While the Sunshine Coast is renowned for being a great place to ride a bicycle, there are only a handful of residents who use theirs to commute along the highway, all year round.
Devon Farrell is one of these dedicated cyclists and was born and raised on the Sunshine Coast.
While the name may not be immediately familiar, many residents are accustomed to seeing Farrell on her almost daily ride during their commute to or from work.
“There's some folks from the archeology company In Situ that know me tangentially through work, but they didn't know it was me out there, and they call me Banana Girl,” she said.
Farrell said she first got into biking while she was living in Vancouver and attending grad school, when she would cycle from her apartment in East Vancouver to UBC.
Farrell moved back to the Coast full-time in 2022 and said she's been cycling ever since.
While the Sunshine Coast presents a comfortable place to cycle during the summer, the off-season paints a very different picture for bikers.
For Farrell, the biggest challenge of commuting all year round is the dark.
“I can cope with the miserableness of the rain, but what I can't cope with is not being able to see very well, and traffic car lights pointing at me, blinding me, mixed with the reflection of the rain.”
Adding, she has a policy now where she won’t bike on dark, rainy nights.
Farrell commutes from Langdale to Sechelt, roughly 25 kilometres each direction, and it takes her about 70 minutes. She does this three to four times a week during the warm season, and a couple of times a week throughout the winter as weather allows.
“I can get it to an hour if I don't have anything on my bike with me, but I usually have a full change of clothes and my lunch and all sorts of stuff. So, I'm not really trying to ride light on my bike.”
It’s not solely for commuting, Farrell said she still finds time to bike around for fun and that she and her husband like cycling to Port Mellon.
According to Farrell, the area of the highway near Joe Road that was recently repaved is a great place to ride, with a great shoulder and good lighting that makes it safe.
On the flip side, she said one of the most dangerous spots along the highway is the turn next to Cliff Gilker Park.
Explaining that there is not enough of a shoulder along that stretch to ride in, Farrell said she usually has to signal to traffic and then take the lane because the area can be so dangerous.
She said some improvements that would make the road better for cyclists would be street lights all along the highway, and having road shoulders swept more, explaining she had to change the tires she was using after her first year, as she got several flat tires from debris on the road.
Farrell takes steps to make herself visible and would advise anyone getting into cycling to do the same.
Her bike has several lights on it, including a front light, a pulsing backlight as well as lights on the wheels that make a pattern when they spin.
On top of this, Farrell said she always wears bright clothes to make herself stand out on the side of the road.
“I'm lit from all four sides, and I'm wearing yellow, so I think I'm fairly visible,” she said. And there are people who see me biking every day, I don't know them, but they wave at me. So I think I am recognizable enough out on the road.”
Another piece of advice from Farrell for those wanting to pick up biking is to start in the spring or summer while the conditions are favourable.
Those wanting to commute to work can start by timing out their ride on a weekend, said Farrell, adding its important to pace yourself.
“Don't push hard on your ride, you don't need to be racing. You can just kind of go at a comfortable pace, and slowly but surely, you'll get stronger,” she said. “Don't try to do everything at once, don't try to ride five days a week at once. I don't even do that because I ruined my knees doing that.”
Jordan Copp is the Coast Reporter’s civic and Indigenous affairs reporter. This reporting beat is made possible by the Local Journalism Initiative.
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