Tandem-onium

Yesterday I saw the doctor for the second time in two days to discuss a cortisone shot for my knee. I was willing to push back the start date a few days to give the knee time to heal from the shot itself, but my doctor wasn't terribly keen on the idea. She advised me that there was potential for a long-term disability if I had the shot and then went out and rode for 10 weeks. I was literally speechless. It took about 2 minutes, but I realized my dream of riding across Canada wasn't going to happen. This was two days before we were supposed to drive out to Victoria. How could something I've wanted to do for years and trained for 10 months suddenly be out of reach?

I didn't want to talk to anyone, but Vanessa insisted she come see me. She had a solution. To me, the only thing that might've made me feel a little better is if I threw my computer through the wall.

I could give my one leg the rest that was needed (cortisone shot or not) if we took a tandem bike. We had joked about riding a tandem across Canada before. Usually the mention of it would be followed by "Wouldn't that be hilarious/ridiculous?". I called a few places in Calgary and found one tandem bike left. I asked them to hold it for me and we drove up to Calgary and rented it. About $200 for two weeks. Not bad at all.

We'll have to do some tinkering to make it as efficient as possible, but this will now allow me to ride a bike from coast to coast. After resting my leg enough and if it feels good I'll revert back to my own bike. The other option was to simply sit in the van for virtually all of B.C. and then join the other two. I'd have to go back and do B.C. on weekends after we finished the trip. I have to travel all of Canada on a bike.