Yahk, BC - Population: 350

Hey again!

I'm sitting in the elementary school of Yahk, the smallest town we've been to yet! The school has about 14 kids, and they have allowed us to stay overnight and make use of their free internet access! This afternoon a couple of my teammates conducted a workshop here called "Cradle to Grave", and it follows the process that a banana goes through from being seeded and grown to ending up in your house! It's a pretty profound workshop, and according to the team who conducted it, it went over quite well!

Since I last wrote, I have biked over 170 km! I biked a fairly difficult ride from Fernie to Cranbrook a couple of days ago, and biked about 70 km today to arrive here in Yahk.

The trip from Fernie to Cranbrook started out quite nicely; the wind was somewhat in our favour and the route was pretty flat. By the last 10 km, however, we had to bike up a steep grade for what seemed like hours! I thought my knees were going to pop off by the end of it. Needless to say, we were all exhausted that evening.

The ride from Fernie to Cranbrook had it's fair share of interesting moments though! I was biking with Rozzy, and we stopped in the little town of Elko (if you can even call it a town) to make a pit stop, and ended up in a very odd conversation with a couple of old locals! I was even scolded by one of them for saying "kilometers" incorrectly: apparently, in his day, it was pronounced "kilo-meters" with the emphasis on separating the word into its two root words. I just told him I grew up in Ontario and that smoothed everything out! Rozzy and I also saw wild daisies along the side of the highway on our journey, and when we stopped to pick some, Rozzy found the jaw bone of a small creature, probably a coyote!

We spent a very short amount of time in Cranbrook, staying at a middle school in their weight room (yep, a weight room - it didn't smell as bad as I thought it would!) but we did 3 performances while we were there. All of the performances were to large crowds of over 350, so we were all a little nervous, and still exhausted from our 100 km ride the day before! The performances went over well with each group, however, and we managed to get some great feedback from each of them. One of the schools even went off to their classes to brainstorm some sustainability ideas for their school that they hope to implement in the next school year! Go Otesha!

Today we rode from Cranbrook to Yahk, and it was the most perfect day to ride! The sun was shining, there was barely a cloud in the sky, the wind was calm (for once) and it was warm! We biked along in our shorts and t-shirts, and even stopped for a long lunch by a river that was full and fast with the spring run-off from the mountains. I was biking with Lynn today, and we managed to find a couple of gorgeous waterfalls along the highway, and stopped to take some pictures! Although, where we stopped was really dangerous - these waterfalls just happened to be right beside the very busy highway we were biking along, and every so often a semi or two would rush past us at top speed. We quickly got out of there!

The ride to Yahk was mostly downhill too, so we made it here in about 4 hours. That's not including the time change either - speaking of which, I am now in Pacific Time! So, to you Ontarians, I am 3 hours behind you!

Lynn and I headed straight for the local ice cream shop when we arrived. It claims to have "authentic wilderness ice cream", which is really just regular ice cream with names like "Beaver Butt", "Bear Breath", and so on. It was also located right next to a goat soap shop, and the shop makes its own soap from goats that they let graze on their roof! It was a really odd and kind of hilarious thing to see - I took pictures!

We all met up after that and decided to run through our play for a little much-needed practice; we hadn't practiced the play for a long time, and after the 3 performances in Cranbrook, we felt that some of the scenes and transitions needed a little tightening. Hopefully now that we've run through it as a group and debriefed it, we'll be able to put on a great show tomorrow! We are performing at a pancake breakfast hosted by the local church, so I'm definitely looking forward to this one :)

Well, that is all for now! Tomorrow after the performance we will be heading to Creston; this time I'll be in the car with Seth. It will be our job to get food donations and greet our host when we get there! After that, it's another 100 km ride to Crawford Bay (hopefully my knees won't be screaming at me by this point). Then, it's a short ferry ride and bike to Nelson! We're all really excited to get to this place - I have a feeling it's the hippie capital of BC (hehehe). So, hopefully I'll be able to update again soon and let you know how the next couple of days go! I can't believe how fast this trip is going - not long now before we arrive at our mid-tour retreat, and then only a few more weeks until Van-city! I'll write more about our retreat as soon as I learn more about it.

Take care everyone! Miss you!!

Sarah