The TransAmerica Ride that wasn’t

Thank you everyone for the fabulous March send off to my TransAmerica ride. 

A great night full of camaraderie and hope in the face of the distant clouds of conrona virus. Rob Boggs took Robyn and I to the airport for the flight to Vancouver via Hong Kong. All went well that far and thanks to Robb and later Bruce and Sue for looking after Robyn.

A shame that the bicycle trip itself did not even start. 

Things went bad quickly soon after leaving Perth. So why did I go? Well, the Smart Traveller declared only a Level 3 travel advice ‘Reconsider you need to travel’. My travel insurance would only cover my cancelled trip if it was abandoned due to a Level 4 advice ‘Do not travel’. Moreover if I did not take the first flight of the multiple flight trip I would lose all the subsequent flights. And while coronavirus was serious in mid-March it was not the catastrophe it developed into a fortnight later. Rescheduling to later in 2019 would have been taking a bet on how the epidemic would develop but would in the best case cut into the timing of the TransAmerican trip so was an unattractive option. Now I at least have the option of trying to reschedule the remaining flights for 2021.

There were no signs of Covid19 until Hong Kong airport where the lights were on but nobody was home. The terminal shops were all open but the passengers were missing. No problems though, a coffee and a noodle soup and onto the flight to Vancouver on a full aeroplane. Two weeks later Cathay Pacific was to fly only 584 passengers on all routes worldwide in a day. 

At Vancouver I arrived at Saturday lunchtime andI loved the great Canadian welcome ‘Welcome to Canada, enjoy your holiday, if you get sick give us a call and we’ll look after you’. That ended at midnight the next day when the Canadian’s closed their inward borders to foreign nationals.

A couple of hours later I had found the Hotel Patricia on the edge of Skid Row in Gas Town. I am still shocked by seeing shoulder to shoulder homeless for a kilometre on sidewalks on both sides of Hastings Street from the hotel back to downtown Vancouver. See that and bless our lucky stars for the Welfare State.

The plan now was to spend three days in the Hotel Patricia getting over jetlag, assembling the bike and psyching up to cross into the US at the Peace Crossing 50 kms south of Vancouver. I switched on the TV and tried to keep up with the rapid fire syncopated speech of the english speaking French Canadian presenters. 

Things were obviously not right. Multiple TV channels in Canada and the USA were running 24 hour coronavirus specials. California and Washington state were closing businesses, schools and parks almost by the hour. A guy called Cuomo, apparently governor of New York state, was saying that the few Covid19 deaths there were nothing to worry about. 

I developed a routine of watching the coronavirus news while getting up in the morning before heading out to find a diner for breakfast (getting harder to find an open one day by day) followed by walking around the tourist spots of Vancouver such as Granville Island and over the harbour to Lonsdale Quay. The Grouse Mountain chairlift and park were closed due to Covid19 risk. I found out that tapping my new paywave finger ring was a lot more convenient than digging out my wallet and credit card. It also started conversations with shopkeepers who had never seen one before.

No one seemed particularly worried about coronavirus personally although businesses were by now takeaway only and signs were appearing on shop doors ‘closed due to coronavirus’ or ‘please respect us and respect social distancing’. On Tuesday the big Hudson Bay store in central Vancouver closed and on Wednesday Nordstrom closed. I noticed that day by day the number of people in tourist spots and on the street was decreasing. The general vibe was developing that the epidemic was serious and while it was coming for Vancouver all that most people could do was be moderately careful and enjoy the last open-air coffee and walks before the complete shutdown came. 

By Tuesday afternoon it was obvious that going to the USA was ‘A really bad idea’. The US was shutting down and their medical system was already under strain on the western and eastern seaboards. On Wednesday the US announced that they were going to close the Canadian border. 

Time to bail out and head home. 

I headed to Burrard St (had to see Burrard St as I have lost so much money on the wild west Vancouver stock exchange in years gone by) only to find that the Flight Centre office had closed due to coronavirus. Thankfully the two agents were just packing up for the duration and helped me find a flight direct to Australia avoiding the chaos of Los Angeles airport. ‘It can’t cost that much!’ I declare before thanking them for their help and leaving to find my own flights online. 

Back in the hotel I found cheap flights through Tripmonster online and booked. ‘Card refused’. Damn! Try another card, ‘no’, ‘try contacting bank’. No good. Finally go to online reviews of Tripmonster to find they are 1 Star rated, reviews awful, MasterCard and Visa refusing to pay them due to appalling service. OK, good on you bank for refusing payments. Back to Webjet, pay what Flight Centre had offered a day before, and book Vancouver – Brisbane – Perth on Air Canada leaving at 00:08 am Friday morning.

The US border closed at lunchtime Thursday while news channels were reporting panicking hordes fully booking outbound flights as more and more airlines cancelled flights or ceased flying some routes altogether. Hotel Patricia booked me a taxi (almost all taxis in Vancouver are Prius electric hybrids) to Waterfront Station. As always, the taxi was driven by a Sikh who explained that while he felt at risk of Covid 19 he had no choice but to drive enough each day to pay the fixed costs on the taxi. Tipped him 50% for the risk and caught the train out to the airport by tapping my paywave ring on the turnstyle.

After a very thorough security check on the bike box and a long wait in the departure lounge it was on to the full Boeing 787 for fourteen hours back to Brisbane. Kudos to the cabin staff who served everyone our meals and booze as normal while not knowing who was going to infect them with coronavirus. The steward for my section treated his english speaking Australians with classic Gallic disdain without actually being unfriendly. Good on’yer mate, it added some interest to the long flight.

Back in Brisbane there was no pretence of social distancing or checking for disease except for signing a Statutory Declaration that I would isolate myself at home for fourteen days when back in Perth. Not a shambles but certainly not an endorsement of Australia’s ability to organise itself quickly  in the face of an epidemic. I can see how the Ruby Princess cruise ship mess happened as each state and federal department tried to shove the cost and complexity of organising disease management onto some other department.

Back in Perth 21 hours after leaving Vancouver. Robyn had stocked the fridge and moved out to let me isolate alone in my one bedroom flat. In the next two weeks I monitoried  my temperature (regularly cycles one degree Celsius between morning and midnight) and managed to put on nearly three kilogrammes. My cycling  fitness also dropped to the point that I could only just make it the 53 kms around the Fremantle Loop on the first day out of quarantine. Randell nearly finished me off in the second week with a ride to Hillarys. 

Now after nearly three weeks of riding the Fremantle Loop every second day I have started to reverse the weight gain and get my cycling legs back under me. 

Thank you everyone for your calls and comments during this adventure that wasn’t. I’ll try again next year. In the meantime welcome back to our other club riders who have or are returning from New Zealand, from Sri Lanka, and other parts far away and will have their own stories to tell. 

Hopefully we can meet up in a few months to swap stories and to plan adventures in 2021.

In the meantime, four of us are heading to ride the 1000 kms of unsealed corrugations of the Gibb River Road. Watch for the posts and remember to follow on the map.

Stuart