But still, after having spotted my Norwegian cycling partner and I pedaling in the opposite direction down the coastal highway north of Kouchibouguac National Park, a sense of duty had compelled him to turn back and fill us in on how things work in the province of New Brunswick. A quick chirp of his siren and flash of lights had brought us together by the roadside.

As storm clouds loomed overhead, he and his partner surveyed our bicycle. Ours was a lot like other tandem bikes one might spot on the roads from time to time. It had two sets of pedals and very long lengths of chain. The frame was welded together and made of light but strong chromoly steel tubing. But what made our bike so special, and also what seemed to be Constable Demeau's chief concern, was the couch. It was an old leatherette loveseat. Our frame was built around it, and Eivind and I were perched on top of it. We sat side by side on the cushions, our legs extended in front to spin the pedals. I steered the bike with a tiller linked to the two front wheels on either side of the couch.

While Constable Demeau couldn't sight any specific laws or regulations concerning wheeled furnishings, he put together some pretty solid arguments against our chosen means of travel. Much of the trouble had to do with the width of our contraption. At nearly seven feet across, it was three inches wider than a Lincoln Navigator. This alone may not have been such a problem had it not also been for our speed, which could only generously have been described as pokey. And then there was the question of whether or not it qualified as a bicycle at all. If it did, then we were in violation of New Brunswick's helmet law.

Yet, despite all our transgressions, Constable Demeau seemed at odds with himself over how to handle us. Though our couchbike may have posed an imminent threat to public safety, he had to admit that it was indeed "a nice rig". He said that it might be against his better judgment, but that he was going to let us go. "Do whatever you guys think is best." He said. We assured him that we'd keep an eye on traffic and pull off into the ditch when cars came by.

While the law had been merciful with us, the weather was not so kind. Minutes after the RCMP cruiser pulled away, the rain started coming down in buckets. We scrambled to cover the couch with our form fitting tarp. Although it protected the precious faux leather fabric, it did nothing for the two of us. In fact, because we sat on top of the tarp, the water just pooled in the depressions where our wet bodies sunk into the cushions creating a sort of mobile Mr. Turtle pool.

The rain never let up all day. I was feeling pretty guilty for what I was subjecting my innocent friend to. However, if he had any grievances about the state of things; his drenched cotton underwear, the erratic way I drove the couch off the steep edge of the asphalt road each time a car came by, or that this morning had been our second brush with the law in as many days; he certainly wasn't letting on. He seemed to be content in the face of it all.

Surely anyone else would have been ruing the day they agreed to join me on this bizarre adventure. In Eivind's case, if he'd wanted to roll back time and extract himself from this soggy state of affairs, the pivotal moment would have been a few months earlier in the spring.

Through the magic of the Internet, Eivind had tracked me down to say hello. It had been over a decade since he'd been to Canada for a high school exchange and we'd been out of touch ever since. He was planning to come back on vacation and wanted to hook up with some old friends for a trip.

As luck would have it, I'd been contemplating a trip myself. For me, past adventures had generally entailed epic feats of endurance; often coupled with severe physical discomfort. Never before had I done a trip based purely on whimsy. For what I had in mind this time, I needed a willing partner, and Eivind struck me as the ideal candidate. English being his second language, I hoped he wouldn't question the odd juxtaposition of the words; ninety-five pound vinyl chesterfield, with such terms as; self-contained bicycle travel.

Ultimately, it probably had more to do with Eivind's easygoing nature and his willingness to try anything once than it did with my sly tactics, but within a couple days, he sent back a response. I had myself a Norwegian crewmember.

I proceeded to obtain a massive heap of steel tubing and aluminium billet. Over the following weeks, I began cutting it up and welding it into form. Eivind would drop me a line every now and then just to find out how I was getting along. I couldn't lie. Having no appreciable time management skills, I was finding it tough to make any headway against such worthy adversaries as work and TV. I would always assure him though, that despite being a little behind schedule, I was confident we'd be ready to roll when he arrived.

When Eivind finally arrived at the end of July, my cheeks were stuffed like a hamster's from all the words I'd been eating. Our couchbike wasn't anywhere near ready to roll. On the way home from the airport, I couldn't tell Eivind what the next few weeks would have in store for us. I had no idea whether another couple of days work would yield the most fantastic touring bicycle known to man, or a feckless monstrosity I'd need to borrow a farmer's tractor to drag off my property. With no idea what kind of performance to expect, we could only speak in vague terms about a cycling route. We both agreed the Maritimes sounded nice.

It was a good thing that over the next few days, Eivind had some other friends that he wanted to visit. And when he wasn't doing that, I had the benefit of what one of my housemates had taken to calling cheap Norwegian sweatshop labor.

After three days of practically round the clock toil in the sweltering heat of my garage, no doubt to the great relief of my long-suffering neighbors, our joint venture of nations was finally complete. We rode it around the block. And then, because we had barely eaten a square meal in days, we rode it to the local grocery store to buy food for a celebratory dinner.

Leaving the grocery store, we didn't have any trouble locating our vehicle among the rows of parked cars. Ours was the one with the crowd around it. As we would realize more and more in the coming weeks, everyone would have their own unexpected reaction to the couchbike. In this instance, the group of mostly older ladies was downright earnest in their praise for the comfortable looking design. Furthermore, obviously embarrassed to have let one of the hottest youth trends slip past their pop culture radar, they sheepishly admitted that this was only the first bike of this sort they'd seen. When we left them, I can only wonder how much longer they stood there waiting for the next pair of youngsters to come cruising in looking for a spot to park their living room furniture.

All told, we'd only logged about three kilometers in testing the bike. But time being of the essence, we decided to ship out the next day. We tore down the bike. Primed and painted it. And the next morning, paint still not quite dry to the touch, we headed off in a roughly eastward direction in a jam-packed rental van.

There was no fanfare there to greet us when we arrived at our arbitrarily selected starting point at the visitor's centre in Miramichi, New Brunswick. No marching bands clashing cymbals and beating drums as we extracted piece after piece of our couchbike from the impossibly small van and laid them all out for assembly in the parking lot. No horn section responding in crescendo as wheels were mounted and cushions were put in place. Nor was anyone lurking in the bushes with lips pursed against a giant tuba. It's a shame about the tuba player, because that oft-marginalized musician could surely have had his moment. In the height of all the frenzy, the tuba man could have blown an abrupt and dissonant tone to silence the band as I came to the realization that a critical component of our couchbike had been left behind. In any event, there I was -- immersed in silence, pale faced and sweaty palmed, trying to explain the predicament to Eivind.

Without getting overly technical, the crux of the situation was this: I had built a custom clamp that was meant to lock down the bearings of our steering mechanism and also permit precise tensioning of these bearings by means of a tuning bolt. Although I had left this critical component behind, all was not lost. It was with great relief that I realized we still had the wherewithal to clamp the bearings. Unfortunately, the precision adjustment would have to be achieved by walloping the bearings with a rubber mallet, a tactic we executed with mediocre but satisfactory results.

Within a few hours we'd reassembled our bike and begun our journey along the wide shoulder of highway 11. After about 7km, we'd turned down a small side road in search of the coastal highway. We were taking up a full lane as there was no shoulder, but we were cruising along, and the light traffic flowed around us in a procession of cars and trucks occupied by people in hysterical fits of laughter. Many were so tickled to see a couch rolling down the road that they dangled out their windows to take pictures of the spectacle.

Eivind was sitting shotgun and had the map spread open in front of him looking for our turn. The turn came quicker than we expected. Although I had access to brakes for both sides of the bike, the excitement got the better of me, and I only squeezed the left brake lever -- the one that was mounted on the tiller. This threw our equilibrium off kilter and the couch went into a high-speed wobble. Suddenly, one of the wheels swung too far and jammed against the side of the couch. It happened in an instant but it felt like slow motion. I felt the couch lift up underneath me. I watched as my passenger was launched in the air and pitched over the pedals. I hung on to the couch like it was a rodeo bull. At the pinnacle of our trajectory everything seemed to be balanced precariously on the two front wheels. Then, slowly, everything came crashing back down. The luggage, which had been mounted behind the couch landed on top of the bike. The couch came down on top of the luggage. Once everything had settled, and I was still clinging to the couch, I looked down to discover that I was sitting about two feet higher than before.

Eivind picked himself off the highway. I was glad he wasn't hurt. Together, we frantically began clearing the wreckage from the road. We lifted the couch into the ditch, and pitched all the bags on top of it. When we went to move the bike itself, I noticed one of the wheels was no longer touching the ground. We moved it across the intersection to a dead-end lane for closer inspection. Even standing on the frame with all my weight, and jumping up and down to flex the rear suspension, I couldn't bring the fourth wheel in contact with the ground. I feared the frame had become irreparably mangled.

Before sharing my fear, I racked my brain for a euphemistic way of saying irreparably mangled. I continued to puzzle at the contorted bike. Eventually, I realized that the telescoping tubes of the frame had simply twisting inside one another. Greatly relieved, we loosened up the pinch bolts in the frame and everything settled down straight again. As I began tightening the bolts on the frame, a pickup truck pulled up and the driver leaned out the window.

"You know what I'm going to ask…" he said, "What the heck is that?"

Eivind, who felt he could field this question, responded by stating it was a bike.

"Where do you sit?" was the next question.

"On a couch", replied Eivind.

"On a what?"

Eivind turned his head to look across the intersection at the large piece of furniture resting by the roadside. "On a couch", he said.

A period of stunned silence ensued. This would prove to be a typical encounter. From there, more questions would be asked. The central theme tended to be "why?" This was a line of questioning to which we could never offer a completely satisfying answer. But as long as people were smiling and laughing, then we knew we were on the same wavelength and that's all we could really hope for.

As we finished torquing the last bolt in our couchbike frame, a police car turned up the road and stopped for a moment by our stack of cargo. Through his rear window I could see his head shaking as though refusing to believe his eyes. Tucked away as we were in the quiet lane, we avoided his detection and were therefore spared the embarrassment of rehashing the events of our near catastrophe. The officer drove off without any closer inspection.

We hit the road again. As the day wore on, we regained our confidence and were enjoying the simultaneous experiences of physical activity, and relaxed lounging. The maritime scenery was beautiful and the people in the passing motor homes were as much a source of amusement for us as we seemed to be for them.

Nearing the town of Baie-Sainte-Anne, we were just beginning to look for a place to camp when a Police cruiser pulled along side us. He rolled down his passenger side window and in a resigned tone, said "I don't want to be a stickler… but I don't think that thing's legal. And if that's a bicycle, you guys should have helmets on." Yes, yes -- the helmet issue. That was something we had debated at length before our departure. Our two main questions had seemed to answer themselves, "How fast are we ever really going to be traveling on a 95 pound couch?" and "Isn't there already an excess of padding on this thing anyway?"

Of course, after having been launched into flight on our unassuming couch, the flaws in our logic had been made abundantly clear. We assured the police officer that we would be picking up some helmets in the next town. With that, he pulled ahead and was gone.

Two days later, we woke to pouring rain. We were further south down the coast of New Brunswick but still hadn't found anywhere to buy helmets. The day before, we'd had our run in with Constable Demeau and ever since, our bike had been taking quite a beating from all the driving on and off the road in our futile attempts at being unobtrusive to motorists.

We needed to give one of the wheels a good truing. But alas, on top of everything else that had happened, our tools had been stolen that night as well. With so much conspiring against us, we decided to take that day to reorganize, and also, to make the drive across to Prince Edward Island.

The Confederation Bridge had been on our minds since day one. The 14km span linking the mainland with PEI was off limits to cyclists. While it might have been only mere speculation on our part, we had a pretty strong feeling about how a slow moving couch would be received at the ramparts of the bridge.

Hitchhiking back to the van proved to be a great decision. After a day of errands and driving, we'd acquired helmets, repaired our wheel, and lugged our couch across the bridge to the quaint sanctuary of PEI.

The next day we began riding again from the town of Tignish. Tignish is located at the Northwestern end of the Confederation Trail, a multiuse path built over an abandoned rail line. Over the next few days we would follow this trial eastward. But first, we wanted to ride west to the coast. We wanted the satisfaction of not only traveling the full length of the trail, but also crossing the island from tip to tip. This would surely be a first for human powered couch travel.

Our outing to the coast was a terrific ride. We made it back to Tignish just in time to attend the blueberry social at the community center. While trying not to eat more than our share of home baked desserts we watched a cast of young and old belt it out in song, instrument and dance.

The next day, as we rode east along the hard packed gravel trail, Eivind and I discovered that we both had the same song in our heads. It was a George Jones tune that a young boy had performed the night before. It was called "Choices" and the words seemed to speak to me:

I've had choices since the day that I was born.
There were voices that told me right from wrong.
If I had listened,
No I wouldn't be here today living and dying with the choices I've made.

Right or wrong, good or bad, it was definitely a string of my own strange choices that had brought me there to pedal through that pastoral setting on a fake leather couch. Given the perfect sunny weather, I wouldn't say that these were choices I all together regretted.

Meanwhile, Eivind was singing his own version of the song. He couldn't quite work out the lyrics. He didn't realize it was about choices. He thought it had something to do with horses.

That the lyrics to this song had registered so spuriously in his Norwegian ears was a cogent reminder of Eivind's innocence in this affair. But whether he lamented his choices or cared more about a secret passion for horses, one thing was clear. I had a kindred spirit in Eivind. Who else would have put up with what we were faced with in the following days?

While the Confederation Trail provided a welcome respite from traffic, that freedom came at a tremendous cost. The Confederation Trail regularly crisscrosses roads and highways. At each crossing, barricades have been erected to keep cars and trucks from accessing the trail. A narrow gap remains open for pedestrians and cyclists to squeeze through. Unfortunately, the visionaries that established this wonderful corridor never accounted for what some cyclists would be lugging along with them. As a result, upwards of twenty times a day, we would engage in the task of dismantling our bicycle, lifting it over the barricade, carrying it across the road and reassembling it on the other side of the second barricade. We got to be pretty good at this. Occasionally we would time ourselves. Five minutes was typical. That certainly must have put us up there with the best of the voyageur moving companies of old. Wherever possible though, we would strive to avoid these dreaded portages. Sometimes it was simple. Sometimes we could just ride up onto a grassy lawn and skirt the gate. Other times, it was a little more sketchy. A trench or a small bush might cause us to stop and weigh our options. Unseen swamps and thorns would often make us regret our cavalier ways.

As we forged across PEI, we won the respect and sympathy of many for all the hardships that our journey entailed. People started to speak as though this expedition by couch represented one of the more significant historical crossings of the small island province. One local cyclist told us about the National Boy Scout Jamboree of 2001, and how all the trail gates had been opened for the associated bicycle tour. He insisted that we deserved the same concessions. "What you two are doing is far more important than any World Boy Scout Jamboree!" he declared. We were flattered by this exaggerated comparison.

Before riding off, he passed on a few phone numbers of people he thought could help us track down a master key for all the gates. We gave them a try but the effort proved fruitless.

So we soldiered on. Along the way, we were interviewed by local papers, we were offered places to stay for the night, and we were served Pepsi. In short, we were having a great time out on the trail. We even ventured down the branch trail to Charlottetown. But as enamored as we were with that scenic pathway, as we neared the end of the track in Elmira, we found the gravel became intolerably soft and loose. Our speed had dwindled to no more than a brisk walking pace. We had been tempted many times before, but we finally decided to bid farewell to the trail and head for the coast by road.

While both the dirt and paved road surfaces were immeasurably faster than the gravel path, the steep long hills of Eastern PEI provided their own unique challenges, both in the accents and the descents. Although the couchbike had two independent drive trains, each with 144 different gear combinations, the gear ratios were disproportionately skewed in the high range. While our high gear was more than double that of a standard mountain bike, our low gear was only 7% lower than normal. So we struggled and sometimes had to push up the hills. Rolling down the other side, we were never brave or rather crazy enough to let the couchbike reach its maximum speed. Once, we let the speedometer creep up to 44km/h, but a palpable fear of death persuaded me to put the brakes on before we went any faster.

Another time, on a dirt road, I was too afraid to apply the brakes. I should never have let us go that fast to begin with, but we had reached the point of no return. Because of the inconsistent dirt surface, I feared that braking hard could cause us to spinout. As the couch hurdled closer and closer to mach speed, all outside noises became muted. I could still here Eivind's last words. "I'm scared", he said.

"Don't be scared." I replied with a calmness that was belied by my posture in the couch. I had assumed a sort of starfish stance on the cushions, my legs and arms spread out wide in preparation for attack from all directions. No sooner had I spoke those soothing words, than our worst fears were realized. One wheel jammed and the couch spun into a donut. The world swirled around us. Strangely, at that point, everything felt very calm. This was one smooth donut.

When we finally came to rest, I couldn't recall how many rotations we'd done, but the couchbike was pointing uphill. Mechanically, everything was perfectly fine. I couldn't believe our luck. The adrenaline was making us both giddy, and we laughed hysterically at our good fortune.

While I was delighted to still be alive. I felt remorse over the preceding spectacle. I had always considered myself a law-abiding citizen. I was not proud of having just desecrated one of our public highways with our perilous circus antics. From that point onward, I resolved to keep our obstreperous couch strictly on the straight and narrow.

Later that day, as we departed from the town of Souris bound for the eastern most tip of Prince Edward Island, a police car passed us and immediately pulled into a nearby parking lot. This elicited our primal flight instincts. We were still feeling like outlaws from our earlier dealings with the police. Unfortunately, we were driving about the worst getaway car ever.

As the police officer got out of his car and went fishing for something in his trunk, Eivind and I plotted our damage control strategy. The officer started walking towards us. It was clear. There would be no escaping this confrontation.

I think the ensuing exchange caught all parties off guard. It turned out, the friendly police officer wanted nothing more than to introduce himself and take a picture to show the wife and kids. He even asked if we were raising money for something. He seemed quite prepared to contribute to our cause. Meanwhile, our nerves were so rattled that we were barely able to break out of a "yes sir", "no sir" line of response. At least our smiles in parting were expressive and heartfelt.

We would wear those smiles through the day and straight through to the next morning, when we rolled up to the lighthouse at East Point, Prince Edward Island. Our odyssey complete, we gazed with satisfaction over the steep sandstone cliffs to the ocean below.

Today, the couch sits quietly in my living room at home. No medals or ceremonial afghans adorn its backrest. But every so often, in a search for the remote control, cushions will be overturned to reveal some treasure like a seashell or a stone. These, and the memories they invoke, are life's true treasures.

by Brent Curry