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Getting into gear with gearsracing.com

Susan McKenzie / 20.08.2003

If it were clearer, gearsracing.com might have had a few stars to light the way. As it was, the four members of the Toronto-based team which currently sits in second place had to rely on headlamps and bike lights to guide them down the logging road on this second bike leg of the Land Rover Raid the North Extreme.

Even in the darkness, the body of fresh water on their right prompts the team to stop and re-fill. They are about four hours behind the leaders, France’s EADS, which checked into CP10 thirsty, with no water. They were running low when they left CP9, but according to the volunteers at CP10, they apparently found the water sources too murky to drink or purify. They would find fresh water eventually just before they ventured down the zip line over the water fall, sometime close to midnight.

“I don’t see how anyone could be working any harder than we worked today,� says captain Kevin Wallace as he sits with his head resting on his pack in the middle of the road, the mosquitoes nipping at pieces of exposed flesh. “If the French are working that hard at staying that far ahead of us, they’ve got to slow down at some point.�

Several hours earlier, gearsracing.com was working incredibly hard as its members pedaled down yet another logging road. Fat drops of sweat dripped down Wallace’s nose as the four pedaled in formation over crests and across railroad tracks where, moments before, 30-car freight train carrying Canadian wheat had rolled past.

As they pulled up to CP9 (arguably the most unattractive CP), at the intersection of the highway and the logging road, volunteers Joel Templeman and Dave Blair are waving furiously, dancing their own rather frenetic welcome dance, their names and CP numbers written on their backs. The sign at the checkpoint says “Kool-Aid, 50 cents.�

“We asked, but they’ve run out,� says gearsracing.com’s Marnie McBean. “Yeah, we drank it ourselves,� says Templeman. McBean and her teammates settle for what’s in their packs as they check the map and John Yip tries to makes some repairs to his bike.

“The left pedal is all wrecked,� he says. “And it’s stuck, so it hasn’t been easy to pedal.�

Gearsracing.com is one of the many teams that took advantage of pack rafts during the first trekking section. “Our feet are in much better shape, plus it makes us feel so much better. Pack rafting was like taking a vacation,� says Wallace. “It was like being in a dinghy. The trekking was no vacation.�

“Thirty-five minutes to go one kilometre,� adds McBean.

“It was all dense, rough bush, so hard to get through,� says Wallace.

“Plus, it was so hot. Just stinking hot yesterday,� McBean says. “We swam a few lakes just to cool off yesterday, just to get wet.�

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