Flea The Race

 

 

Day	5	Date	13th May 2015
Distance Total Distance	75.8km 245.5km	Weather	Wet, Wet, Wet, Slight wind behind me
Rolling Time Total Rolling	03:44:38 14:18:14	Terrain	Some Hills
Climbed Total Climbed	614m 2,341m	Spend	Ferry Victoria to Port Angeles $30.05 CAD Ferry Food $12.00 CAD Lighter $1.50 USD Total $46.60
Average Speed	20.3k/h	Sleeping	National Park Camping
Max Speed	52.6k/h	Difficulty	Easy

Thismoring I leave Victoria to catch the 10:30am ferry crossing over to Port Angeles in the USA.  US border control was on the Canadian side so after a grilling form them I got past and onto the ferry, only after I could make up an address at which I was spending my first night in the US, I had no idea where I was going to spend my first night… “Sir, you can’t come through until you give us an address, go over there, open a map and find me an address so I can let you through” Fingering a location on the map was good enough to coax her down from her high horse and she let me through with the added advice of being careful when I get to Mexico.  Everyone and their dogs seem to be warning me about going to Mexico!

The ferry sailing is only 2 hours to Port Angeles so I ate some shitty ferry food to fill the void.  I didn’t hear any good reviews about Port Angeles and according to my cousin John Paul Fitz, “Port Angeles is a shit hole! We spent our 1 year dating anniversary there in a motel….couldn’t afford the ferry to Canada!!!”. Armed with this advice I decided to cycle out of it as quick as I landed in it.  My destination for the day was Quilcene which is about 75km from Port Angeles, the village sits just below a long 5km climb out of it as you travel south so I figured I’d set up camp in the national park at the base of the climb.

It pretty much rained all the way to Quilcene once I got 20km into the trip, it was a sticky continuous drizzle so I was fairly damp by the time I arrived.  This weather is supposedly typical for the area and you can tell by the mossy green vegetation and semi tropical damp smell everywhere that its partial to rainfall.  It wasn’t cold and I dried off pretty quickly once I got to Quilcene and setup for the night.

I ended up riding the 75km trip in one sitting as there wasn’t really any useful villages along the way, I couldn’t stop to cook food because someone robbed my lighter at the hostel bar last night, so I kept on going right into Quilcene where I stopped to get a lighter and then onto a sheltered picnic area at the end of the village where I cooked up dinner and then found a place to camp in the woods close by the Picnic Area.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Three random people today commented on my shoes, one American guy on the ferry was like….”Hey buddy, awesome shoes, what are they?”….. “They’re Camper”….”They’re Whaaat?”…….”They’re Camper”…..”Is that with a K?”…

 

I made a timelapse video when putting up the tent, it’s kinda funny!