Hardly any wait at Sumas, and the charming Canadian custom officer came from Quebec and we chitchatted in French for a while (funny how I didn’t mind wasting a couple minutes then. :-) I reset my GPS III+ to metric so that I have a ready reference to the local speed system. I keep my StreetPilot on that antiquated and quaint U.S. system, ‘coz I’ve lived here long enough that it’s almost more natural to me – and all my maps, routes and schedules have been computed and laid out using miles, mph, and 60-minute hours. Quick zoom up to Hope, and up the Coquati… the Cochiti… the Cookarach… well, Highway 5, you know! Another, shorter way to head north is to follow TC1 up along the Frazier canyon. It’s a gorgeous ride, very scenic, very curvy. It cuts maybe 50 miles compared to Hwy5, but is not necessarily faster. It’s 2 lane most all the way, which can be painful when there are lots of RVs on the road, there are often construction zones that slow you way down, or can even stop you for a while, and there are more critters to be found (er, "to be avoided") on that road. The alternate toll freeway is a bit longer, but doesn’t take more time in normal conditions, and can be quicker if traffic is slow on the Frazier road. One element I had not taken into account is that the pass is at a much higher elevation than the canyon road… At any rate, I had planned on taking a detour East and hit Kelowna off on 97C, and the freeway cuts closer to it, so that was that.

The day started with pleasant weather, but the more I headed into the mountain, the darker the skies got. Pretty soon, the cloud cover had turned into a foreboding lead coffin. I ran into major league fog banks – I hate running blind, no knowing if some idiot has decided to stop in the middle of the road, yet not daring slowing down too much because there will be those morons who will mow you down from behind running 70 mph in close to zero visibility conditions. I stuck close to trucks then, hoping that their Christmas tree lighting will be more conspicuous than my rear end. It got pretty cold, it starts raining, and as I reached the tollbooth, rain turned into sleet. Wow, and this was almost summer! I was getting pretty cold. I didn’t really expect the weather to get that cold, and kept thinking that I would burst through the clouds back into the sun any minute, and was still riding in hot weather configuration. Not good. I stopped at the toll plaza, got to the bathroom and donned my electric vest and fleece jacket and pants, and defrosted my hands under the hand dryer before putting on my winter gloves. When I got out, surprise! Sleet has turned into honest to goodness snow. Big, fat, heavy snowflakes, that had already started to accumulate on the bike – and on the shoulder. Yeap, definitely early summer in the Pacific Northwest. Well well well, things were getting interesting, no?! I knew I was not too far from the top of the pass, and got back on the bike and hit the road quickly, before snow got too bad. Later on, at the finish line, I talked to Dave Biasotti and Alan Barbic, and to John Laurenson, who tried to get through probably a couple hours after I did, and got stuck. Dave and Alan spent 5 hours huddled in a tunnel before they managed to backtrack down into the valley, John hitched a ride back down before the snowplow came through… All three missed the window for the next checkpoint because of that nasty storm, and couldn’t score any points for these 2 legs (but they all finished all the same. Way to go!) Visibility was limited (but better than with fog), it was quite a bit slippery, and it was cold (got down to 32F / 0C.) Apart from that, well, all was sweet. I didn’t beat any land speed records, I had the electric vest, heated grips and seat cranked up to fight the cold and dampness (and to think that I used to pooh-pooh the idea of electrics on a bike, ya know, only good for sissies and all that… Welcome to the Dark Side, Dominique), but I soon reached the top of the pass. In those areas, the mountain range often marks the limit for bad weather. Clouds beat against the West side of the mountain and dump their load on the unlucky side, but the other side can be nice and sunny, and totally dry. The welcome transition occurred this time, and the same scenario was to play again a couple times when crossing more mountain ranges further north. I got snowed on one more time (##$%*&), and we all went through some rather nasty weather along the way, with some nice respites. Well, at least I didn’t get hail, like many riders did 2 years ago :-). Joe Z. sure knows how to pick ‘em.

After sweating for (too) many hours on Streets and Streets, I had come up to the conclusion that, well, Yukon Territory was a long way from Idaho, and that I was not likely to have time to go hunting for too many bonus locations. The program reported about 2500 miles from Boise to Whitehorse, for a good part on 2-lane, mountain roads. With my, er, somewhat conservative riding style (i.e., I wanted to have at least 3 or 4 hours of decent sleep every night), it was going to be all I could do to get to Whitehorse before the window closed, after having grabbed the Orcas Island bonus. It seemed that I would pretty much only be able to be picking bonus along the way. I had tentatively marked a few in and out boni further out (Cherryville, then a handful more along TC1, Hyder, etc.), in case I realized that I had been unduly pessimistic, but I would quickly realize that I could not hit them. I’m not a seasoned rally warrior, I don’t have that burning urge to push further and longer, and I want to stay waaay on this side of safe. I don’t even want to come close to pushing the edge. That might sound like anathema, but I a) really don’t want to take any chances and b) I don’t want to make the ride too painful – shoot, I’m a tourist and a gawker at heart, I can’t deny it. You can take the Frenchman out of his featherbed, but you can’t take the featherbed out of the Frenchman. (Mmmm, wait, that didn’t quite come out as I meant it to… oh just forget it.)

After getting away from the stormy peaks of the Coqara…, the Cochit, er, Hwy 5, the rest of the ride to Merrit, then to Kelowna was pleasant. Nice curvy and fast mountain road, gorgeous scenery – from now, on, there will be a lot of forested mountain sides, rugged rocky peaks, snowy ones, small and large lakes, small and large rivers, …- almost no traffic, niiiiiice, warm weather – albeit very, very windy for a couple hundred miles. I’ll take wind over snow or fog, thank you very much. Kelowna is located on the side of Okanagan lake, and the entrance to the city is quite spectacular – the road drops down from the mountains to the lake, and you cross a long bridge to get to the town. I got there around 7PM, and quickly found the park by the lake where we were supposed to take pictures of "famous sails" and of "Ogopogo sculpture" The sails were easy enough to find, a huge sculpture with a fountain, but where was my buddy "Ogopogo". There was a park next to the Sails, and the most likely suspect was a funky see serpent sculpture there, but no signs to confirm the ID. I had done an Internet search before leaving, to no avail, but figured that it would be easy enough to figure it out once there. Well, well, well… Fortunately, there were lots of people strolling and hanging by the fountain, and my second strike gave me the confirmation needed – the sea serpent it was. Er, why "Ogopogo", pray tell? ??? I still don’t know the origin of the name nor the story behind the sea serpent (Loch Ness wannabe?) – but I got my pix, so party on.

I was pretty much on my schedule, but confirmed that I could not hit the other bonus location further East. I had to decide whether to go on North on Hwy97, or backtrack the way I came, to head up for Kamloops. I decided to backtrack – this is not usually what I like best, when the alternative is some nice unknown mountain road with curve potential, but it appeared on the map to be smaller than the way I had come. Night was getting closer, I knew the road I had just come on, and the stretch further up to Kamloops, was fine to boogie on, so I turned around and went the "safe" way. Night fell, the riding was quite nice, the weather was holding. I was feeling OK, I had ridden those roads half a dozen times before, I was pretty happy with my ride so far, glad to have managed to follow my plan, and thinking that the bad weather must have been stopped by that first mountain range… Hope springs eternal. Feeble mortals can be but wide-eyed clueless pawns in the hands of Fate :-). I zoomed through Kamloops after nightfall, and pushed up on 5 towards the turn-off onto 24 to find 97, which would lead me to Prince George. I would pick up a bonus along the way at Bridge Lake, easy pickin’, all’s well. That’s when the Weather decided to turn back to Nasty with chances of Crappy. Funny how Nature and other very un-human elements get so quickly anthropomorphized when things don’t quite swing the way one likes! It starts raining again, not a frog-choker, but a heavy drizzle interspersed with intermittent showers (did you know that Seattleites have 34 different words and expressions for rain?) I had only ridden about 500 miles, what with all the ferry rides and waiting, but had been up since 4AM. Of course I was in the middle of the boonies, with little chance to get off the road. I was looking for the town of Little Fort, where I was to turn off onto 24 – I didn’t spot a town, but did spot a motel, right at what the Streetpilot claimed was the intersection with 24. I sure didn’t see any signs. Which could have been a sign in itself that it was time for me to get off the road. That, and the weather would surely improve in the morning. It was around 11 PM, the owner of the motel was still up, and, after the usual questions and comments about where I was headed on such a dreary night, sent me my way to slumber in a nice, kitchen-equipped, but pretty bare room (lotsa hunters and fishermen come this way, she told me.) Good night.