Sheri Davis has taken part in many causes through her activities with the Rotary Club of Squamish.
Among other things, she’s helped support housing, education and healthcare for street children in Kenya, provided safe water for rural villages in northern Uganda and built a road and medical clinic in rural Guatemala.
This summer, though, the Squamish woman tackled quite the feat just for herself by pedalling across Canada.
“It’s probably the most selfish thing I’ve ever done,” she tells The Squamish Chief.
She laughs when she thinks how, by Squamish standards, it might not seem like a big achievement in light of some of the extreme physical activities local athletes undertake.
Still, she took on the challenge with relatively little training, almost on a whim one night while relaxing. Davis did take a course in bike repair because, she admits, she knew little more than how to change a tire beforehand.
This spring, she and husband Ian were in Wolfville, N.S. for their son Gareth’s graduation from university. Instead of flying home, she decided to get on her bike and ride back to the couple’s cabin in 100 Mile House.
“I started May 17th and got home on August 11th,” she says.
At one point, she did take a break and came back to B.C. when she had company during the summer, but was then back out on the road again.
“In the end, I added it up and rode 64 days in all,” she says.
The biggest challenge was the weather.
While B.C. was relatively mild through the summer, this was not the case for most of the country.
“It was horrendous all across this summer,” she says. “It was a pretty awful summer to do it.”
On the Prairies she could see the thunderstorms coming from a distance.
“Almost every day I would get up and ride toward a black sky,” she says.
This meant starting on the bike at first light, then packing up by the early afternoon when hot, humid weather made the chance of a storm all too real.
Things were less predictable in Ontario.
“I just didn’t ride very often in the afternoon,” she says.
One day, the weather changed so quickly, her glasses fogged up.
Most grueling was northern Ontario, especially along the north shore of Lake Superior, which seems to go on forever, with little more than large trucks and RVs for company.
One trucker was impressed because she was tackling a desolate stretch of road that is a long stretch for people driving, let alone travelling on two wheels.
The loneliness was often a struggle, though her husband and a friend were along for the ride for short stretches.
On the whole, each day she would find there were ups and downs.
“There was never, ever a perfect day, but there was never a day that was completely awful,” she says.
One highlight was the warm welcome she received from locals in small communities in the Maritimes and Saskatchewan. She would run into people at local Tim Hortons who often called friends to come down to say hello or debate which road she should take.
“I just met so many amazing people,” she says.
Oddly, biking is something new to Davis, as she hurt her back while in Kenya four years ago and needed to find a new activity she could still do.
In all, she pedalled a total of 6,209 kilometres, even though she had not done extra training to prepare for the trip of a lifetime.
“I really didn’t put any thought into just how far that was,” she says.
