On our last two cycling journeys, our bicycles have not arrived at our destination along with us. In Russia, this caused us much grief. Consequently on this trip, we were quite anxious about our history of “bad bike karma” and impressed on the gate personnel how important it was to make sure that our bikes made it on board (“pretty, pretty please!”). Sitting in the plane on the runway in Seattle, Jim and I saw our bike boxes sitting along side the plane while the other luggage was being loaded onto the plane. “Hurray! Look! Our bikes”.

The jubilation was, however, short- lived, as moments later Jim saw the airport ground crew loading our bikes back on the truck. “Oh noooo!”

Jim leapt from his seat and ran forward to the cockpit. He talked to the first mate who immediately opened his window and yelled at the ground crew ” Hey, what are you doing with those bikes?”

Fortunately they were just moving them to a different cargo hold. Whew!

We arrived safe and sound in Inuvik, well above the arctic circle. It took our plane three stops from Edmonton to get here.

The stop-over in Yellowknife

Flying over the boreal forest we began to realize that it will be a long cycle home.

Church in Inuvik

Dinner at the bus

The mosquitos arrived in force tonight. We realized at the Canada North airline desk that we better take the issue seriously when we saw their in-flight magazine:

Buzz, swat…better go. More soon…