Tour de Victoria 2022
Of all the events I signed up for this year, Tour de Victoria was the one I looked forward to the most! My friend, Kim, was going with me and we were making a full weekend on Vancouver Island in Canada.
Kim met me at my house at 6am on August 19th and we both rode (mostly in the dark) to the waterfront in Seattle to catch the Victoria Clipper to Vancouver. The Clipper is a high-speed passenger ferry that only takes about 2.5 hours to get to Victoria from Seattle. It sure beats having to drive that amount of time, then wait and catch a ferry from the mainland to the island, which could take another couple of hours.
I thought I might sleep on the ferry ride since I wasn’t able to fall asleep all night, but that wasn’t the case. I guess I was wired from excitement over the weekend trip!
When we got to Victoria and collected our bikes, we rode a very short distance to our hotel. We were staying at the Royal Scot hotel (I had stayed there before and liked it).
After getting settled in our room, Kim went for a walk while I thought to take a nap. Nope, it wasn’t happening! I just couldn’t fall asleep. Ugh! Instead, I went down to the basement and soaked in the hot tub.
When Kim got back, we rode our bikes over to the Day’s Inn who had a restaurant with outdoor seating. Unlike the Day’s Inns in the U.S., the ones I’ve been in while In Canada are a huge upgrade. I wasn’t very hungry and only ate fries with brown gravy for dinner. After I ate, I went back to the hotel and was finally able to go to sleep. Kim went out to take sunset photos.
We got up the next morning and ate a so-so breakfast at the hotel before riding about a block to the start location for Tour de Victoria. The event had over 2000 riders between the six different distance routes. Our route of 72km (about 43 miles) was to start at 9am and we had almost 600 in our group!
I wasn’t prepared for how steep the hills were on the outskirts of Victoria! There were at least three that were so short and steep that I had to hop off my bike near the top and walk the rest of the way up the hill. I wasn’t alone…many were doing the same thing!
About 20 miles into my ride, I started to feel really dizzy and sick in my stomach. When I got to the third rest stop, I got so dizzy after sitting for a bit and standing up, that I knew it wasn’t a good idea to continue riding. There happened to be a support driver there loading up another person’s bike, so I asked if I could be taken back to the start.
Back at the start/finish, I rode my bike across the finish line so I would at least get my finisher medal. I then got a burger and fries from the buffet. After eating, I was able to get a 10-minute low back massage. This was a free service suppled by massage school students. The massage really helped my lower back, which had tightened up during my brief ride.
I hated to leave Kim, but she had my extra battery to have enough charge to get to the finish line. What I failed to remember, however, was that her key didn’t fit my battery and I had forgotten to give her my key. I didn’t know until sometime later that she rain out of charge, couldn’t switch batteries, and had to walk a lot of the last part of the route. She didn’t make it back to the finish until after they were starting to tear down the event. Luckily she was able to find someone to get her finisher medal.
That evening, I felt so bad about leaving Kim and her sad adventure getting back so I treated her to dinner and even got her a flight of whiskeys to try. I also walked around and got some sunset photos.
The next day, we had time to kill before catching the Clipper back to Seattle. I was feeling well rested and much better, so we rode some of the trails around Victoria. Lunch was one of the best tuna wraps I have ever eaten!
Too soon we were loading up on the ferry and heading back to Seattle.
It was late and already dark outside when we got back to the pier. We rode our bikes back to my place where I helped Kim load her bike into her car. At one point, her bike fell over onto my legs. I had terrible bruises (large ones) all over my legs for the next week.
