It was seven years ago that I first thought about cycling across Canada. I was 19, working on a trout farm in southern Ontario, which may be a strange place to start thinking about long bike trips. An older, bearded, weather-worn guy I worked with had told me casually about his cycling trip across the country. He had biked from the west coast to the east, and it had taken him an entire summer to do. Although he seemed an unlikely long-distance cyclist, I must have been inspired back then, listening to this guy describe his long journey across 10 provinces.

Three years ago, with my mother recently diagnosed with Alzheimer Disease, I began to think again about cycling across Canada - not for fun or adventure, but as a dedication to her, and as a means of dealing with my personal grief in seeing my mother turn from a competent school teacher, to someone who could no longer read, write, understand numbers, or even put on her own clothes properly. I suppose I had the idea of a long cycle trip brewing in the back of my mind for many years, but it seemed clearer as my mother's condition worsened. I had to do something personally to combat Alzheimer Disease. I decided to initiate a future battle with this disease with a long journey of discovery on the road. When I told my 19 year-old brother Greg what I was planning, there was no hesitation in his voice when he said he'd come too.

After a winter spent planning and training, we found ourselves in Victoria, B.C. on the first day of May. Bikes loaded down with warm clothes, rain gear, tent, cook stove and sleeping bags, we dipped our front tires into the Pacific Ocean, and set off from Mile Zero on the Trans-Canada Highway. After 88 days of cycling and a whopping total of 8320 km, we completed our journey at Cape Spear, Newfoundland on August 17th. We had carried everything we needed on our bikes, and had camped most of the way. It was an incredible journey, and I will always think of those past four months as some of the best of my life.

Every summer we hear about cyclists making this epic cross-Canada tour - it seems to be a strangely popular thing to do, probably something that only cyclists would fully understand. Even though we were told on numerous occasions that one might need to 'have a screw loose' to want to do something like this, we met an entire entourage of continent-crossing cyclists this summer. Although we travelled through hundreds of towns and villages without spending more than a day, it seemed that the Trans-Canada Highway was our own little community, with an ever moving population of cyclists. Despite being busy with our own awareness campaign, we noticed newspaper articles about other cyclists. From the day we left the west coast, to the days spent relaxing in St. John's after finishing our trip, we met all shapes and sizes of cyclists, some doing it for a cause, some doing it for fun, and some doing it just to get away from city life for a while.

Having started our trip early in the season, we had the distinct social advantage of meeting or at least hearing about most of the cross-Canada trekkers. There were troops of cyclists with support vans raising money for Child-Find, Bosnian-relief and even Crime Stoppers. There was a ride going west for Canadian Unity, and a ride going east for the United Way. We met a Scottish guy in Northern Ontario trying to get to New York City in just over a week, and a Fireman from Calgary who had been crossing Canada a little bit at a time, over the past 10 years. There were lots of German cyclists just doing it for fun, and a funny British guy who didn't know why he was doing it. There were cyclists decked out with all the expensive gear, and there were a few people whose bikes were held together with duct-tape and bearing grease. We met Californians who claimed to have an inflatable surfboard with them, and a cook from Guelph who was carrying a cutting board, cheese-grater and oven mitts! Yup, we certainly weren't the only ones out there on the road last summer.

All summer long, as we wove our way through the mountains, prairies, forests and coastlines, people would be curious to know what we were doing. Imagine how we looked to a group of farmers as we'd pull into a dusty old gas station in rural Saskatchewan decked out in spandex with shiny plastic bowls on our heads, with all that stuff strapped to our bikes. We'd stop to fill up our water bottles or put air in a tire, and people would inevitably bombard us with questions: "Where'd you come from boys", they'd say, and we'd cheerfully reply: "Victoria!". With that answer we'd receive looks of surprise, which grew to looks of pure astonishment as we travelled further east. One of my favourite moments from the trip was meeting the old maintenance man at the Newfoundland ferry terminal. We had just rode off the ferry into our tenth and final province and were taking a break when the questions started. Watching this old guy's reaction when we answered "Victoria!" was something else. He just stood there for a moment, thinking about it, and then wandered away saying he needed a stiff drink! Meeting non-cyclists on the road was always a bit like meeting someone who didn't speak our language.

Meeting other cyclists on the road was a highlight of our journey. Often we would find an immediate camaraderie with other cyclists, especially those laden down with all their worldly belongings as we were. On our way from west to east, I had been keeping a loose count of how many cyclists were crossing the country. I was up to about 20 by the middle of Canada, when for an entire week from Kenora to Thunder Bay, we were met by cyclists going the other way, from east to west. That is where I started to lose track. While cruising down one of the steep hills found on Hwy. 17 north of Lake Superior, we'd barely get a friendly hand up to wave at them before they were gone. One fellow who did stop to chat from the other side of the road asked us in his strong British accent if we'd seen his cycling partner ahead of him.

"Oh yeah", we told him, "but he was going pretty fast." Indeed, his friend, all geared-up in racing attire, had his head down and was ablaze with speed down a particularly long downhill stretch (uphill for us). With a convoy of logging trucks passing through our conversation, our British friend told us he'd met his companion a week ago and they were keeping each other company. He wasn't entirely happy with the pace that his friend was setting, or the style in which he was going across the country.

Referring to his speedy companion, our British friend explained that "he doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, and he's a vegetarian.... quite boring really." I think our British friend was considering turning around to join us for a while. Indeed, there are many ways to do a trip like this. Some cyclists had support vehicles to carry their gear, others travelled light and used a credit card for nightly motel rooms. Some, like us, carried everything with them in panniers, strapped on with bungies. There were three guys from Sudbury who towed their gear in cycling trailers!

The one thing that I'm sure was common to all these methods of touring was the incredible head-space that can be achieved along the way. Our days tended to blend in to a continuum of wonderful experiences, beautiful scenery, and the unusual satisfaction of being really, really tired at the end of a day. The challenge of trying to capture the strange and wonderful moments of the trip while enduring the many physical and mental challenges, allowed me to feel my life acutely. Out there on the open road, I felt isolated, yet in control. I felt exposed to all the elements of nature and all my senses were alive. I watched the changing landscape and wildlife, felt the winds from all directions, heard the migrating birds fly past chattering to themselves, smelled the fresh sea air and tasted the water of ten provinces. Across the prairies I could sense the curve of the earth all around me on the horizon. Out there, isolated from society and its trappings, our minds had no use for the ever-racing mental chatter that usually fills them. For the first time in my life I could fully allow myself to focus on the task at hand, revealing a crystal-clear confidence and relationship with the road and landscape that heightened each day.

Now back to civilisation and technology, I fumble with words on the keyboard to describe some of the moments we had on the road last summer. At best it's a second rate account of reality - it is truly impossible to duplicate the enormity of a personal moment with words, and so the best way to experience it is to get out there and experience it yourself.