Day one! It’s finally here after months of planning, organizing (and reorganizing seemingly a hundred times), “gearing up” with many visits to REI and Amazon, tinkering with gear for countless hours in the garage to dial it in perfectly to my bike and squeezing in rides whenever possible. The alarm went off at 4:15am this morning and those of you who know me well, know that is not my finest hour unless of course I’m waking up for an “alpine start” to climb a mountain or to start some other grand adventure that pulls me out of that cozy soft bed and down pillows in the middle of the night! My older brother (by 6 years), Michael, who happened to be passing through for a few days to visit his son, our mother and me on his way to Saipan/Guam, was kind enough to take me to the airport at that crazy hour. Yesterday, I took my bike in to the Alpha Bicycling, shop in South Denver where I bought it a couple months ago, to get a quick tune up and have them disassemble, carefully protect and pack the bike into a large cardboard box suitable for checked luggage with the airline. I was impressed with their masterful packing skills and was sure to ask a lot of questions as I would be trying to put the bike back together again when landing in Vancouver B.C.! Knowing I was only allowed two checked bags, I stuffed some of my smaller bike bags and panniers into any remaining open spaces in the large box! All in all the bike box with gear ended up weighing about 55 lbs which, due to my status with United Airlines, is still 15 lbs under the 70lb limit. So I thought! When I got to the airport I quickly realized I wasn’t actually flying United, but rather Star Alliance partner Air Canada… whoops… perhaps I should have checked in last night? Off I went to the Air Canada check-in (which was on the other end of the terminal) with my 55lb bike box, my other large duffle (35lbs) and my small carry-on pack. It must have looked quite funny to see me trying to wrestle all my gear across the airport at 5am! Once at the Air Canada gate, I was greeted by a chipper and friendly gate agent who informed me the Air Canada’s policy is 2 bags at 23 kilos (50lbs)! So with a tired look on my face, I let her know I would need to transfer some items from box to duffle and she half winked at me as said I was good to go! Woohoo! And the kicker was that the oversized box charge was only $50 vs. $200 for United! Oh boy, thank you Air Canada! There’s so much to like about our friendly neighbors to the north, but I’ll save that thought for another day. Vancouver, here I come! Once we landed, I got through customs and immigration relatively quickly. Thankfully both my duffle and bike box showed up undamaged and after I got a bite to eat, I found a quite place and got busy putting the bike back together again with all the bags in the right places. This process took about 2.5 hours… about an hour longer than I anticipated! A number of people asked me what I was doing and were interested in my journey. I wish I had a time lapse of this entire process. Once completed, I headed to the train station and took the train to downtown/waterfront Vancouver. My first ride was around the sea wall of Stanley Park, a beautiful and famous 8 mile loop that I’ve done every time I’ve visited Vancouver on business. I stopped at all the popular sights like the totem poles as well as the scenic overlooks. I then grabbed a quick bite before riding across Lionsgate Bridge to my friend’s house in gorgeous West Vancouver. As I was riding across the bridge, I meet a super cool cyclist, Brad, from Ottawa and ended up riding about 7-8 miles with him. Finally reached my friends and they hosted me with a great dinner and fun conversation which lasted a few hours. What a first day of my journey!