[Neys Park, 2008. "I camped just steps from the wild beach": photo GH]
After completing several complicated mathematical calculations, I learned the distance from my front porch to Courtenay, on Vancouver Island, British Columbia is 4,691 km. In other words, my trip to visit my dad’s old WW2 naval base, down the road from Courtenay, is a long one.
[Leading Seaman Doug Harrison, lower left. Comox, Vanc. Island, 1944 - 45]
The 10 or 11 day bike trip in July will be about 5 km. longer if I turn off the Trans-Canada highway at Neys Provincial Park, on the north shore of Lake Superior, to take more photos of its desolate beach. I can see myself doing that, especially if there is no charge for a ten minute visit.
The trip will be hundreds of km. longer if I detour from my route in order to visit a CN train station in Edson, Alberta. The Edson station is but one of many that my dad and other sailors ‘posed in front of’ while travelling west from Ontario in 1944, before embarking on their final months of service to the Canadian Navy. I can’t see myself making the detour. It would add another day to an already very long trip.
[Don 'Westy' Westbrook from Hamilton: photo from collection of Doug Harrison]
My body - read, ‘my butt and feet’ - will thank me later for just getting to a hostel in Lake Louise, stepping off the bike and pealing off my hot leather boots as quickly as possible.
[Yeah, thoughts of my 2010 trip to Halifax - half the distance - are coming back to me now.]
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