Day Two – Biting Off More Than I Can Chew

Langford, BC to Malahat, BC

Sooke Hills Wilderness Trail

Distance travelled – 15km.

It is only the second day of my cycling tour and it didn’t take me long to get in over my head.

I will mostly be cycling on paved roads for this cross-Canada tour, but I will sometimes be on bike paths or gravel trails.  I use a couple of different GPS apps for bicycle routing to help me plan my routes.  On this day, both apps suggested staying off the busy Trans-Canada Highway and taking a bike trail instead.

The Sooke Hills Wilderness Trail is popular with cyclists and gets glowing reviews.  It looked like a great way to avoid traffic and enjoy some nature.  I broke camp around dawn and set out around 6:00 am to start my ride.  I figured that I could get some nice trail riding in early and then stop for breakfast somewhere in the Malahat or Shawnigan Lake area.  Things did not go according to plan.

It is definitely a beautiful trail, but it is entirely inappropriate for a fully loaded touring trike and trailer.  I was too wide and too heavy.  The path was too steep and had too much loose gravel.  It was a disastrous combination.

The hills were so steep that I frequently had to dismount and walk the trike up steep grades.  If I tried cycling up the hills and got stopped halfway up, it was difficult to get off the trike without it sliding back down the hill.  Getting out of the seat takes the weight off the front tires which have the parking brakes.  With no weight on these wheels, the tires had insufficient traction in the loose gravel and the trike would start sliding downhill despite the brakes being locked – sometimes dragging me along with it.  I was beginning to feel like the mythical Sisyphus rolling his boulder up a hill.

On the steepest hills, I couldn’t even walk the trike and trailer up because I couldn’t get enough traction with my shoes in the loose gravel to overcome the sheer weight of all my equipment.  At these hills, I had to disconnect the trailer from the trike and walk it up separately.  The combined weight of the trike, trailer, and all my gear is about 130 kg / 300 lbs.  With me riding on it, I am pedaling a total of 200 kg / 450 lbs.

I tried riding up hills with the trailer and bags removed to reduce weight, but could not get enough traction and the rear wheel would spin out in the gravel.  I also had to remove the trailer and bags to navigate a narrow suspension bridge.  I probably should have turned around and gone back to a paved road at that point but I continued on.

There is a theory, often quoted in relation to investments, known as the “sunk cost fallacy”.  Basically, we have a tendency to continue a behaviour due to the amount of resources (time, money, effort) previously invested even if the current costs outweigh the benefit.  It is a form of loss aversion.  So, for example, someone might continue pouring money into repairs on an old vehicle (rather than selling or scrapping it) because they have already spent so much that it would seem like lost money to give up now.  Or an investor might hold on to a stock as the price continues dropping because they invested more than what it is currently worth and don’t want to take a loss.  They will irrationally continue holding the stock and hoping for a rebound even when all indications are that the price will continue to slide and the unrealized losses continue to grow.

There were several points during my ride when I should have strongly considered turning around and going back to a paved road.  Every time I had that thought, the sunk cost fallacy would override my logic.  I would think, “I can’t turn back now.  I have already gone so far and passed so many obstacles.  Surely it can’t be that much further before I get back on a paved road.  Going back would be more effort than continuing forward.”  But it was much further, and there would be more obstacles.  The further I went and the longer it took, the more daunting the idea of turning back became.

I spent an entire day on that trail. I could have hiked it in a fraction of the time.  Dragging a heavy trike up a hill and then trudging back down to retrieve the trailer was tedious and exhausting.  There were also several points where I had to partially disassemble the trike to get past an obstacle. 

I didn’t have a proper meal all day.  I thought it would only be a couple of hours ride before I could stop for breakfast and buy some groceries.  Instead, I spent all day expending a great deal of energy with only water, protein bars, and some dried mangoes to sustain me.

Although I started the day with almost 8 litres (2 gallons) of water, I was rationing it by mid-afternoon.  By the time I got back to a paved road around 5:00 pm, I had become so weak and dehydrated that I couldn’t continue riding.  I was in pretty rough shape. 

I was very fortunate that some other cyclists came along and gave me water.  I didn’t catch all of their names, except for Derek who gave me a whole bottle of Gatorade to help replenish my electrolytes.  A short time later, some first responders happened to show up and one of them was a medic.  They checked my vitals and gave me some food and more Gatorade.  It took about an hour for the food, water, and electrolytes to kick in before I felt better.  The first responders really went above and beyond anything that I could have expected.  One of them lived nearby and let me store my trike in his garage overnight while one of the others drove me to a nearby motel to recuperate.  I owe a huge thank you to Adrian, Paul, Wil, Jesse, and Ryan, as well as the cyclists who stopped to help me before that.

Unfortunately, there was a major power outage in Malahat due to a truck knocking down the power lines over the Trans-Canada Highway.  The motel had no electricity and no water, but the highway was closed so getting anywhere else would have been difficult.  At least I had a comfortable bed and some food in my stomach.  That might be something that a person would often take for granted, but not me and not on this particular day.