Commuter Cycling in the Back Country

by Rob Rao

When I accepted an editorial co-op position at Harbour Publishing in tiny Madeira Park, an old logging and fishing community turning into early retirement and summer homes located about thirty kilometres past Sechelt on the upper Sunshine Coast, one of my first realizations was oh no, this is it… I have to get a car.

Exploring for the first time, and in all seriousness, the feasibility of living in a camper van and the notion of a completely mobile life, I quickly recognized the truth, deep in my heart, that I was not quite the type of person who particularly enjoyed wondering where I would be taking my showers every morning. And while the question of whether to finally procure a vehicle (having never own a car of my own) eventually resolved itself with the very generous loan of a family-sized sedan by my employer, I resolved at the same time that I wasn’t going to entirely coast along that particular gas-fuelled path, either, even if I could (sorta) afford it.

Fortunately, I don’t have to range very far for the essentials. It is just over one kilometer along a winding, hilly back road down to the supermarket, post office, liquor store, video store and pretty much everything else down in Madeira Park. The village sits in a valley created by the coastal mountains descending to the numerous coves and natural harbors formed by this section of twisty shoreline. And my little trailer in the woods is just over four kilometres away from the offices of the publishing house located in a suburban-style cul-de-sac nestled up against a provincial park, about the same pedaling distance as, for example, Commercial Drive is from Oak Street and the hospital district.

The difference, of course, is in the traffic and the terrain. One of the first things to get used to is the preponderance of Ford F-series 4x4 pick-ups. It’s a cliché, I know, but it’s true. It snows a bit heavier out here on the coast, I’m told, and even the trucks have trouble getting up some hills. But now, in the middle of a mild but bright-hot summer, the roads are in fine condition, if a little narrow and with no shoulders. I admit that I’ve turned into far more of a fair-weather cyclist than I was in the city, a combination of having a (gas-propelled) vehicle readily at hand and because it’s exciting enough when a guy in a large pick-up truck comes upon and passes you on a two-lane road with its twists and turns on a dry and sunny day. In the dark or rain, the possibility of something fatal happening seems all too real.

I console myself while on my bike on these roads with a vague kind of real-time mental computer simulation, rationalizing that it would be in fact pretty difficult to get hit along most parts of my route, because being a moving object yourself, you are never in a dangerous blind patch very long. Struggling up steep hills, you are easily seen from a distance by vehicles behind you, and once cresting the hill you pick up enough speed to outpace a vehicle until the next uphill or a flat, safe straightaway.

But rural drivers are generally courteous and respectful, often hanging back until they get to their turn-off or a clear, straight stretch of road, taking care to give you plenty of room as they pass. I haven’t encountered any real attitude from anybody driving by, but I am always acutely aware of how exceptional it must be to come around a corner and upon someone riding a bike for transportation, out here on the coast. Bike-riding is much more likely in Robert’s Creek, but the only other person I can feel a vague affinity with in this experiment in extending the range and context of ‘non-car culture’ is Bob, an old guy who passes me going the other way across the little Beaver Island bridge on his electric scooter every weekday morning.

All of it does cause me to reflect out here, far from the city lights, on what it would take to make these more rural areas far less auto-dependent. Out here, I am vividly reminded of my suburban upbringing, where the one car to one driving-age adult was the norm, out of functional necessity. (It doesn’t help that my loaner vehicle only has a tape deck, allowing me to relive my musical tastes from the early to mid-nineties via my back catalogue of cassette tapes, some not played since adolescence.)

But the car has proved extremely useful in allowing me some range, the ability to explore the beauty of this part of the coast as well as to get down to the ferry some other weekends, a little over sixty kilometres and an hour’s drive to the south. You can see lots of touring cyclists on the Coastal Highway, loaded down with front and back panniers, but no cyclist could seriously consider using it as a commuter route. Its twisty, turny, hilly two-narrow-lanes nature means it would take most of a day to bike, if you were so inclined, and you probably are not, unless you’re doing a serious tour, circumnavigating the coast counter-clockwise or something.

A local publication recently reported on the trial run of a bus route for the upper Coast that would run from Egmont in the north to Pender Harbour, and then south to Sechelt, twice a day, much as commuter trains are scheduled in larger metropolitan areas. Whether this will be able to sustain itself economically over the long run remains to be seen.

It also remains to be seen how feasible – or maybe even sensible – it is for me to continue to ‘share the road’ with Ford F-series pick-ups, as the summer turns into October and beyond. These steep hilly roads are more likely to be wet than not, and late afternoon trips would be done in gathering darkness. There are few streetlights along these country back-roads. The constellations come out on these cool, clear summer nights, and I intend to be around for a few more decades of star-gazing.