrowly missed her and cars were forced to put themselves in danger to avoid the debris. It’s extremely lucky that she didn’t go through a following vehicles windscreen and that nobody got hurt. However, my bike is now in a right state and needs new rims, fork, handlebars, stem, mudguards, pedals and god knows what else.

Some of the more superficial damage. This used to look like this>>>>

Fortunately with the help of a couple of local bike mechanics we’ve managed to get the twisted wheels in good enough shape to roll and having just spent hours working on her I hope that I’ve bodged together a machine that can limp over to Vancouver. It is doubtful that many bikes would have been able to withstand such massive trauma so I am glad of my sturdy Thorn, however, on the flip side, because she’s such a specialist machine I’ll have to get all new parts shipped over from the UK. Needless to say, I’m looking forward to being massively out of pocket.

Oh well, shit happens and life goes on. It could have been much worse.