A Saskatoon woman recently made the trek home from Dalhousie University – on a bike.
Saskatoon’s Naomi Bird, and Vancouver’s Kathleen Olds, both attend Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. The pair decided to go on a leisurely bike ride to deal with the stress of final exams, but the trip turned into a cycle travelling halfway across Canada.
"It feels kind of surreal, but it feels right,” said Bird. “The whole trip, I thought about the day I (would get) home and how I would feel. (Now), I just got home and it was just natural.”
While Olds isn’t from Saskatoon, she decided to make the close to 4,300 kilometre trek with Bird.
“We just thought, ‘We're young, we can (do it). Our bikes are here, the land is there, we can do it. Let's just use this time and do it,’” said Olds.
It took two months, cycling about 100 kilometres a day, for the two to reach Saskatoon before their June 20th goal.
“It was tough at first, but then our legs started to adapt and we just got stronger,” said Bird. “After we got capable of doing 100 (kilometres a day), we did 130 a day, and then once in a while, we'd do a little bit more.”
Bird and Olds said the journey gave them a unique perspective of Canada.
“It was really amazing to watch the provinces change directly at the border. You could distinctly tell where you were and how it was different,” said Bird.
“(Going) through the Laurentians and Ontario and along the St. Lawrence in Quebec, Canada has so many different kinds of beauty. I really feel like we got to experience all of them,” said Olds.
