Day 28 – Elkhorn to Brandon (T.D.: 103km; S.T.; 5h29min)

A record start time today: 6:11am, which felt like 5:11am to us, having just crossed the border and set our clocks ahead an hour. We whispered goodbye to the Elkhorn municipal campground, which was as quiet as the cemetery beside it. 25km down the road, we stopped in Virden for a delicious breakfast at another Shell station. I had French toast, while Caroline had her usual of eggs, over-easy, and toast. We find that sometimes two courses is just not enough, so we ordered a third to split between us: one of those yogurt, fruit and granola things.

Nicely sated, we set out again, only to discover my first flat tire of the trip! 1 flat tire in 2500km ain’t so bad. It was also convenient to be able to fix it in a roomy parking lot in the shade, as opposed to under the hot sun on a busy highway shoulder.

The otherwise uneventful trip to Brandon got considerably more exciting when we spotted an incredible prairie thunderstorm hovering directly in our path. While we seem to have been dodging extreme weather left and right since we got to the prairies, this was the first time that we could see a whole, isolated weather system looming right in front of us – and it was massive. I, personally, have never seen anything like it. You know how on the weather network, when you see storms on the satellite radar screen and they’re these big spirally things that move across the map? Well, to this point in my life, that image was some weird fiction that had no bearing on the reality of storms; today, I realized that the satellite radar does not lie. From our vantage point as insignificant specks on the side of the TransCanada, we could see the whole great swirling beast guarding the entrance to Brandon, MB, ready to swallow us whole should we dare try and pedal our way past.I should say that we still hadn’t felt a drop of rain yet; nor could we hear the thunder, though we could see the lightning flashing, and weren’t feeling too confident about our chances of avoiding this thing unscathed. This feeling only intensified as things started getting all dark and windy around us, and chicken feathers started blowing towards us from the farms in the distance.Fortunately, things didn’t end in a climax worthy of the 1996 film Twister, and all the tension and suspense resolved itself undramatically into blue sky and sunshine as the system wheeled its way northeast towards the horizon.

Pulling the horseshoes from our bottoms, we slowed our heightened pace and finished the ride into the outskirts of Manitoba’s Wheat City, to the home of Barb and Lawrie Groves, who had kindly lent us their house while they went to their cottage for the long weekend. Here, we cooked and consumed a gigantic meal. We didn’t take a photo, but I can assure you that we ate enough to feed several families.

Stats:

Av. Spd.: 18.7km/h

Mx. Spd.: 30.0km/h
Days since last flat tire: 19

Hallucinations of funnel clouds forming in the weather system in front of us: several
Hallucinations of cows being tossed through the air as a result of watching Twister too many times as a youngster: 2

Kilograms of salmon eaten: 1.2

Servings of rice enjoyed: 4.5

Number of vegetables devoured: 2 big potatoes, 2 cobs of corn, 1 large salad

Haagen-Daas ice cream bars ingested to round out the meal: 1 (Caroline didn’t have one)