Day 9 – 13 Toad Rock part 2

Keith

The next day Carmen said he was going for a scoot with the group and planned to ride up to Kaslo and cross over to New Denver and down to Castlegar but only after breakfast. Carmen and Cindy made a great breakfast and after rounding up everyone we set out. We started out with Rebecca ahead of me in the left and leaving Toad rock she almost could have been hit turning left out of the campground to go north. Luckily, she saw the oncoming vehicle in time to brake and continue on only to be stopped by construction just up the road. We made Kaslo pretty quickly and fuelled up. Rebecca asked to ride tail gunner as she is a novice rider and building her confidence so that let me move to the left with the order now Carmen in the lead followed by Trent then me. We now headed up my favourite highway in all of BC, highway 31A. Carmen pre warned us that we would stop at the little toad lake for a break. On the way Trent was riding pretty close to the shoulder and at one point he caught the shoulder and it looked like he was going to go down but he rode it out. When we stopped I told him I was impressed he rode it out. The next stop was an amazing overlook at Slocan Lake. We all had a quick drink of water and Carmen indicated that we would take the Pass Creek road.

The road started off really twisty with some great turns but bad sight lines. About halfway to Castlegar, Trent hit the soft shoulder but this time there was no chance of riding it out as he suddenly disappeared riding over an embankment. As I was the rider immediately behind him on the left I started slowing quickly and pulled over, I was the first one to him and he was standing on his feet with his thumb up saying he was ok. Holy shit I was so surprised as I was expecting the way I witnessed this crash we would be calling for medical.

The other saving grace with where Trent went down as it was down an embankment was we didn’t have to try to push his bike up the hill as just below was an access road so we team lifted his bike and lowered down. Amazingly his bike only had a minor scratch on the primary and it was very dusty but overall ok. The next problem was as Rebecca dropped her bike after seeing Trent’s crash she flooded the engine so I brought out the tool kit and we pulled the plugs and got it started.

Well I think Trent’s crash rattled Rebecca as about 2 miles down the road she didn’t navigate the corner and hammered on the front brake. She ended up going over the handle bars and hit her head as she went down but she was ok. After pulling the plugs again and bending a few things back into shape her bike was rideable and I really needed a beer after witnessing two crashes in less than an hour. We stopped at the Lions head pub just in Robson outside of Castlegar for a pint and a bite to eat.

The ride back to Nelson and Toad Rock was far less eventful and we made quick time back. Leah and I broke off in Nelson as it was the day our part was supposed to be delivered so we headed to the brewery for a pint and to see if they had our part. Leah and I played a game of crib, golf, and even battleship before deciding that the part is not coming so we would have to stay another day at Toad Rock, shucks.

After picking up some beer we headed back to camp to enjoy the night with our new friends, this included me being the test subject for the new bar game that ended giving me a few splinters in my back.