‘It’s just me and the wind’
Cyclist completes awareness fundraiser from Saskatoon to Vancouver
SASKATOON — The numbers are impressive: 1,670 kilometres cycled in the dead of winter; almost $23,000 raised to support groups at the front line of drug policies, outreach and research; temperatures of –45 C with the wind chill; who knows how much spent on peanut butter …?
“Peanut butter kid! I never thought I’d see peanut butter kid!” a stranger who followed Iliajah Pidskalny’s journey on social media said when the 25-year-old popped into a convenience store on Hastings Street in Burnaby, B.C. on Friday morning to buy some of the rocket fuel that, along with noodles and bananas, nourished him on his long ride.
Pidskalny set out at dawn on New Year’s Day from Saskatoon to cycle to Vancouver and raise awareness and money for the opioid crisis in Canada, and harm reduction. He spent one night inside at a friend’s in Alberta. Otherwise, he camped in secluded woods or behind truck stops.
A bum knee he couldn’t really stretch, a nose that bleeds from his years blocking blows with it during his days kickboxing, frost-nip in the fingers — all were annoyances.
“Definitely this,” Pidskalny said when asked which was harder, this trip or getting kicked in the face. “There were really tough pushes. It’s like this weird chess game with hypothermia; you’ve got to always stay 10 moves ahead.
“What’s wet, what’s frozen, what’s dry? Is it going to dry in this wind or is it going to freeze instantly?”
His bike needed some repairs after his rack and back wheel “disintegrated,” forcing him to push his bike the last hour to Vernon. An anonymous donor from his hometown covered the cost of repairing it.
Comparing the experience with his time in the bush on geological expeditions in the Northwest Territories, Pidskalny tweeted on Jan. 23 that the benefits of winter are no bugs, no bears.
“The only downside is a constant battle against hypothermia and frostbite.”
On Friday, he had second thoughts.
“It’s a trade-off, but I think I’ll choose mosquitoes and bears next time,” he said, laughing.
There wasn’t a time he questioned why he was doing this, he said. Not to say it wasn’t non-stop tough slogging. The wind was the hardest, 90-km/h plow winds — Prairie hurricanes, basically — blasted him almost backwards in the Dead Man’s Flats in Bighorn County, Alta., while chinook winds that delivered above-freezing temperatures also made cycling into them extremely hard.
“You don’t forget why you’re doing this, but you just focus on the task,” he said. “I just feel like this animal, so engaged in my task. It’s just me and the wind.”
Pidskalny, an awardwinning student after getting the highest marks in the class of 2020 at the University of Saskatchewan’s school of geology, planned to stay with an old roommate for a few days in Vancouver, then head to Vancouver Island to continue cycling and camping, pursuing his vagabond lifestyle.
“Every summer I’ve done something like this, but I always had to go back to school.
This is my home right now,” he said, nodding down at his bike and gear. “I’m nervous excited, the same kind of nervous excited I felt before I started this trip.
“I’m free. This time it’s one way to I don’t know where. Just keep moving.”