St. John's to Victoria: Unravelling Our Way Home

Our flight home would be from St. John's to Halifax to Vancouver. Mum will meet us with a car at the airport in Van, and we'll drive to the ferry in Tswawassen, and then down the Pat Bay highway back home to Victoria. All same day. 

Airport security was an ordeal, to say the least, and our bike boxes had to be repacked piece by piece at the airport before we could board. The plan to have a car to pick up the bikes in boxes seems like a good one, rather than trying to reassemble them in the Vancouver airport.  

Minutes into the flight it sinks in that we are going to fly almost directly over the path we just spent 2 months carving up on bicycles.  

Through the window we see Newfoundland, then the ferry port in North Sidney, and then some Nova Scotia before we land in Halifax. It's pretty, but kinda hits weirdly that we're unraveling it all so quickly.    

    

On the flight to Vancouver we watched Skeet. It's a movie about a man trying to make a fresh start after a stint in prison and it's filmed in St. John's using many local actors, complete with the local accent. It's rendered to the viewer entirely in black and white so the Dr. Seuss palette row houses don't distract from the compelling subject matter. There's a darker side to the St. John's we got to know over the last week. We can recommend the moving film, and even better, especially right after you've just been walking around the streets of St. John's for a week or so.  

We watched the flight path screen a little stunned as the airplane unwound our accomplishment province by province. We were lucky to have a clear day and we could make out towns in the Rockies we had visited on the way out.         

The landing in Vancouver, as always, nothing short of spectacular. 

Our bike boxes looked unscathed and well handled. Our fears had been unwarranted. It was still nice to not have to try putting bikes together on the carpet in the baggage claim and we were sure glad to see mum, and an automobile!   

After important connections with family in Vancouver, and then important connections with family in Victoria we pulled our old city bikes out and rode over to the 'Mile 0' monument at Beacon Hill Park to visit Terry Fox. It's 9pm and there are several of the huge cruise ships in port, with sightseers buzzing around everywhere. Victoria is showing really well. We love this city, it's easily our favourite!        

The tours are pulling up in pedicabs, on rented bikes, in taxis, horse-drawn platforms, and open topped busses. The tour guides tell their respective clients about Terry Fox and the magic of his ambition. They talk about how this is the start (or end) of the Trans-Canada highway and the other end is in St. John's, Newfoundland.  

One guide says from where we stand, we are 100 kilometres closer to Tokyo, Japan than we are to St. John's. And standing at the marker in St. John's you would be closer to Portugal, than to here in Victoria. 

We haven't fact checked him, but yeah, it's a very long highway, across a really huge country.  

We didn't tell any of them that we had been there, in St. John's, why just this morning. We just smiled like tourists, snapped a selfie at the '0' and went home to bed.        

READ NEXT:   Across Canada By Bicycle: The Numbers