6/28/09: Off Route; Ericsdale Manitoba to Selkirk, Manitoba; 110 miles.
On the road again! And did it feel good to get back to making our way across Canada. The prairie wind machine was turned on full blast today, as we woke up to the sounds of these massive wind gusts. The only real worry was……..what was the direction.
Now last night we watched one more movie, and Ryan fell asleep, and I turned it off around 11pm. It was the Batman with George Cloony. Kind of lame actually. But the nice thing of the evening was that you could see some clearing in the west as this massive monsoon was actually rolling out of the area. So we both felt pretty positive that the morning would be for riding. So got up at 5:50am to the howling winds. First thing I did was to open the door, with both fingers crossed, toes crossed, hail Mary’s and the whole bit, and just hope for something that would aid us. And the verdict was……..winds out of the northwest at anywhere from 20-35+ mph. Now I’m telling you, these prairie winds are just out of hand. They can be constant or they can be constant with massive gusts. We had the latter today.
Got on the road at about 7:30am, which was great for two reasons: the first of which is that we can cover more mileage when it’s cooler out, and the second is that I’m beginning to think that the bulldogs are a late riser – not coming out to torment animals until 10 or 11am. So we figured we put some good time in before the bulldog-fest would begin. As we’ve found out in the past, the winds don’t make a bit of difference to these little harpies, as they’ll hang out in a talwind, crosswind, headwind, no matter how fierce the velocity of the wind can be. They are there. Period!
So we get this beautiful cross tailwind out of the northwest, a first for the Great Plains wind direction. Most everything we’ve had thus far has been out of the southwest, and it just so happened that today we had a portion of southerly riding that would go for nearly 60 miles. Now a week ago that 60-mile piece of riding would have been crazy hard to do in the cross headwind, so today we felt we had to strike while the iron was hot, taking advantage of the wind direction and riding that whole southerly portion today. That was the plan. Game on. So the first stretch of riding, about 40+ min worth, was with the cross tailwind. And the the road did this insane curve to the north, curving and curving and we just knew what was coming……from 18 mph to 8 mph within one sweeping curve. And this puppy was constant for about 13 min. Believe me, I’m timing the minutia of everything, just because sometimes you have to play mind games with yourself to get it rolling 5-8 hrs a day on the bike.
And I’m telling Ryan while we’re fighting this crazy headwind about the headwind I fought in Iceland one day, a headwind that had me down to 5 mph, in the little cookie, for 12 straight hrs of riding! Worst headwind day of my life actually. So we both felt good that we were nearly double that number going into this headwind. We rounded the corner finally, and curved back to a cross tailwind for another long, 1 + hr stretch of riding. One more small curve and headwind section and we were golden. The rest of the way on Rt 68 to Arborg was nice and flat with a great cross tailwind.
Jumped on Rt 7 south to Winnipeg and again, got a good cross tailwind, but this time the gusts were just pushing us all over the road. Thank God for the berm, because a couple of times we were just thrown out into the traffic side of the road. There were times were I was thirsty, but didn’t dare go down with one hand to reach for a water bottle, for fear of the wind gusting so hard as to knock me off of the bike with that one hand steering. So I’d wait for a rare moment when the wind died down, reach for the bottle real quick, take a swig, and then hold the bottle in the right hand and steer until I got another little lull in the wind. Sometimes I’d have to steer with bottle in hand for a good 5-10 min before it felt as though the wind was dieing down.
The push south was actually stronger than the push west, so we were just tearing up up on the Rt 7 south portion. This is a road that is so straight and flat it’s beyond belief. It just goes and goes and goes, with hardly any features at all with respect to up and down. Straight and flat. That’s it. So we take this thing for nearly an hour, just smashing the pedals. Ryan backed off just a bit and I cruised into to our next junction, I think it’s Rt 321 east (don’t have a map on me right now as I’m sitting at the Selkirk library which is closed, using the internet. Great connection, so I’m planted here until I go back to camp). Anyway, we took this little country road east to Lake Winnipeg, looking to go to Gimli, Manitoba. Didn’t take but about 10 miles with the cross tail and we were there.
Next up……..Subway. By Gimil we’d done 72 miles in 4 hours, so we did our usual routine: me 2 12-inch subs; Ryan 1 12-inch sub; both with sodas. The temp in there was like……well like a meat locker, and when we went out to ride we were both chilled to the bone. Couple that with the very cool, very windy day today, and we had the chills. I had to put on my long sleeve cycling jersey to try to get warm. My fingers were numb and tingling, and I kind of had the chills going. Ryan was the same. So were now on Rt 9 south out of Gimli, freezing cold, and trying to crank it back up to speed again with 24 inches of subs in my gut. Burp, burp, burp. Not a good feeling.
Finally got warm within about an hour of riding, and eventually cranked the mph’s up to a good level again. So we see a sign for Selkirk, the town we had agreed would make a good destination for the day, that said it was 27 K away. Just what I needed. With a great cross tail, I really began to smell the hay and the barn, and gradually cranked up the mph to the point to where we were doing 30 mph. Now, I was working pretty hard, and couple that with a cross tailwind that was literally laying the roadside grasses down horizontal to the surface, and you can imagine riding a mt bike with 85 lbs of junk on board at 30 mph. It was a thing of beauty. We were able to sustain this pace for a bit, fluctuating between that and 25 mph for the last half hour. Pulled into Selkirk with 5:50 hrs of riding under our belts, having covered a distance of 110 miles. Some of the overriding today was to help to make up for what we lost yesterday with the forced off-day.
Ryan checked with the Father of a nice little Catholic church here in town and we were given permission to camp in their courtyard. It’s a wonderful little fenced in area with a garden and spigots for water. They’ve had so much rain in the Winnipeg area over the last 2 days that there are large lakes of water on crops, alongside the roadways…… and in this courtyard, as a large wheelbarrow is completely full of water. Totally full, brimming over full, ready to explode full. And in just 2 days of rain. That’s how crazy it rained over the last 48 hours out here. We were even told by one of the custodians of the church that areas of road are closed because the manholes have backed up.
So when we told you of the deluge yesterday, I was not kidding. It was just so nasty that there was not even an issue of riding in it. NOPE!
Well, I’m just about done here at the library, and I think I’ll go next door to the DQ and get some burgers to go, to have dinner in the hotel Hille back at the church. We’re going to get back on segment tomorrow and continue going east on Rt 44, which is about 5 miles southeast out of Selkirk. I’m hoping we an make the Ontario border sometime on Tuesday, and then it’s Rt 17 all the way past the Su, just north of Michigan’s UP. So we’re getting into familiar territory once we get to Ontario, as I’ve ridden this route many many years ago when I was in college. Hope they’ve worked on the berm since then!
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