The Great Trail, not the Great Divide is our adventure this year. Rather than bore you with details of the preparation, much of which happened in the past few days, I thought I would start this year’s story by telling about getting to the start.
The great Trail is in Canada and is probably a lie. Nothing against the wonderful Canadians, but saying there’s a 27,000 kilometer trail from coast to coast seems a bit of a stretch when the entire continent is only about 7000 km across. Perhaps it takes a very circuitous route. In any case, the part of the trail we will travel is from Canmore in Alberta to Victoria, British Columbia.
A lot of people wonder about how you prepare for this type of trip. In reality, short of biking 6 to 8 hours a day, (virtually impossible in real life) there really isn’t any way to prepare for the biking part of the trip. However, there are things that we can do to prepare ourselves and we did just that on our drive from Pueblo to Great Falls today.
Driving several hundred miles in a day makes you realize that roads were made for cars not bikes. Perhaps most notable is the fact that bathroom stops are by car a few hours apart but on bikes it would be a few days apart. Accordingly we practiced for our bike ride by stopping on the side of the road where there weren’t bathrooms.
I suspect that most people also believe nutrition is a big part of long distance bike ride. Sadly, it’s the lack of nutrition that one must prepare for when the bike ride involves traversing rural areas. In anticipation of that fact, we made every attempt to eat badly on the drive today. Hopefully, this will get our stomachs ready for gas station food, hamburgers in bars, and the Giardia that invariably happens after drinking from water bottles sprayed with cow manure on dirt roads.
We may not really be ready for the thousand or so miles of bicycling through British Columbia, but we are definitely looking forward to it and doing what we can in terms of final preparations.
Grumpy Grandpa's Great Bicycling Adventures 
Shaun,
Thank you for sending your New Post on your new adventure. Like last year, it truly means a lot to me.
Dad
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From: Grammy & Grumpy’s Great Divide Adventure [mailto:comment-reply@wordpress.com] Sent: Wednesday, July 24, 2019 10:23 PM To: bgogarty@beyondbb.com Subject: [New post] Great Trail – To the Start
wsgogarty posted: “The Great Trail, not the Great Divide is our adventure this year. Rather than bore you with details of the preparation, much of which happened in the past few days, I thought I would start this year’s story by telling about getting to the start. The grea”
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Sounds to me you are fully prepared. Have a great ride.
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Safe travels, God Bless.
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I am so looking forward to your story! I loved the last one…hope it is safe and amazing for you Love you both! Laura K.
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I cant believe you are eating nachos from a gas station! That will be the most dangerous part of your journey. The cheese doesn’t even have to be refrigerated!
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Thank you for the health information. I hope you will be our nutrition coach for the trip 🙂
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The scenery is beautiful, the sky is such a deep blue color and the snow on the mountains makes me feel cooler just looking at it in the 90 degree heat we are having.
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It feels and looks even better than the picture. It’s quite magnificent
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Had I known about your adventure earlier, I would have 0lanned to follow behind in an air conditioned car with an endless supply of gas station nachos and unrefrigerated cheese for whenever you needed it!
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Darn it! That would hsve been wonderful:)
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