profi le: Jason Addy

Zero miles per gallon; thousands of miles per gumption Since his first epic, self-propelled trek ? at age 12, pedalling his BMX bike 50 kilometres around Lake Ontario?s Bay of Quinte ? Jason Addy has been hooked. ?There?s a thrill about being completely self-reliant for a little while,? explains Addy. ?You get into a different headspace.? The 40-year-old founder of B.C.?s Self-Propelled Outdoor Club (SPOC) has biked from Inuvik in the Northwest Territories to Dawson City; from Toronto to Los Angeles (5,000 km in three months); and from San Francisco to Nevada?s Red Rocks (just outside Las Vegas) and back again on a rock-climbing tour ? hitting eastern California?s Yosemite and Joshua Tree national parks along the way. Addy is a pioneering outdoor adventurer in the vein of the late Gîran Kropp. In the mid-?90s, the patron saint of the self-propelled biked 13,000 km from his home country of Sweden to Nepal, climbed Mount Everest on a solo ascent without extra oxygen, then biked home. Trips by Addy and fellow SPOC members are usually scaled to a weekend or maybe a week, but they?re similarly ambitious: wherever they go, the entire trip is human-power only. No hitchhikes, cars, buses or trains. In 1995, Addy left Ontario for B.C., drawn

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that ?a journey into the Iconic environmentalist Edward Abbey wrote wilderness is the freest, cheapest, most nonprivileged of pleasures.?

SPOC

trips embody this.

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ing much of the local backcountry, he then by its ready access to wilderness and a job in a Vancouver bike shop. He worked as a bike mechanic for the next 15 years while keeping up his habit of long rides. After explor- factored in a new love ? mountaineering. Ride to a mountain from your doorstep, climb it, ride home. Simple. Pure. And, yes, painful ? but in the best way. With his curling brown hair and wiry beard, the now Powell River-based Addy looks like a mountaineer, though he?s softspoken, perhaps the most low-key hardcore adventurer you?ll ever meet. But he?s passionate about human-powered trips. ?Our club is the logical extension of the idea that the more effort it takes to attain a goal, the more rewarding it is and the more complete the adventure.? SPOC came together offi cially in 2001, as a profi t-free, unincorporated attempt to promote self-propelled travel. Today, Vancouver, Toronto, Powell River and Whistler chapters log dozens of epic journeys on the club?s website. In the summer of 2008, for example, several B.C. SPOCers rode their bikes from Vancouver to Washington State?s Mount Baker, summitted the peak and biked back home, all in four and half days ? for the Continued on page 29 ?SPOC IS NOT JUST FOR ELITE, crazy riders who want to suffer more as they try to go climb mountains. It?s about a different way of looking at our relationship ? as urban dwellers ? to nature and the outdoors, and to the spaces in between.? ?Vancouver fi lmmaker Gwendal Castellan 28 WESTWORLD >> SUMMER 2010 Tyee Bridge

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