Ride boats not goats.

I’ve barely been home since Wednesday, and it’s been mostly for good reasons. Temperatures outside have been comfortable. That’s a rarity for me. I have a tight, acceptable temperature range.

A classic getaway for Victorians is to leave the island for an even smaller one. We have a few options: Salt Spring, Galiano, Mayne, Pender, and Saturna. There are even more options, but those five islands are the most accessible.

It’d been two years since I’d loaded my bike like that; handling all that weight took some getting used to. Even though the weather forecast for Thursday and Friday was looking very favourable, I packed an entire pannier with warm clothing. Just in case I couldn’t find a warm rock to lounge on, like a lizard.

Alexa and I received a lot of solid routing advice from others to base our itinerary on. On Saturna, there are not many routing options, but we estimated that we had about 100 km in our legs. All the other islands I’ve ridden on were hilly. I expected Saturna to be no different.

Our first destination was the campsite in Narvaez Bay, where we shed most of our gear. It was a walk-in campsite: I’d brought cash, expecting to self-register and pay via a deposit box. We’d already pitched the tent at #5 when we read that we were supposed to call a 1-800 number to secure a specific site. There were two problems with this system. One: I’m deaf. Two: Alexa didn’t even have a cell signal.

This quickly became a non-issue when the park rangers showed up 15 minutes later. Then, we were on our way to Mount Warburton Pike. As I said, all the gulf islands I’d visited by bike thus far had been hilly. Up until then, the gearing ratio of my gravel bike had been just enough. I have a 1:1 gear ratio. One complete revolution of the cranks equals one wheel revolution. I made it to its purportedly goat-occupied summit, thus reinforcing the idea that a 1:1 gear ratio is enough, but only after grinding my knees like never before.

Alexa and I were disappointed at the absence of goats at the top; however, we both had cell signal, so we made good use of it to text our friend Burger to notify him of the lack of goats so that he could participate in our disappointment.

To the untrained eye, it looks like I’m throwing the peace sign while making the duck face. Deaf eyes know I was mid-signing “goat.”

I only joke: it would be like trying to lipread a photo.

To get over the disappointment, we had to sit on the dry grass for about an hour, looking at all the unsightly islands ahead of us. Although goat-free, there were some stupid birds. And regular birds.

Here’s one of them.

The noble American robin. It’s the only bird I deemed worthy of photographing. For the most part, I allow myself to be absorbed in the simplicity of nature. In Victoria, I would have been unlikely to spend enough time carefully watching a bird pluck a fat grub out of the grass. And even if I’d been observant enough, I wouldn’t have appreciated its scavenging mastery as much.

The bird flew away as Alexa came back from what I thought was a trip to the washroom, except she returned via a completely different path. She explained that she didn’t feel like chatting with the other park visitors who were situated en route to the lone outhouse.

“But you don’t have to?” was my initial response. As I’ve never been able to engage in small talk with strangers casually myself, I hadn’t considered that it’s different for most.

“Remember the group of old people that walked by earlier? One of the guys shouted out, ‘I want what you’re cooking.'”

Oh god.

How is a smile and a polite wave not enough? I’ve considered how many strangers I may have possibly upset with my oblivious silence. I used to care about this until it finally sank in that there wasn’t a thing I could do about it. There’s not even the slightest hint of malice on my part.

And now, to get back on track, our destination after the descent of Mount Warburton Pike was East Point, aka Tekteksen. Its indigenous name means “long nose”. At night, a lighthouse illuminates the tip of Saturna’s long nose for seafarers to see. During the day, a nearby heritage centre educates tourists on its history, as well as the history of an orca caught off the coast in 1964, Moby Doll.

Moby Doll was the first orca to survive in captivity for more than two days. She was also the second orca to be put on display at a public aquarium. The aquarium? Vancouver Aquarium. This was back in 1964, so it was a truly different time.

The heritage centre had a collection of free-to-use binoculars. Even with 30x the seeing power, Alexa and I still did not find the goats or whales.

“I see your home.”

I swapped my binoculars for the more powerful ones Alexa was using.

“No, I think that’s White Rock.”

To some, Vancouver encompasses neighbouring cities. Maybe Alexa thought I was a former White Rocker (that’s the actual demonym). Alas, I grew up much further inland to the east. None of the binoculars the lighthouse had were powerful enough to see where I spent my formative years: Langley.

Since 1950, the island has hosted annual lamb roasts, where flayed, crucified lambs are arranged around a giant fire pit. It looks morbid to me, but the community is still enthusiastic about it more than 50 years later.

Back at the campsite, some of my warm clothes came in handy. We’d cover 97km with an elevation gain of 1,423m with the power of our legs. I suggested leaving the tent fly off, assuming there was no chance of rain that night. I’d given myself a pirate bath with four squares worth of baby wipes in the outhouse. Leaving off the tent fly would provide us with better ventilation, lessening the worry of subjecting one another to our BO while trying to sleep.

It didn’t take much to knock us out. I didn’t bother changing into my pyjamas or even taking off my bra. We both tried reading for about 10 minutes before we nodded off. The sun hadn’t even set.

The next morning, I noticed that the tops of my panniers, which I’d left outside, had damp spots. I’d hung the previous day’s cycling kit in a tree to dry. My chamois was still a bit moist. I went overboard with packing warm clothes and was underprepared for cycling wear.

“It rained last night.”

“It did?!”

“Just for a minute.”

I also slept though the sound of fighting otters.

Alexa and I went out to shore to rinse the instant oatmeal residue from our bowls. While we squatted over turbid seawater, the barnacles providing us with traction on the rocks, a yacht in the foreground marred the scenery. I can only hope its passengers were spying on us dirtbags through their binoculars.

The ferry ride home was a bit of a pain. It’d been a single-ferry sailing to Saturna Island, whereas the journey back to Vancouver Island required a ferry transfer and a stop-over. Two and a half hours in all, an hour or so of which was spent watching baseball on TV and drinking a Monster energy drink that I’d bought from the ferry vending machine for $6.50.

I make poor choices sometimes.

It did give me the extra pep needed to pump the legs back to Victoria. I wasn’t looking forward to going home per se, but the allure of a hot shower was appealing.

Alexa and I have already planned our next adventure which already has a name: The Three Ferry Ride.