On the road again
After a week and a half at home Ride Smart staff headed North again. This time we opted to take the Highway 11 route through Cochrane and set out with new t-shirts and new destinations. The first stop was Armstrong (Also known as Armstrong station) about 3 hours NNE of Thunder Bay. We met with a very keen teacher at the local elementary school who has built about 5 km of mountain bike trails right in the town. He offered to take us for a ride later and we couldn’t resist. We also met with a youth worker and band council representative from Whitesand First Nation, a community that abuts Armstrong and they were enthusiastic about having the program in their community in August!
The following day we headed south to Gull Bay First Nation to meet with a Band Council representative and offer pop-up repairs and do some short rides with youth the dozen youth that showed up. We repaired 5 bikes as well in the short time we visited and will be back in August to deliver a full day or two of programming.
After catching a few fish for dinner, we headed for Red Lake the next morning, but not before stopping in Thunder Bay to get (fingers crossed) our last Covid test of this pandemic so we could safely enter Pikangikum to help get the bike program rolling again for the season.
Pikangikum Bike Program
In the past, our partnership with the Ontario Provincial Police has allowed us to fly straight into Pikangikum, but things did not work out for flights this time. This provided a challenge and a great opportunity, to paddle a canoe from the end of the all-weather road into Pikangikum. The majority of this route we had ridden on fat bikes for the Ice Road Challenge in 2020 so it was great to see it from the water rather than the ice! What looked like 12-15km on a topographic map ended up being 19km of paddling so the paddle in took about 3 hours and 20 minutes, an overall rewarding experience. Thanks to Goldseekers Outfitters for providing us with an excellent, lightweight, Kevlar canoe that was a dream to paddle; think the ‘carbon road bike’ equivalent of canoes!
Once on the ground in Pikangikum, we headed to the shipping container shop and found Rusty had already got a head start on tidying things up and getting bikes ready for this season. We jumped in to help with tune ups and organizing, and made a list of parts, accessories, and tools to ship north to make things run even smoother. We were also able to connect with Public Works to get the second, smaller shipping container full of bikes moved over to live beside the bike shop.
With the bike shop and program in capable hands of Rusty and Tony (both have worked with the program before), we reloaded our canoe and paddled back to our parked van. This time we made the trip in under 3 hours, whether this was due to better navigation, a tail wind, or a determination to make it to Thunder Bay before we slept, no one will ever know, but Strava proves that it did happen.
We did in fact make it to Thunder Bay that night, slept in the back of the van for 3.5 hours and continued straight home to Southern Ontario.
A successful trip – 4700km later…
Our second trip north was extremely beneficial from a planning perspective as it provided face to face meetings with new partners and allowed us to connect with Rusty and Tony as summer staff for the Pikangikum bike program. Our fundraising efforts from the Ice Road Challenge and a generous donation from the Cataraqui-Kingston Rotary Club will support these summer positions and provide continuity for the Pikangikum Bike Program. The Pikangikum band council through summer student employment has also provided two summer staff to the program giving the flexibility for some staff to remain at the bike shop while others head out for rides in the community and on local trails.
