Out of the plains

Day 28

Total distance 2414.0km

Position, Winnipeg

Ahhh sorry it's been so long, there are so very few opportunities to update that I've got very behind with them.

I'm now in Winnipeg, with my warmshowers host D'Arcy Johnston and his family. I've done about 450km in the last three days and well over 1000 since my last rest, so I think it's time for a day off today.

I'll start where I left off, in Swift current where Bonnie and Doug dropped me. We had a hot chocolate and said goodbye before I cycled off into the sunset to find a place to camp. I stopped ata plant nursery and asked the elderly couple there if I could put up a tent in their yard. They kindly obliged and I spent the night in my tent on a lovely soft lawn. The next morning I was invited in to fill my water bottles and have a cup of coffee whilst they bombarded me with all the normal questions that people ask when they find out what I'm doing. Why canada? Why cycling? How's it been? Seen any bears? How's your ass? How far do you do each day? HOW FAR???

The next day I set off to try to make it to Moose Jaw, which lay 165km from where I stayed. I had a brutal headwind for the first 80km, so spent most of it slogging, and then the headwind got even stronger for the next 40km. I bonked twice. The cyclists amongst you will understand, but to those uninitiated, bonking is when you run your body dry of glycogen and all that's left is fat. This hurts, it really does, and every movement is deliberate and painfully slow. All you can do is rest and eat and wait for your body to refuel. The first one wasn't so deep, and I managed to eat enough and sit by the road for long enough that it passed, but the second time, at kilometre 162, was the deepest I've ever experienced. The next 3 km took about twenty minutes, and I turned up at my hosts' house in Moose Jaw absolutely knackered.

What made the situation worse was the HUGE thunderstorm overhead. I could see it coming, a hazy wall with angry looking clouds swirling overhead, the occasional crack and rumble of thunder audible above the rain noise. At one point I was ducking with every flash that went off, because the lightning was all around, and I must have been the highest point for a thousand yards in every directon. As with much of the weather on the plains it was fickle, and passed within half an hour - just long enough to soak me though. My spirit was lifted when a man stopped to offer me a lift and a bed just outside of Moose Jaw, but at that point I was so close to another 100 mile day that I declined and cracked on. I was to stay with Jim Forbes, another warmshowers host, which meant I had a bed, shower and lots of lasagne to myself. I hit the bed and have never fallen asleep so quickly.

The next morning I visited Mac the Moose, a large fibreglass structure that represents Moose Jaw. I took it easy that day, and slowly wound my way to Regina for 1800h that evening. I listened to Daft Punk and made the most of the sun.

So far Regina has to be my favorite city in Canada. I stopped at their city lake on Goose Island and just sat in the sun and smiled. It was a perfect moment. I was still on my post-exercise hormone high, and had just had way too much sugar in Tim Hortons. I sat and watched the rowing training and talked to another Brit for a bit. I ended up a bit burnt, but it was more than worth it.

That night I had another warmshowers host looking after me, so I made my way over to his house on the other side of Regina. I was joined by the people I had stayed with last night at Jim's house. Rose and Ray had met up somewhere in BC, and had stuck together for company. I was pleased to learn that Rose was a Londoner, so I was finally able to complain about the state of Canadian cheese, and drink proper tea and generally remind myself that I was British.

Apart from being an excellent host, Ron was also a bike mechanic. This was exceptionally lucky, as my back wheel had started to break only the day before. The spoke nipple had pulled through my rim. I apologise for the poor taste, but again, those with a knowledge of cycling will understand, whereas the rest of you must make do with the following explanation: my wheel was broken and I needed a new one. So it got fixed, and took much longer than expected, but eventually I got away and made the most of the rest of the day. I made it to Kendal - not the one in the Lake District, but the one along highway 48, a much nicer road than hwy 1, mostly because of the lack of trucks and crazy elderly motor home drivers.

I've found that the trucks will almost always, if they can, move over to give you as much room possible; even if there's a two metre wide hard shoulder, most of them will wave at you if you look back, so I've taken to waving a brief acknowledgement of thanks to every passing truck. The motor homes, however, are less forgiving. It seems to be a national pastime in Canada to retire, sell your home and buy a beast of a camper van, the type that could easily pass for a coach in the UK. They're mostly smaller than the trucks, but you're able to drive one of these monstrosities on a regular car licence. This means that every elderly driver out there has the capacity to captain one of these beasts, and very rarely gives much room to any cyclists, or anyone else on the road for that matter. If I look behind me and see a huge 60 foot long logging truck, I'm 99% confident that I'll be passed far too wide to cause any concern. If I look behind me and see a 40 foot long RV with an elderly driver straining to see which way the road goes, I start praying, and veering sharply into the hard shoulder, or, if needs be, into the grass bank.

So I made it to Kendal, one of many little towns along the highway, and asked to stay in someone's yard. Her name was Jennifer, and once she had got past the strangeness of having some randomer stay in her yard, I was invited in for chamomile tea, and we talked late into the night about my trip and everything else that came to mind. In the morning I was invited in for a shower and a huge breakfast of bacon, eggs and toast. It's so nice for strangers to accept me and not only allow me to flatten their grass, but then go out of their way to look after me. It's a nice feeling to be unexpectedly looked after.

The next day took me to the farming town of Kennedy (through another called Bender) where I pitched my tent in another person's back yard; they weren't at home, but their brother-in-law said "it's probably ok". I took his word for it and got my head down. A rather uneventful day really.

The start of the next morning was more interesting. I passed through the Moose Mountain provincial park, and had the first hill in maybe 1000km. It was nice to remember that roads aren't just totally flat, and even nicer to desend a hill for the first time in far too long. I also passed the 2,000km mark and the 2,100km mark that day, which means according to my plan i'm roughly 1/3 of the way through the trip which is a nice thought and also means I'm just a little ahead of schedule, by about 4 days.

Another uneventful day followed, save for being unexpectedly and wordlessly bought a footlong sub in Subway by a total stranger. The usual afternoon thunderstorm gave me a thorough soaking just before I pitched my tent, which was lovely, but for the rest of the day my ride was sunny and usually windy, although it was mostly a sidewind which isn't so difficult.

Yesterday I completed my 450km beasting into Winnipeg with a final 151km day in the saddle. I seem to be encountering some, *ahem*, 'gentleman's soreness', shall we say (my arse hurts now) which makes riding all the more interesting, less for me and more for any passing cars who get to see all the strange positions I've been trying.

The road into winnipeg was pretty much just one straight road from A to B, with the occasional dog-leg to get around a particular field. It makes for some very meditative riding when there's nothing of interest to see or do. I often end up singing enthusiastically to the 1Gb of music stored on my phone, or working out an estimated time of arrival for no reason other than that it's something to do. It's boring, but tomorrow I'll be heading into the Canadian Shield, in Ontario, where the landscape makes it's next sudden change; from featureless plains to lakes and trees.

It should make a nice change, but for the next two weeks I'll be in some serious wilderness. The Rockies were wild, but there were regular towns; the prairies were less inhabited, but I could get between the towns because the riding was so fast and flat; Ontario is just rock, and trees, and water, and lots of each respectively.

So we come to today, and I've spent the morning sleeping-in and having breakfast before heading out to pick up a few things that I needed to buy, BUG-OFF being the most important of course (the mosquitos, or skeeters, will actually try and carry you away rather than just sucking your blood here, and some of them look big enough to manage it). I was treated to a nice Italian lunch in a restaurent, before we went to D'Arcys no-kill animal shelter. I can think of no better way to spend a rest day than playing with a room full of kittens, so that I did, for maybe an hour just mesmerized by them. Once I was bored of them we moved onto the puppies, but I had to do a shop, so left them pining for more cuddles. D'Arcy's daughter, Alex, and I went and did my food shop for the next week, which consisted of 32 oat bars, 24 nutrigrain bars, lots of oats and rasins, and packs of dehydrated pasta meals. And coffee of course, lots of coffee.

It can't have been very exiting for her, but it was nice to have a conversation with someone other than myself, and in the UltraSuperMegaHugemarkets she was invaluable in finding everything. I'm scared of those places; they're just too big, so I usually play it safe and shop in the aptly named Safeways. It's more expensive, but I don't get agoraphobia walking about the aisles.

I then accompanied D'Arcy's family, without him, to his wife's (Sharon) sister's house for a huge supper of chilli and salad. Canadians do chilli well, actually anything with beef they do pretty exceptionally. It was nice to sit in the sun and eat ice cream and have some company. That's what I've missed the most on this trip - not the comfort of a home, not good food, not even being dry and warm, but company. Luckily I've picked a country where everyone is happy to talk and most people are thrilled when they find out about the trip.

That brings me up until now, where I'm sitting at a computer typing away. It's getting late and I'm rather sleepy, but I hope that binge of trip info is of some interest.

As a final thought I'd like to share the lyrics of a song I've listened to pretty much every day, often on repeat. Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger by Daft Punk. It seems to fit:

Work It Harder Make It Better

Do It Faster, Makes Us stronger

More Than Ever Hour After

Our Work Is Never Over

It's true.=p

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