Loyal She Began, Loyal She Remains: Rolling into Ontario

As of this moment we are in Dryden, ON- hometown of Chris Pronger. There's a campsite in town where we are staying. It came with a mini Saint-Jean-Baptiste day celebration as there's a Quebecois couple camping beside us. The conversation with our mangled French and their broken English is a sneak preview of the Quebec leg of our journey.

Anyway, the first night of Ontario was spent east of Kenora. Kenora is home to the Kenora Thistles who won the Stanley Cup in 1907. The town doesn't let you forget that fact as your riding into town. In Kenora I finally got to see Huskie the Muskie- their giant roadside attraction fish- up close and personal; another life dream fulfilled there.

We stopped in Winnipeg for a day. The Peg has a pretty nice downtown core. Checked out the Forks which is a National Historic Site. It is where the Red river and the Assisboine converge. A more interesting area was over the river in Saint Boniface which still maintains a very French character. It is here where you can find the grave of Louis Riel and some of his lieutenants.

Here are some other Manitoba memories in no particular order:
-Seeing traditionally dressed Mennonite woman rip around on her traditional riding lawn mower.
-Confusing the hell out of the deer- they take one puzzled look at us and our strange devices and then they tear away as fast as they can. One guy didn't stop for at least 400 metres.
-Shredding my back tire. The rubber seperated and had suffered close to 20 tears- the biggest being a 4-5 inch gash. Good thing we carry spares.
-Ripping to Gladstone- just beating a major lightening storm. The storm's winds helped us reach 40 km/h speeds which is really nice on flat ground.
Also making use of a strong tailwind, I went from Grandview to Gilbert Plains -13 kms- all in my top gear.
-Steak on the grill at Gilbert Plains- we also had potatoes and garlic bread.
Riding Mountain National Park- hilly but a really healthy forest surrounded but lower lying farmland.
-Tyler snapping his chain just outside of Riding Mountain which was bit of a production to put on a new one, but we did it.

It's raining right now but hopefully it'll let up and we can power to Ignace which is 110 kms away.

Goodbye Rich

Even though we were in Saskatoon for two short days it was nice to get back on the road again (that is not to say Saskatoon wasn't a nice place as it's a pretty city for the most part.) The first night back in the tent was spent in Humbolt, SK which, as Aiden is so keen to point out, is home to Glen “Mr. Goalie” Hall who similarly to Gordie “Mr. Hockey” Howe also grew up in rural Saskatchewan. Apart from its famous hockey playing progeny, Humbolt was typical of the larger prairie towns we have come across in our travels. That is to say one major road which also happens to be the highway and a couple of side streets where the people live, and not really much else. Humbolt also happened to be the place where Rich decided it was for the best to throw in the towel. I certainly can't fault him for it, he rode from Calgary to a days ride past Saskatoon without any training. As such, he did a great job keeping up and he certainly carried more than his share of food. The Last we saw of him he was riding west to grab a Saskatoon bound bus where he would then presumably be heading to Edmonton to give Jared a surprise visit. Aiden and I both had a lot of fun cycling with him for that week and a bit and hope his knee and ankle begin to feel normal again soon (but not too soon, so he remembers us for a little longer.)

Today's ride was record setting; we smashed our daily speed average record by a full 2 km/h to bring our new daily speed average record to a whopping 25.8 km/h! Well not quite whopping, but I still think that it is somewhat impressive. To put things into perspective, we traveled 146.97 kms today, meaning we were cycling at around 26 km/h on fully loaded touring bikes for just under six hours. That sounds a little more like it. Aiden and I were wondering when the ride through Sasquatchewan was going to live up to our expectations of the quickest cruise of the trip, and now that we are within half a day's ride from Manitoba it seems to be shaping up that way.

Headwind

We've made it as far as Saskatoon now, and it wasn't without a little difficulty of late. We were happy to have a helpful tail wind to blow us to Calgary (our longest day yet at 159.36 kms) so I guess it was time to have the wind blowing the wrong way, all day. After leaving Drumheller there was a brutal headwind coming from the North, and to Adrian's (and our own) dismay that is why we missed out on the Big Vally Creation Musuem. It was just too far out of the way to justify the visit under such adverse conditions. The East of Canada, however is not something we can avoid if we want to bike across the country and unfortunately for us, the past two days of cycling have involved a relatively strong headwind coming from the north east. It has been some tough going for Aiden and I, so I can't even imagine what it was like for Rich who came from working on the deck of a fishing boat all day to cycling all day; we certainly are impressed.
Other than the headwind Saskatchewan has been a great place to cycle. The roads have been great for the most part and the people have been really helpful. We were in subway for lunch one day and one of us forgot a pair of sunglasses (not pointing any fingers.) On the way out Subay we had a brief conversation with an RCMP officer about the trip and then continued on down the highway. Not two kilometers out of town, an RCMP cruiser came down the highway from behind us with the lights on and sunglasses in hand. It was a nice thing for him to do, and the person who forgot the glasses appreciates it.
Another day we were planning on stopping for lunch in the small town of Tessier, SK but found that the store was only open until noon (we were less than 60k from Saskatoon so we didn't have anything but snacks left.) Luckily for us, Rich ran into a gentlemen on the street whose wife ran the store so he suggested that he'd go get her to open it up for us. Experiences like this certainly show what great people make up this country, well except for the idiots that drive past us and lay on the horn as if to tell us to get off the virtually empty highway...

Saskatchewan!

We've made it to our third Provence: Saskatchewan. If it wasn't for the change in the road signs, it would be hard to tell the difference between eastern Alberta and western Saskatchewan. Both are fairly level, yet rolling country, covered in farms as far as you can see in all directions. Our last night in Alberta we stayed at a campground in Youngstown (it was more of a field with RV hookups and a fire-pit) but it did have a hotel with a small-town bar on the ground floor. There was some interesting people to talk to there, I kind of liked listening to this retired trucker guy go on about where he's been and what he's hauled. The next day we rode to Saskatchewan, at lunch we did the usual and stopped at Subway. Rich and I were looking at the map, Aiden had left to make a phone call, when another cyclist came in. He asked us where we were from, and when we asked him he answered with Denver. He had left two weeks before us, yet had gone up through Utah, Oregon, Washington, BC, and then Alberta; needless to say he put us to shame. Mind you he was raising money for a charity and was van supported... We have about a day an a half of cycling left until we hit Saskatoon and we are all looking forward to sometime off again to rest our legs.

There be Dinosaurs

Aiden and I ended up being in Calgary a little bit longer that expected. It did, however, work out for the best as I now have a pair Shimano Ultegra shifters that allow me to glide effortlessly from gear to gear (at $450 for the pair of them, they had better) but more importantly Rich Malcolm has joined us on the trip for the foreseeable future. Rich had just finished on the halibut boat, saw that we were stuck in Calgary, and then decided to fly out to join us on the trek. The day after Rich arrived was a busy affair; we had to find a bike and all of the necessary camping gear so that we could head out on the road the next morning. It was quite the shopping experience, but we managed to get it all done.

The ride out of Calgary was great, we were on bike paths virtually the entire way, and then moved onto a low-traffic rural highway where had a bit of a tailwind. After spending the night in Beiseker, we made to Drumheller in time for lunch and spent the afternoon wandering around the Royal Tyrell museum. I hadn't been in some number of years and was pleasantly surprised to see that it's been changed up quite a bit. I was also pleasantly surprised to hear that Aiden enjoyed the museum, and get this, thought it was better than the Dino exhibit in the Royal Ontario Museum (as hard as it is to believe, he is a diehard Toronto fanboy.) The guys are getting ready to start Shrek 3 so I think I am going to join them. If we don't have a horrific head wind from the North we'll be going to visit the Big Valley Creation Science Museum which will be good for a laugh. Thanks to everyone that helped to host us in Calgary, especially my Grandpa put up with us for longer than initially planed.