Day 23 - Chaplin to Moose Jaw (T.D.: 90km; S.T.: 5h49min)

Woke up, dew-covered, at 5am this morning in order to get an early start and beat this prairie heat. We were rewarded for our ambitions with the prize of thick fog and a fierce headwind. The fog lifted before too long, but unfortunately, the headwind only intensified. This was our first day dealing with a headwind for any great length of time, and it was an interesting experience. It's kind of like you're always going uphill, which is a bad thing, but you stay nice and cool even though you're working so hard (because of the constant wind), which is a good thing. All in all, the day went by quite quickly even though our progress was slow and our saddle time long. I think the early start probably helped in that regard. And we did get most of our riding done before the heat really set in.

Our first few hours were spent looking for signs that might indicate when we would next cross paths with a grocery store or restaurant of some kind. For some reason, we had let our food supply dip dangerously low, and we were down to our last two dried apricots before we hit kilometer 20. After this, we would be forced to subsist on spoonfuls of peanut butter. Smooth peanut butter, even. Luckily, we found some fresh-baked cinnamons in the town of Mortlach which saved the day. Thank you Mortlach! (Next time, we’ll pack sunflower seeds – thanks for the tip, Anna!)

Mortlatch also provided the meeting grounds for an encounter with a young man name Ryo. Ryo is from Japan, but is cycling across Canada in search of a job, dropping resumes off in every city he passes. Ryo is much faster than us, but as a solo cyclist, we discovered, he is more susceptible to attacks by wild animals(!). We were tipped off to this fact when he asked us, in all seriousness, “So, have you been attacked by many wild animals?” As it turns out, Ryo had, to that point in his journey, come under the claws of at least two hawks, and was chased by a coyote through the Cypress Hills. No bears (or bearcows) yet, however. He had also been caught in a hailstorm somewhere near the summit of the Kootenay Pass.

While Ryo sailed past us for his next wildlife confrontation, we continued to fight the headwind until Moosejaw, where we set up camp for the night at the Prairie Oasis Tourist Complex (it was as lovely as it sounds...), after which we headed downtown to find something to eat. Moose Jaw lays claim to the most all-you-can-eat Chinese-Canadian buffets in the whole world (I am certain that this is a fact), which suited us fine, being a Chinese-Canadian couple after all. We ate all that we could.

Stats:

Av. Spd.: 15.4km/h (the headwind really killed us)

Mx. Spd.: 32.5km/h (this occured on a small hill during the first couple kilometres of the trip - the rest of the time, we didn't go much higher than 18km/h - does anybody care?)

Evidence of a peculiar brand of Saskatchewan humor: A sign that said “Point of Interest: 2km” and then, after two kilometers, a turn-out that had nothing but a big garbage bin on it. Very funny! I worked hard to get to that point of interest.

Contents of our food bag after the dried apricots were eaten: Four or five tablespoons of peanut butter, a couple of those jam things that you get at breakfast restaurants, a small bag of powdered milk, and a handful of drink crystals.

Most surprising non-encounter: Ryo camped in Chaplin the same night we did, but at a different campground, amazingly. Chaplin is REALLY small. Why does it have two campgrounds? His cost 20 bucks, while ours cost 10. Ours had a pool. His didn't even have showers. He chose poorly.