Hey, I’m Nicholas Arnold your midday guy here on 89.7 Sun FM and I’m chronicling my experience of being on the 2024 Tour de Rock team. The 14 day and over one thousand kilometre bike ride has been done every year since 1997 and raises funds for the fight against childhood cancer.
A beautiful start to the day in Ucluelet. I guess it’s a ¿Sunday? although honestly I have no sense of time as of right now, and it’s amazing. We started off with an early breakfast at the Heartwood Kitchen.
An older building that has been through a lot of changes. The staff were telling us that it began as a cottage, but was converted during World War II into a mess hall for members of the Royal Canadian Air Force. After that, they eventually converted it into a full restaurant-sized kitchen and turned it into a business. A side quest of the Tour has been finding all of these great small businesses with cool stories like this one.
Today was a much needed slow start for a bit of recovery with a van ride back from the west coast of the Island to Parksville.
Now you might be saying, “Hang on a second Nicholas. I thought this was the Tour de Rock bike ride, not the Tour de Rock van ride.”
And to that I say with my index finger to my lips, “Shhhhhhhhhh.”
We had already ridden that exact road out to the coast and so in the interest of saving time, we bus back to Parksville where we had been two days beforehand and start there. So we are still riding our bikes across the whole island, just saving ourselves two days by not biking back from Ucluelet and Tofino.
Once we did get riding it was minimal. Mostly on the Trans Canada Highway from Parksville to Nanaimo. Nothing particularly challenging, especially compared to the last week. We made a couple of stops including one at the Namaimo Fire Hall, which is a really neat building. We made it to our accommodations for the night, The Inn at Long Lake, and got ready for the night’s main event: a gala at the Coast Bastion hotel.
At the event we were introduced by an honourary member (child who has experienced a cancer diagnosis) in Owen – who is around 10-12 years old. Owen has gone on from his diagnosis to become quite the athlete. He plays hockey for a Nanaimo team and scored four goals in his last game.
It was an evening with a dinner, and an appearance from a lot of our Nanaimo committee that do a lot of fundraising for Tour throughout the year. We raised another $250 to shave off half of my beard. We let owen to the honours and he did a really good job for someone who’s never shaved before.
The second best part of the night aside from the fundraising was this: helium filled balloons on the back of each rider’s chair. I would never recommend inhaling helium for comedic purposes… and I definitely didn’t walk around the gala thanking people for their generosity in a high pitched voice. That would just be silly.
Let me explain to you another bit of logistics surrounding the Tour. When we come on the two week extravaganza, we’re allowed to bring two standard bags. One is our “day bag” which is a two foot long duffle bag that houses all of our cycling gear. It has our helmet, gloves, change of jersey, arm and leg warmers, and really anything that we might need throughout the day. We get access to the bags at several different stops during the ride so we can make adjustments to our attire while on the road.
The other bag is our night bag that is a standardized hockey bag with the Tour logo on it. You’ve got to cram everything else that you might need for your 14 days away from home. That includes extra clothes, toiletries, different shoes, and the likes. You’ve been on a trip before and know what goes in there. When we travel everything that we bring is thrown into a single U-haul truck and we get access to it at each night’s accommodations. I’ve told you that, so you have better understanding of the finite amount of space available to us as riders.
We have a challenge when it comes to our nightly events. A really good fundraising technique – and one that was at the gala tonight – was a silent and live auction. We as humans often would like to get involved in the bidding process and get involved. With one rider taking things to the extreme.
Mary-Ellen Somerville from Sooke RCMP is an auction machine. She earned the reputation on the first night of Tour in Port Alice when she walked away from their silent auction with no less than SIX items. And that was just night one! Since then, every auction she’s been to she’s walked away with at least four items either silent or live. We generally have to pace ourselves and only bid on one or two things so we have enough space for it. However, it all adds up when you factor in that we’ll probably be at 8-10 different auctions.
Now I will say, there is a method to Mary-Ellen’s madness. She says she bids to try and drive the price up closer to the actual valuation of the item and if she wins it she gets a discount on an item and if someone outbids her, she makes more money for the cause. It’s pretty smart if you’re looking to raise more money for the cause and don’t mind if it’s from your pocket book. However, I can’t imagine how heavy her bag is getting.
Tomorrow brings a day in Nanaimo and Ladysmith. Chat then!
Daily and Overall Stats
Total kilometres ridden on Day 9: 49.38 km
Total kilometres ridden: 756.68 km
Total elevation on Day 9: 506 m
Total elevation climbed: 7,091 m
Total sodas consumed on Day 9: 2
Total sodas consumed on Tour: 40
