.Armistice Day-100 Years Later Pre-ride Report Mark Payten

On November 3,2018 at 0526 PDT three riders, myself, Dave White and Sandy Szabo left 2290 Cooperidge Drive in Saanichton in the dark. It would be dark for at least a couple more hours. The weatherman had promised cloudy but dry weather until about 1500 hours that day. The temperature was warm. All day it remained between 7- and 12-degrees C. As we started so did the light rain. During the day we were granted less than one hour total of dry. Fortunately, precipitation stayed as a drizzle. The forecast for this coming Sunday, November 11 is for mainly sunny skies, lows of 7 and highs of 9. Sunrise will be at 7:15 PST. So, it should be becoming light as the riders start. We enjoyed a sandwich for lunch at the Red Barn at Latoria and Veterans Memorial Parkway. Road and path conditions for the complete ride were excellent. The only major construction project was the McKenzie interchange. The ‘Goose’ is gravel around this area and there are some narrow spots when facing oncoming bike traffic. There were no minor construction projects on the go anywhere else. The route generally is on good trails and road. We found the northbound bike lane on Fort St. rather odd in that it is two-way on the left-hand side of the road from Quadra to Cook. It becomes a one-way bike lane in our direction of travel. However, this one-way lane ends a few hundred metres up the road. A bike lane starts at Cook at the opposite side of the road which continues much further. There were a few incongruencies with the route I thought I had planned and what appeared on the route sheet and .tcx file found on RwGPS. These changed to match my intent. We scouted the locations for our two secret controls. The Langford control was added as it has historical interest. We found the Langford site as well as the God’s Acre Chapel sites particularly interesting as they were new to us. We finished the ride just before 1530 hours. It was a faster route than we anticipated. Despite the wet the ride was pleasant. With the forecast for a mainly sunny sky on Sunday it should be even better for the participants.