Vancouver to Surrey: The Boy Who Biked 105km in a Day

For the past few years Neil has been biking 10x his age every year. It started with a 72km ride to visit friends in Chemainus. The year after that we rode out to Coquitlam and PoCo on an 80km ride. Then we rode to New West and around Richmond on a 90km ride – oops, I didn’t write that one up (but see the route below). Finally, after Neil’s 10th birthday it was time to ride a metric century!

Our route took us across the super impressive Port Mann Bridge, which we had never crossed before. This was definitely one of the highlights of this ride, it’s such a beautiful bridge. We continued through Surrey to Delta, along Mud Bay, and over the Alex Fraser bridge back to New West. From there we followed the Fraser River back to Vancouver, finishing on the Arbutus Greenway, our backyard ride. Of course, every self respecting ride must involve an ice cream stop – we had ours at Avalon Dairy and for once I was ok with getting Neil a double scoop, he earned it!

The route I planned out was 100.2km on RideWithGPS. But we ended up riding just over 105km – due to some detours and a couple of mistakes. We enjoyed this ride very much but decided that this is the end of the 10x birthday tradition – 100km is long enough! Still, I think we’ll keep doing the occasional long ride from home.

It’s kind of fun to compare our 80 (blue), 90 (orange), and 105km (yellow) loops on one map – below. Perhaps it will give you some ideas of how to construct your own loop. It points out some areas we could focus future rides-from-home on – Delta, Langley, Pitt Meadows, and less flat but nearby North Vancouver.