On the evening of August 3rd, while he overnighted in Calgary awaiting a flight back home to Minneapolis the following morning, Bob Costain suffered a heart attack and died in his sleep. The picture below is how I choose to remember Bob Costain. Years earlier he had overcome prostate cancer and took up cycling to stay fit. He signed up for this tour every bit as eagerly as the rest of us, though he admitted during the ice breaker meeting the first night in Banff that it would be his most ambitious tour to date. I recall day 5, the longest day in the saddle, a day many of us were overly concerned with for its difficulty even before it started. Jim Gordon backtracked part way down a particularly difficult hill climb to discover that Bob was, as we say in cycling parlance, bonking.  He had many miles in front of him that day to the finish, nearly 100 in total.  He reached down inside himself, cleaned the rest of the hill and finished strong at The Crossings resort. And he went on to finish each of the next 4 days, some 300 miles, in fine form, never asking for a lift in the sag. I enjoyed his wry sense of humor, his upbeat attitude, and his company and conversation at dinner in Radium Hot Springs. He was a fine human being, a good cyclist, and a lot of fun to be around.

God Speed Bob Costain, God Speed.

Intro | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 7 | Day 8 | Day 9 | A Tribute To Bob Costain