Day 33

6/24/09: Off Segment; Yorkton, Saskatchewan to Dauphin, Manitoba; 110 miles.

Great day! I have to say that days like today are what this is all about. Now first thing is that we’ve made over 2000 miles. Second thing is that we entered our fourth province – Manitoba. To bring you up to speed, last night we kind of roamed the streets of Yorkton searching for food, as usual, and happened upon a little mom and pop place that had home made icecream. So what do you know, I ordered a pint of black cherry – amazing stuff, and gone in 30 sec. Then it was back to the church for a little more work on the computer, checking our route for today, and this thanks to Pastor Steve for his contribution to our trip with some provincial maps of Saskatchewan and Manitoba. Then sweet dreams.

         We made it up by 7am, and that’s me, with Ryan probably hitting it an hour earlier and making the coffee, again courtesy of Pastor Steve via the church kitchen. We were out the door of the church at 8am, and Pastor Steve saw us off. Great man, wonderful hospitality. I wish we could have had some more conversation time with him as he was a pleasure to chat with.

So it was back on the road, this time on Route 10 east, a secondary, on a perfect, cloudless day, with a moderate tailwind coming out of the west. And we were just ripping it up from the get go with a perfectly straight road that ran for miles on end due west. Within the first 20 min we had a 16.5 average, and we’re not even warmed up yet.

         Now we did have this issue with these horse flies. Now we’ve had them on and off ever since Jasper, where they’d fly around for a bit, maybe two at a time as you were riding down the road. A minor nuisance, but never really a pain. But today, WOW, I would have anywhere from 4-10 of these monsters flying around me. And no matter how fast we went, these things were right at our side. Like glue! And it kind of ticked me off, so I decided to get a little thing going, kind of like what the WWII pilots did with shootdowns in the war, as they put stickers on their planes for each “kill” they made. Well, that was me with these horse flies. I’d wait for one to land on my handlebar bag……and WHACK. One down, and one sticker of a fly to put on my top tube.

         I told Ryan of my goofyness, and he just kind of laughed. So whenever I scored a hit on my handlebar bag, I’d hold up the number of fingers for Ryan, listening to his Ipod, to see. I mean these things were relentless. They would land all over the luggage, and kind of sit there waiting to get you at the right moment. So I kept whacking them on the handlebar bag because that I had the easiest proximity to. So the count kept going up……3 fingers, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8, which I whacked on my arm. Now I have the potential to put 8 fly stickers on the top tube of my bike!

         Finally, for some reason they just disappeared. Why, I’ve no idea, but we had to deal with them for about 2 solid hours. And NO, I didn’t get a bite, so I was a very solid 8 and 0. By about that time we descended down to a very beautiful lake area and into the province  of Manitoba. And like all of a sudden the terrain changed, form really flat to rolling with hills, it was crazy. I mean it cannot just be a sign that suddenly changes things. And not only that, but the trees were beginning to change – to where there were many more evergreens. So these rollers suddenly became a challenge, as we were up to an average of 17.5 by then, but the climbing really began to dig into that. Heck I had used the middle ring hardly at all in Saskatchewan, but in Manitoba I had used it 3 times in the first 40 min.

         Three hours in we stopped at a nice little town by the name of Roblin. I exchanged currency and had a great conversation with a lady at the RBC bank, where she was giving out cookies, ice sticks and ice tea. I told her how much I loved the little town, and how it was probably a great place to raise a family. She agreed, as she was greeting people, all by first name. She did say the kids want to get out of a small town like that, but later return when they’re adults to raise a family. Go figure. Sometimes you don’t know what you have until you’re gone. I love these little rural towns, and now that we’re off of the Yellowhead, Rt 16, we’ll really get a chance to get our there and see more of rural Canada. It’s pretty exciting right now with such a cool change of pace.

         So we hit the local supermarket in Roblin, and ate lunch under a gazebo in front of the store. Then it was back the road, which has changed numbers to Manitoba Rt 5 east. And again, we were flying, on a spectacular rural road, with amazing scenery surrounding us. This was one of those rides where you just shake your head at how cool everything is. Now there is now asphalt shoulder on this road, but the traffic is way more mellow than on Rt 16. Once in a while a truck, and some car traffic, but in general it was such a joy to ride on. No trouble with people, and a lot of honks of “go get um”. And the speed kept on creeking up, to 17.3 average, to 17.5 average and a 17.7 average.

         About 4.5 hours in we stopped at a little gas station store in Grandview, Manitoba. My mouth was getting pretty dry, and I was craving a coke. So we go in, and Ryan gets a slushy, a bright blue one. So I get a Pepsi and a red slushi. Amazingly great. That cold, cherry flavored ice just tasted spectacular. I literally guzzled the stuff down, while Ryan was fighting the notorious headache syndrome from eating the ice slushy too fast. Not me. I inhaled the stuff – no brain cells to explode in me! I finished the pop and slushy, and then I commenced to throw down about 2 bottles of tap water on top of that……. and I felt like I had just been filled up with a fire hose. So we talked with the locals for a bit, and listened to what routes may be good in crossing Manitoba and bypassing Winnipeg. They were great folks, and each had his own opinion on what was the best way to go as the “touring” route. We had some good ideas to chew on.

So we get er going again, and my belly is just like, well, like someone inserted a balloon in it and then filled it to capacity. Wwwwwwwooooo. Not a good feeling. And I yelled back to Ryan that it may take me a good 30-40 min to get back into the swing of a good hard pace. In the meantime I just wanted to keep the 120 ounces of liquid in me. So I pedal and burp for about 20 min. I mean I was literally sloshing, the liquids just mixing with the Pepsi carbonation and creating these nasty animal-like burps. After about 30 min the carbonation burps stopped and I was more in the gig again.

We’d get these long, long straightaways, that would go for 5-8 miles, and it was slightly flat so the pace was just crazy, and I’m talking like 21-27mph. So I jumped on the big meat and went  into the TT mode. “Time to get it done and finish the day with………..food!”  Now we had a bus stop to drop off kids, and I kind of sighed in frustration, but then the driver really got it up to speed again so we were able to hammer. And as we were hammering I noticed that the clouds had been building up to the point to where we had some rain storms ahead and behind us. It’s so flat out here you can see for miles in front and back of you, so these storms looked close, but even jamming at 20 some mph, we just couldn’t get past them. I did get a touch of rain for about 5 min, more than likely the very periphery of the storm in front. You could see this long draping of rain hanging in the sky, kind of just moving along like a tornado would.

This is where I really pushed hard so as to beat the storm. One of the worst things that can happen on a ride is to be racing a rain storm, to ALMOST get to your destination, with maybe a few min or a couple of miles to go……and BAM……you get hammered with rain. That totally sucks. And that is what I did not want to happen here. And you could see fresh puddles of rain on the road as I rode on, with Ryan just a tab behind me now, so I knew that we were riding on borrowed time at this point. Finally,  I passed the Daulphin City Limit sign, looked behind me and saw this nasty wall of black, and I’m hoping that Ryan is kicking it like I was kicking it. At this point we had gotten 110 miles in 5:50 hrs, not bad ha?

Ryan pulled in about 8 min later and we ask a couple of people for the location of a Subway. We get em, and ride about a block, with the wall of black clouds just on our tail. Get inside, order, sit down, and all hell breaks loose outside with the storm. It rains like crazy for about 15 min while we’re devouring our subs. Yup, same old for me, and a single for Ryan. And I’m able to tap into someone’s wifi inside so I work on returning client emails for a bit, do a quick skype, and then let Ryan take over.

He had looked for a place to stay, and the owners of a bike shop suggested some free camping in the city park. So we finish up in the Subway with the computer and head over to the city park. Now a sign there says that camping is 14 bucks, but the bike guy had said they let tents pitch for free……..Right! We set tents up and then the camp caretaker comes over to collect. Not only is it 14 bucks, but 14 bucks per tent. Now we’re not poor and homeless, but 14 bucks per tent on one site is a bit ridiculous. Oh well, tents are set up, the mosquitoes are biting big time, it’s 7:30pm and we are just wiped out. And the guy is a good sort, just doing his job, so 28 bucks to camp next to a mosquito infested bog! They do have a shower here so we were both able to wash a couple salt shakers worth of salt off of our bodies and then soak our cycling garb in hot water to wash the salt out of them. It was well over 80-degrees today, so we were totally salt encrusted. Same with cloths.

I’m now here in hotel Hille, and Ryan said he’s hitting the hay in his 14 buck a tent Hille. This was a great day, and it looks like we’ll have some real interesting terrain to cover here in Manitoba. We’ll be heading off into some remote area tomorrow, continuing east on Rt 5 towards Lac Manitoba. From there we’re looking to do the interlake route on Rt 68 that goes right through the middle of Lac Manitoba, and onward to the west shore of Lake Winnipeg, and down south along the west shore. So tomorrow we may not have any wifi available, so the next blog could be a couple days away. We’ll see.

Well, I’ll try to post this now. All the best to all of you following, and we’ll talk to you soon. Late……….Pete