Cycle Touring Fatigue

In all honesty, at the moment, I am not having that much fun cycle touring and have not been probably since leaving Lilloet at the start of June. One of the issues is the boredom of the repetitive and uninspiring scenery. There are of course exceptions such as the glaciers down to Stewart or the lakes along the highway and every so often glimpses of rolling, forest covered hills for as far as the eye can see. But also there is the hundreds and hundreds of miles of highway with a 50 foot verge then a wall of trees. Writing this it almost sounds good. Miles of tree lined roads does, kinda, sound rather pleasant but cycling for weeks, with almost exactly the same view is tough, really tough. The trees are not huge, ancient and thought provoking specimens from the birth of Jesus Christ. They are dwarfed by permafrost and are carbon copies of each other all in a row.

The same can be said for the human interactions. They too seem to be frost bitten. As with everything there have been fantastic shows of kindness, such as having a place to stay to get over my illness in Smithers, riding with the Justin and Melissa up the Stewart-Cassiar highway, getting a place to stay while trapped in Fort Nelson and the lift with Erin. But these serve to highlight the poor interactions we have had with other folk rather than mitigate it. People just don't seem to care that we have cycled 5,000 to get to where we are having the conversation. The hospitality we received from the Americans and friends and family in Vancouver has been sorely missed as we got further and further into the wilderness and into environments I had expected kindness to be at it's highest. It's not that people are rude just not really interested and walking into a shop, restaurant or campground we now have the expectation that we are going to get ripped off in some way. It's a bad feeling and one I'm hoping will vanish now we are further south.

Thirdly, and totally manufactured by me, is feeling trapped. For many years I have been fighting the notion of getting "trapped" in a life. I didn't want to own a house because I would be "trapped" in a mortgage and then be "trapped" in a job. I bring this up because actually, at the moment, I feel that I have "trapped" myself on this cycle tour. By having the blog and calling it Detour to Moose Jaw I have to carry on cycling to Moose Jaw and I actually have to carry on for another 20 months since it's the "2 year cycling adventure..." even though, at the moment, that thought isn't something that fills me full of happiness and excitement.

Sophie and I have been trying to figure it out, because this is a problem and it comes down to a few issues. One, I am a task orientated person. I like to work hard on a task, figure it out, finish it off in a nice little bow and move onto the next task and pick up some praise along the way. This is hard to do on a bike. Next, I like to learn new things and then do research to add to what I have learned then put all that into practise and get excited by that new thing. Again, difficult to do while touring and sleeping in a tent or in a stranger's house. Then there is the fact that cycle touring stresses me out. I struggle with the not knowing. The not knowing where we are going to sleep. Not knowing the best place to buy groceries. The not knowing the best thing to see or do around this next corner because we'll only get one shot at it and then we'll have to be on our way to Moose Jaw then Toronto then who knows where. All of these things make the day to day in the saddle a bit of a grind, at the moment. Which, makes me feel really sad because we worked so hard for such a long time for this and it's just not floating my boat. But again this is, for some people, and was once for me, an adventure of a lifetime and it grates on me that I'm getting bored. Surely you shouldn't be bored on a trip like that?

Now, I don't think that it is terminal, but it is worrying, so we are going to mix things up a bit. We are going to have a bit of a holiday in Jasper and Banff before getting to Moose Jaw. Once there we are going to re-address the situation to see what we both want to do. We have options, in fact we have so many different options, we could do pretty much anything we want. And I need to remember that having blues while on a trip like this is relatively normal and, as Sophie points out fairly frequently, that if I had done some reading beforehand I would know that it isn't all plain sailing and endless wonderment but at times it is tough, it is boring and it will test you; but that's part of the adventure right?