Day 145 September 28, 2011 Vernon to Kelowna 61km

The weather here is much warmer than it was in Banff and although Firstar has sent me a ton of warm weather gear I haven’t really had much opportunity to wear it. In fact, I think I may have gotten a little sun burnt today.

The morning began with a staged photo op of Mike stretching my hamstring. I don’t think he’s helped me stretch once this trip but that’s the photo the photographer from the Vernon Morning Star wanted so who were we to say otherwise.

I continued running from the military camp and almost immediately found myself climbing up a steep hill that began to offer a beautiful view of one of the lakes in Vernon. I continued on for about half an hour before I entered Lake Country and was met by a number of people.

First there was my cousin Mike Riley, who had brought another cousin of mine Kit Riley by for me to meet. It was the first time we had met and he told me his own personal story about prostate cancer. Second there was Andrew Best, a good friend of mine from camp whom I haven’t seen in a number of years, and who lives in Vernon. Thirdly were a reporter and cameraman from CHBC news who did a quick interview with me. Finally there was our fire escort for Lake Country.

The run through Lake Country was beautiful and warm and at the start was two lanes wide. Eventually though we found ourselves merging into single lane traffic which meant that with the fire escort we were completely blocking traffic and no one could pass us. This continued for around 30 minutes and a long line of traffic had formed behind us. When we finally found a turn off where we could pull over we found out just how angry some of the motorists were. The first couple of cars drove by with continuous pressure on the horn and their middle fingers extended. At the same time as this was happing though a woman pulled over to tell us her story about her own cancer and to give us all the money she had on her at the time. It was a strange contradiction. The fire fighters weren’t bothered in the slightest. In fact, I think they were kind of enjoying it!

Shortly after leaving Lake Country we entered the Kelowna city limits and were met by the Kelowna fire department. The made a very generous donation and then the two trucks escorted us all the way through Kelowna right up to the bridge over to West Kelowna. During the escort Elaine joined Tyler and I and the two of them ran the entire 10km portion we were escorted. We were also joined by Sarah Greenwood, a friend of mine from high school who I haven’t seen in ages.

All in all a great afternoon run.

We finished running somewhere in West Kelowna where we were met by Jennay Oliver, the sister of my brother’s good friend Geoffrey. Jennay gave us directions to her fruit stand where we met Geoffrey and were given a tour of their fruit stand and surrounding orchards, along with massive scoops of free ice cream! By the time we left Geoff and his mother had loaded us down with fresh apples, pears, plums, squash, tomatoes and basil. Incredible!

The remainder of the evening consisted of dinner at Earls where I held myself back from ordering three starters in addition to my main course and falling quickly to sleep in our friends condo that they very generously lent us for the time we were in Kelowna.

Tomorrow is my first non-running day in 12 days, since Calgary, and the first time since I can remember that I have nothing scheduled to do in the morning and I can sleep in!