WRITER - Western Living -
Chefs in the Forest
Why are all the great CHEFS hiding IN THE FOREST?
“Come to the Kootenays, David!”
“On my bike?”
“It’s only 50 or 60 K. a day. Hey, it’s not Boot Camp!”
“What’re you, crazy?”
Barry Gilpin is so crazy he only owns four sporting goods stores and a bicycle touring company. This, after 18 years of running a major land development office and a lifetime of playing and teaching sports of every imaginable kind. For all that, he’s relaxed, drop dead funny and madly devoted to his all-too-gorgeous wife, Natalia, the senora with the mostest from El Salvador.
So when Barry Gilpin says, “Hey, Bud, 59 is only a state of mind,” you submit to his charms, lock your bike on the back of the van, hop in, and head for Castlegar, B.C. and the beginning of an extraordinary adventure.
The Kootenays are that mountain range that embraces the eastern spine of British Columbia, tucked in close by the Alberta border and just below Banff National Park. The area is already famous for Kokanee Beer, pristine lakes, eccentrics, retro-hippies, Hollywood North location sites and fresh trout. But who knew about the food? It’s both folklore and found wisdom that Vancouver has gone, in one bloated generation, from nowhere-to-eat to Best-Place-in-the-World-to-Eat-Out. But nobody was ready for the haute cuisine we stumbled across in wooded glen after rolling pasture after small town back-alley bistro.
All of this, of course, is but the crème broulee to the main reason we are here – The Bike Trip! Ten riders, 6 days, 365 kilometres of wild flowers, rivers and mountain glaciers. Can you say, “Unspeakable beauty, boys and girls?” The riders are perfectly split, by the way, 8 women and 2 men. Ha! Three of the women are teachers from Prince George. The senior executive from B.C. Hydro arrives at our starting off point in Castlegar in her black BMW roadster. Compared to us two scrawny, pathetic guys, these women are all Olympians, refugees from the Tour de France. But that’s the beauty of this kind of excursion. Your only real qualifications are a bicycle and willingness. Pooped? Intimidated by the next hill? (There’s always a next hill!) Just pat the top of your helmet the next time Barry and Natalia go by in the van and they’ll rescue you. Water, nourishment, encouragement, a bad joke or a ride in the back seat of the van are all there for the asking.
The brilliance of these trips is that they are cleverly broken into bite-sized chunks that even the most reluctant novice can handle. On Day One our first instruction is to follow “that cloverleaf part of the highway out of town, head past the Castlegar Airport, up a bit of a hill (Barry is always saying, “A bit of a hill,” when in fact he means a 10 degree mountain climb!), and we’ll meet you near the dam for a little rest and chat.” Then it’s “see you about 10 K up the road at the fruit stand,” followed by, “You’ll see us behind the Co-op by the river with the picnic lunch.” It is by exactly these kind of warm-hearted psychological tricks that those of us who have never before ventured farther than the corner store on our bikes find ourselves 8 hours and 66.5 kilometres later at our first unforgettable overnight stop.
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