Canada to Mexico

May 14, 2025

It had been a month or two since Tom posed the idea to me. We had spoken about it in passing a few times but nothing had materialised. About a month before we were meant to leave we received a message from our friend Matt back in England asking "Are we doing this?".

We got our act together and within a couple of weeks we had committed to the plan. Canada to Mexico. That was it, we hadn't planned anything else. We were to meet Matt in Vancouver and find him a bike from there.

Prior to starting the trip, we had planned to move to Banff for the summer. We're still not really sure what it was but we were followed by some sort of forcefield around us for this trip, making every bit of suffering we did rewarded in some way or another. It was as if just by committing to the trip we set off the blessing canon. We were offered jobs in Banff by Tommy, the owner of Banff Cycle, we told him about the trip and he offered us bikes, gear and endless support and advice as someone who had completed the trip before. (Fast forward three years, Tommy is still a huge support of both Tom and I and practically our surrogate father)

Oh, and to make things more interesting, I went and broke my collarbone one month before we were meant to set off…

After a pitstop in Banff we started the first slog of the trip. A 12 hour drive to Vancouver with my arm still in a sling where we met Matt in the quest to find him a bike. We had 3 days to get him geared up. In a blur we found ourselves boarding the boat in Victoria, BC heading for Port Angeles in the US. Packed and ready, if ready means a bike and a desire. I remember video calling my mum on her 60th birthday whilst we crossed into US waters. The people at the party were jumping on the phone to say hello and ask what I was up to, I turned the camera around to show the boat rocking about 90 degrees either way and told them what we were about to attempt. I remember this solifidying the concept for me, now I had told people, we had to do it.

Remember the whole lack of planning thing? On our very first day of riding in the States, after stepping off the boat at Port Angeles, we had our sights set on our first campsite of the trip, the first of many we’d hope. After a gorgeous day of riding to Crescent Lake, we arrived at the campsite only to be met with a big red sign notifying us that the campsite was closed. It was May. May in England is Spring. May in the Pacific North West is definitely still Winter.

As we turned away from the campsite we noticed the clouds had rolled in and the sun was going down fast. We began to knock on the lakeside houses and hoped that someone would let us sleep in their garden. Then the snow began. We found a sign with my Initials written in it and assumed it was a message from the gods. Turns out it definitely wasnt and I almost fed both of my legs to two aggressive bulldogs. Just as were about to camp in the closed site, we waved down the only car we had seen in hours. A guy with long, surf damaged hair pulled up. We explained the situation and he made a call.

Thumbs up. We were in. His housemates were happy to have us and we set up our tents in their garden. The snow continued and after a while they invited us into their house to keep warm. We found out that one of the guys living in the house was from the same place as us in England. He fed homemade Hob Nobs and breakfast tea into our mouths like a mother bird to her young. His name was Geode, after his love for geology. The other guys name was Spencer.

They decided we were to sleep inside and provided us with mattresses and blankets for the cold night. We sat in their living room overlooking Lake Crescent sharing stories until the wee hours. The next day we were told that two of his housemates were tripping on acid whilst we were there, they held it together pretty well.

As we rolled out the following morning, after a huge breakfast of pancakes and more tea, we noticed the snowline had dropped considerably overnight and sat only 100 metres above us now. This experience would truly be a microcosm of the remainer of the trip. Suffer, reward, meet incredible people.

The weather continued for days and showed no signs of clearing up. We raced down Highway 1, with California in our sights. We still had plenty to experience in the meantime, however. I could write for hours about everything that we went through on this trip. One book each about the places, people and emotions that we endured during our time on the road. From staying with a cult in Washington, to a Mansion on the Oregan coast and some of the most feral living conditions in Northern California and everything in between.

We even rolled back the years by trading goods. After receiving three XL bags of fresh Emerald Triangle Marijuana we had some valuable currency in NorCal. Carrying this in my frame bag eventually contaminated my water bladder which gave every sip a slightly hint of the stuff. We traded this commodity for firewood, mushrooms (of the magic persuasion) and bicycle maintenance when my back wheel aborted mission 2 days from the Mexican Border. We observed some of the most breathtaking scenery like the Redwood Forests in NorCal and the coastal roads of Big Sur. We were lucky enough to be able to ride the entire road, free from rockfall danger.

This was our first experience of bikepacking and we were entranced. 2 months on the road felt like two years. Every day experiencing something new and rewiring our brain chemistry. Arriving in San Fransisco was a surreal experience. The thought that our legs had taken us through thousands of kilometres of ups and down, emotionally and physically, and had eventually spat us out across the Golden Gate Bridge was incomprehensible. The world suddenly became incredibly small.

As we were cycling towards the Mexican Border, we looked behind to see dust billowing up in the air blurring out red and blue flashing lights. We pulled to the side to let them pass and looked at each other in shock. As the border came into sight, so did the flashing lights. We stopped at the end of the road, looking down in disbelief as we were witnessing two men being arrested by armed police. It appeared they had just jumped over the border a mere 10 minutes before we arrived. The police ushered us past and we cycled in between the two police vans and straight through the scene.

We stood at the border and looked into Tijuana, all the people touching the border on the other side, loud music, chaos. On our side, nothing. Just me and Teej, nobody around.

We went into Tijuana for breakfast the following morning and, as a parting gift from this trip, were stopped by the police in the street for no reason at all. They took our passports, stood us up against the wall and searched us from head to toe. Luckily there were no remnants of the NorCal weed or SoCal mushrooms or it could have looked very different. He made a remark about my disposable camera and mimed taking pictures with it as a joke. He saw we had nothing on us and let us go. We ran back into the States and caught our flight back to Canada to start our new life in Banff.

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