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A cyclovolcanic quest

West coast team conquer second stage of ambitious journey ‘Cycling the Pacific Ring of Fire’
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Pedal Power Janick Lemieux and Pierre Bouchard are coming to the Sea to Sky region to present insights from their epic cyclovolcanic journey.

What: Cycling the Pacific Ring of Fire Part II: A Mariner’s Journey

When: Thursday, Jan. 22, 7:30 p.m.

Where: Squamish Howe Sound Brew Pub

Admission: $5

For the past six years, Janick Lemieux and Pierre Bouchard have been viewing unique locales from the seats of their bikes: they’ve been traveling from one volcano to the next, clockwise around the Great Ocean, starting in Vancouver and ending in Vancouver.

Though in hindsight, the journey may seem daunting, Bouchard and Lemieux broke it down into manageable stages.

“We have rarely pondered on the whole ‘Ring,’” Lemieux admitted. “It's been done in stages, stretches, sometimes one day at a time, even one kilometre at a time. The truth is that we thought it would take us three years at the most!”

Both avid cyclists and adventurers, Bouchard and Lemieux were inspired to embark on the journey while on another trip, from Siberia to India.

“We were having a very rough crossing of the Tibetan Plateau during the last freezing weeks of 1997,” Lemieux explained. “There was little sleep to have, with most nights spent over 4,000 metres of altitude and often under –20 Celsius! We were also both very ill with Giardia. During one of those painful nights we projected ourselves in the future: ‘What if we make it out of here alive?’ we wondered. Of course, we would continue travelling amongst the world's mountains on our bikes. Remembering that our toes were frostbitten, we decided to stick to warmer mountains... mountains of fire... volcanoes... the Pacific Ring of Fire!”

But this journey was different than any other they have embarked on.

“The Ring of Fire is completely different than the random migrating we've done before,” said Lemieux. “Having a theme, a common thread, has given us an added angle to look from that makes the traveling so much richer. We've hiked a lot more, went to the end of dozens of dead-ends and to un-cyclable destinations just because of the volcanoes. We can say that they took us to some of the most amazing spots on our planet and the warmest of people.”

Aside from the excitement of visiting “living mountains,” both Bouchard and Lemieux were thrilled with the idea of traveling through the Americas, returning to Indonesia and Russia, and an excuse to visit the islands of Polynesia, Melanesia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Japan.

“Besides learning about one of our dynamic planet's constant formation processes, volcanism, we aimed at getting acquainted with the ways of the people who managed to thrive and survive in the vicinity of these fiery mountains,” Bouchard explained. “Out of the few hundred volcanoes that de facto designed our route, we hiked to the base, trekked around and climbed to the summit of dozens of selected ‘members of the ring.’”

They broke their ambitious journey up into three stages — Vancouver to Santiago, Santiago to Jakarta, and finally, Jakarta to Vancouver — and gave themselves about a decade to complete the trek. Starting in May 1999, and extending until now, the first two legs of this mountain bike adventure have seen the pair saddled on their bikes for some six years, traveling a total distance of 60,000 kilometres.

But it wouldn’t have been possible to make the journey on bike alone.

“We strove to move only by bike — or foot — when on the land, though there was the odd chicken bus or pickup truck ride when pressed by time, visas, boat or plane to catch — or broken down,” Bouchard explained. “But when we say the ride was 60,000 km long, this is all 100 per cent pedal power.”

During the second stage of their journey alone, they flew at least 12 times and traveled on 55 floating vessels — everything from rudimentary dugout canoes to ocean-worthy cargo ships.

Now, the pair is on Hawaii’s big island, “the very belly button” of the ring, with just one week of their journey remaining — riding to the summit of the Mauna Kea volcano, which is currently covered in snow.

“It'll really be like the cherry on the top!” said Bouchard.

They hope to share the knowledge they have gained about other cultures with people back home, in North America.

“By ‘reshaping’ data harvested — namely stories, photographs and video footage, and experiences endured on the road in the forms of magazine articles, books, documentaries, public presentations, and other media components — we like to think that we contribute, if only in an extremely modest way, to make our world smaller, bridging distant peoples and cultures, create a spirit of humanhood, solidarity amongst (all),” Bouchard said.

Pedal Magazine has played an integral role in helping them carry out their dream trip.

“Our relationship with Pedal goes back some 18 years ago when (I) ‘moved in’ on the road,” Bouchard explained. “Its publisher/editor's early vote of confidence has been a great display of support indeed and made us believe that our plan to go out there, check it out and tell the tales about the adventures was within reach.”

They’ve also had the support of countless sponsors, including MEC, Devinci and others, who have helped sustain their nomadic lifestyle.

They return to British Columbia, where they will make a presentation in Squamish on Thursday, Jan. 22, at the Howe Sound Brew Pub. The multimedia account of Cycling the Pacific Ring of Fire, part II, features hundreds of images and live commentaries, set to a score original music written by a Montreal musician, who also happens to be a childhood friend.

“Let's say it's custom designed for our images!” said Lemieux.

They’ll also include an improvised “teaser” of the third and final stage of their quest.

Afterwards, the pair plans to return to their base camp in Charlevoix, Quebec to begin work by-products on the whole expedition; books, articles, and, of course, a new multimedia documentary that chronicles the third and final leg of the trip. They also plan to hold both French and English language lecture series in the coming years, and hope to return to the Sea to Sky corridor before the end of 2010.