Day 36 – Nestor Falls, Ontario to International Falls, Minnesota (T.D.: 96.0km; S.T.: 5h44min)

Oh Caliper Lake Provincial Park! You seemed so idyllic, with your beautiful lakefront sites, gorgeous sunsets, and lush green foliage! Little did we know you would send an army of mosquitoes to feast upon our unsuspecting flesh in the early light of dawn!

Yes, we made a hasty retreat from the park, skipping our own breakfast in order to deny the bugs theirs. Mosquitoes generally haven’t been much of a problem for us on this trip, much to our surprise, but this would be the second campsite where we nearly devoured by the little beasties (Emerson Bridge, in Alberta, was the first).

We stopped down the road a ways, deep in logging territory, for a breakfast snack at a lumber checkpoint.As we rode south to the border, the trees around us would sometimes start to quiver and shake, and eventually thrash about wildly like victims of a giant wood shark that was pulling them under the forest canopy and gorging itself upon the remains.

Logging is the only sign of human activity in these parts, though the occasional billboard indicates that a handful of hunting and fishing lodges lie not too far off the beaten path.

After a few hours of riding, we arrived in the hilariously-named town of Emo, where we stopped for a snack and to write in our diaries about the past break-ups, loneliness, and dysfunctional families that made our lives so miserable (http://www.amazon.ca/Everybody-Hurts-Essential-Guide-Culture/dp/0061195391).

From there we continued on to Fort Frances, where we would cross the border into the U.S. of A., for the American leg of our trip. The border crossing was interesting. We were questioned for about 20 minutes by a stern man who was completely bewildered by our adventure. It was unclear whether he was asking us so many questions because he was suspicious of our intentions, or because he was genuinely interested in the details of how such a trip might work. I think he was genuinely interested, but masking that fact with a façade of suspiciousness. In the end he seemed quite impressed as to how organized we were. I guess they don’t get many cyclists passing through here.

Stats:

Av. Spd.: 17.3km/h

Mx. Spd.: 40.4km/h

Best new use of a modern buzzword: From now on, if we say that something is “so emo,” we will be referring exclusively to the habits and customs employed and favoured by the residents of Emo, Ontario (nary a long-bangsed moper among them, mind you).

Day 35 – Sioux Narrows to Nestor Falls (T.D.: 54.4km; S.T. 3h06min)

It was odd to wake up on a small island in a rustic cabin today. How did we get here? Oh yes. The generosity of strangers . Right. We had slept on some cots with a roof over our heads in a screened-in porch to enjoy the breeze off the lake, and ironically, got far wetter during the night than we usually do in the tent, due to some heavy rain and strong winds that blew through during the night. It was fun though! And we didn’t really get that wet (Caroline wisely moved inside when the rain started blowing through the screens, and I sleepily migrated to the centre of the room). The morning was leisurely, as we enjoyed breakfast with our new friends and got ready to head back to the mainland. Cast a few more lines off the dock and managed to catch a smallmouth bass before leaving. Then it was back to Sioux Narrows in the motorboat, where we bid farewell to the gang, and thanked them for giving us this great gift of hospitality and fun!

What an experience! Thanks guys!

Refreshed and happy, we hit the road once again and decided we would keep to our schedule (one day delayed) and finish yesterday’s trip to Caliper Lake Provincial Park. This was a great idea, as the park was lovely lovely lovely. And, unlike most days, we arrived early enough to really enjoy it, setting up the tent, going for a swim, and making dinner all before the sun started to set.

Stats:

Av. Spd.: 17.4km/h

Mx. Spd.: 53.9km/h

Best name for a fish that lives in these lakes: The Black Crappie

Runner-up: The White Crappie

Day 34 – Kenora to Sioux Narrows (T.D.: 62.5km; S.T.: 3h50min)

The thick fog of heat and humidity (not actual fog, that’s just a metaphor) had not left us today, but luckily we were deep in lake country, with an impressive selection of places to cool off should the need arise. The need did, and we enjoyed a lovely dip in Bunny Lake, one of the many offshoots of Lake of the Woods. By Sioux Narrows, however, we had gotten quite thirsty, but unfortunately, none of the water we could find was potable (what’s that famous Coleridge quote?). We ducked into Gill’s Trading Post to purchase some liquid refreshment (Arizona Iced Tea and Fruit Punch – quite a bargain at 99cents for 691ml) and stood outside in the shade to drink it. While we were standing there, something remarkable happened. Allow me to relay the events to you:

- Two cyclists stand outside Gill’s Trading post in Sioux Narrows, Ontario, sipping Arizona Iced Tea and Fruit Punch

- A young boy sitting in a nearby truck engage the cyclists in conversation.

- After speaking with the boy for several minutes (impressed with the maturity and candor with which he spoke), the cyclists turn their attention back to their refreshments

- Suddenly, the cyclists are approached by a woman, who asks them, both directly and plainly, if they would fancy a bit of a break from their ride and accompany her and her family (two daughters stood beside her) back to their private island for an overnight sojourn to enjoy the lake in all its summertime splendor.

- The boy in the truck (who turns out to be the woman’s son) pipes up that indeed the cyclists should take his mother up on her offer, that there is great swimming there, and great fishing too.

- The cyclists, overwhelmed by the proposition, the spontaneity of it, the generosity, shake their heads in wonder and mumble a thanks-but-no-thanks-really-it-sounds-wonderful-but-we-just-couldn’t sort of response and smile politely (and genuinely)

- The woman, attuned to the fact that her offer was indeed both spontaneous and (preposterously) generous, offers the cyclists a few minutes to think it over more deeply while she and her daughters pick up a few groceries in the Trading Post.

- The cyclists think it over.

- The boy in the truck shouts some more encouragement

- The cyclists decide to accept

And so, we followed Cara, her daughters Nacoya and Ciara and son Kelton, down to the nearby marina, where we left our bikes, hopped onto the family’s motorboat, and sped off through a maze of land and water to their private island on Lake of the Woods. There, we swam, fished, relaxed, ate, and were generally entertained by these delightful people for a 24 hour window of bliss in the heart of Northwestern Ontario’s vacation country. It was, to be quite frank, awesome. Thank you so much Ted, Cara, Kelton, Nacoya and Ciara for showing us an incredible time!

Stats:

Av. Spd.: 16.2km/h

Mx. Spd.: unknown (we forgot to write down some of the stats in all the commotion)

Important stat that we did remember: 3000km on the odometer!! Woo!

Biggest stereotype explosion: By far the greatest hospitality we've been shown by strangers in Canada came from an American family (Ted, Cara, and the gang are from Montana)

Number of leech attacks: 1

Day 33 – Prawda to Kenora (T.D.: 125.4km; S.T.: 7h00min)

Another hot, humid day. The landscape got increasingly more interesting (read: less horizontal), however, as we approached the Ontario border. Also, though our climbing muscles may have disappeared somewhere around Calgary, its amazing how the physical stimulation provided by a few hills can really make the kilometres zoom by. They also made us very tired, however, and we were quite exhausted by the time we reached Kenora. The impressive sight of Kenora, situated as it is at the top of the mysterious and unwieldy Lake of the Woods, was reward enough for our efforts, and we celebrated with a foot-long sandwich at Subway. We had hoped to make it past Kenora to Rushing River Provincial Park tonight, but our legs were too tired, and so we bailed out at a commercial campground on the city limits called the Willows. The owner there was a nice fellow, and told us we had just missed a doozy of a thunderstorm the day before. Our luck, it seems is still with us!

Stats

Av. Spd.: 17.8km/h

Mx. Spd.: 45.2km/h

Most eye-opening juxtaposition: The very visible population of (mostly) white Canadian vacationers with lovely cottages on the lake vs. the very visible population of First Nations people begging on the mall sidewalk.

Day 32 – Winnipeg to Prawda (T.D.: 122.7km; S.T.: 6h34min)

Back at it. We’ve got a huge backlog of these things to pump out, so I’m going to have to be slightly more business-like from here on in (or am I just saying that to mask the fact that the trip got slightly more boring the further into Manitoba we got?). Our first day back on the road after a luxurious 120 hour break made it apparent why long-distance cyclists don’t take 120 hour breaks. Our leg muscles had softened considerably, much like an ice cream cone left too long between licks. Ice cream was on our minds this day too, as we had returned to the highway in the midst of a sweltering dose of high heat and humidity the weather gods were administering across central Canada. They had also thrown in an atypical easterly wind to make things even more challenging for us as we pushed ourselves across the open expanse that leads from Winnipeg to the Canadian Shield.

The Shield, which would be the next Important Canadian Landscape to claim us as its own for a few weeks, started to come into view around Richer, where we stopped at a little hunting/fishing oasis called Walker’s. The owner, presumably a fan of Chuck Norris, told us that a couple of cyclists has been chased down and eaten by a wolf the other day. He was joking. Ha! Hm. Anyway, we stayed around and humoured him for a while, because his store was air-conditioned. At some point, we decided that heatstroke was preferable to his antics, and so got back on the road.

We arrived in Prawda (fashion capital of Manitoba) late and camped at a wonderful little place called Pine Tree Campground, which was owned and efficiently run by a serious German couple. We would recommend it if you’re passing through. They have a little restaurant where they serve homemade pie and authentic schnitzel.

Stats

Av. Spd.: 18.6km/h
Mx. Spd.: 28.7km/h
Newest roadkill variety: Turtles! (This is cool because I like turtles and rarely see them. This is bad because I like turtles and now they are roadkill.)
Evidence that the Trailer Park Boys tv show has fans as far abroad as Richer, Manitoba: A couple of young fellows at Walker’s made some reference to Ricky and Bubbles when we told them we were from the east coast. They thought they were being coy and clever, but we were on to them.

An explanatory note (to interrupt - and explain - the silence)

Hello friends and faithful readers,
For those curious minds out there who might be wondering what has befallen their beloved blog hero and heroine - fear not. We are still alive: happy, healthy, and riding our bikes. It's just that internet is scarce in these parts. You are far more likely to find black bears and mosquitoes here than you are a library with a computer and internet hook-up (much less one that's actually OPEN at REASONABLE HOURS). In any case, we don't even really have time to update the blog right now - though we did manage to find a computer - but I thought I would let you know that we are still alive at least. I think it will be another two weeks before we can actually fill you in on all that's happened. In the meantime, you can all go back to your Stieg Larsson novels (I hear he's all the rage this summer), as you wait for us to get back online.
To give you an idea of our progress, though...
Since we last updated this thing in Winnipeg, we've travelled 1142 kilometres, crossed one provincial, one international, and two state borders, eaten 7 slices of pie (I know, I know, not a very impressive showing), one bag of Oreos, and 55 bags of instant oatmeal, blown several American minds by telling them about our adventure, caught 2 fish in the Lake of the Woods, and been stopped by State police once (actually, we were already stopped, and he was just checking to see if we were alright).
We'll be back in Canada in approximately 4 days. Hope you're all doing well.
Bye for now,
Pat and Caroline

August 4th - August 7th: INTERMISSION

During the above-stated dates, we temporarily adjourned the cross-country biketrip to accept and complete a top-secret mission for one of Eastern Canada's most notorious mafia patriarchs. The mission can't be discussed here at length; however, I can tell you that it may or may not have involved being shuttled to an undisclosed island location to play mini-golf, enjoy several long walks on reddish-hued beaches, and indulge in sizeable portions of butter-dipped lobster.

The Family was very pleased with how the operation played out.

We will be back on the road tomorrow.

It seems as fitting a time as any to remind readers that this bike trip is being used as a platform from which to highlight and advance a worthy cause from back east. The Randy Cable Fund, a Fredericton charity dedicated to helping cancer patients and their families through periods of treatment, is currently accepting your donations online at
http://www.randycable.com/fr_thefund.cfm.

Randy was simply one cool dude with a big heart. A talented musician, he recorded an album in the hospital in Fredericton while being treated for colorectal cancer. He was diagnosed at 29. Caroline knew Randy for one year, which was filled with trying cancer treatments, hospital window painting, coca-cola, and dirty jokes. Randy passed away at the age of 31 and has since been regularly celebrated for his strength of spirit, witty sense of humour, and general supercool-ness.

Day 31 - Rest Day in Winnipeg

Our "rest" day got off to a doozy start, with Craig (best host ever) waking us up at 1am to report that our bikes needed to be moved inside from the garage stat, as the next door neigbours were being burgled (no joke!). The back lane was crawling with undercover policemen as the little criminals stole away under cover of midnight. They had made off with an adirondack chair from the porch next door. There were no other casualties.
Managed to get back to sleep and in the morning, we wondered if it had all been a dream. It hadn't.
Not much else to report here today. Rode into town to stock up at M.E.C., and brought our un-pilfered bikes to Olympia Cycle and Ski on Portage Avenue to be tuned up. Had another delicious dinner with Craig and Dorothy, and then off to bed.

Stats:

Bikes saved in the nick of time by Craig Batty: 2
Adirondack chairs sacrificed in the name of the bikes: 1
Adirondack chairs returned by police later: 1

Day 30 - Portage La Prairie to Winnipeg (T.D.: 87.8km; S.T.: 4h46min)

Oh day of days! After what may have been the low-point of the trip coming into Portage yesterday, we were ready for something to lift our spirits. Cue entrance for Colleen, Melba’s sister, who offered to drive some of our belongings to Winnipeg for us. Yes please. With 60% of our usual load in the trunk of a car, we sailed into Manitoba’s capital city, the heart of the continent, that jewel of central Canada, the symbolic halfway point of our journey across the country, with nary a sweat broken (well, not really – it was ridiculously hot out)! We felt like those Velo-Quebec guys, just zooming along (and we still had 40lbs or so on our bikes), leaving other self-supported cross-country cyclists in our dust (again, not really – we didn’t see any today).

To add to our mirth, who should we run into but our good friends Edward and Juanita in their camper van (remember them? From Elkhorn?)! They gave us a honk and pulled over for a chat. They’d been in Brandon for a couple of nights at an agricultural fair of some sort, and had been keeping an eye out for us as they made their way to Winnipeg. It was awesome to see them again.

In fact, everybody on the road seemed to be encouraging us along today, as we had our most friendly honks ever (at least we think they were friendly – this is Manitoba, after all). Moreover, we had our greatest diversity of honk sources today, including our first ever transport truck honk, our first ever RV honk, and our first ever classic car honk (I believe it was a 1963 Studebaker).

We stopped in Headingly, on the recommendation of Melba and Doug, for some ice cream at Ko’s Groceries. Ko is a stern Chinese woman who takes her ice cream doling duties on with the seriousness of a Catholic school headmistress. As she wordlessly handed us our heaping cones, we wondered if we had perhaps done something wrong by ordering the cookies ‘n cream variety.

Not even Ko could suck the fun out of our ride to Winnipeg today, though, and her generous serving of ice cream fuelled our trip most effectively. Upon entering the city limits, we took our time on bike routes and trails, ambling through the holiday crowds in Assiniboine park, and along the river to the home of one Craig Batty, father of one Adam Batty, our dearly beloved friend and former roommate in Vancouver. Craig had knee surgery this weekend, and is suffering from a pinched nerve in his back as a result of a poorly-aimed spinal anaesthetic. In other words, he’s not much of a host. Here we are, biking across the country, and the man can barely get out of his chair to fix us a drink. Next time, we’ll check in at the Royal Albert Hotel.

(Luckily, Adam's mom, Dorothy, was around to fix us a beautiful meal!)

Stats:

Av. Spd.: 21.3km/h (it was 23 on the highway – our highest average speed yet! Thanks Colleen!)

Mx. Spd.: 28.6km/h

Cumulative distance: 2691km (roughly 7/16ths of the way through) – for those who care, the longest country in Europe is 1752 km (Norway, end to end), and a trip from Vancouver along the West Coast to Tijuana would be about 2500km.

Days on the road: 30 (I guess that’s obvious if you’re reading the titles)

Days in a month: 30 (or thereabouts)

Average distance covered in a day to this point (not including rest days): 103.5km

Rest days taken so far: 4 (1 in Kelowna, 1 in Calgary, 2 in Medicine Hat)

Ice creams eaten: something like 12 each. Maybe more, maybe a little less.

Best name of a Canadian town not yet mentioned in this blog: Ituna, SK (tired of opening those little cans of tuna every time you want to make a sandwich? Download iTuna, the new App for your Blackberry or whatever – from your phone to your sandwich, tastes great every time!)

Runner-up for best name of a Canadian town not yet mentioned in this blog: Uren (no explanation necessary)

Worst host: Craig Batty (we’re joking, of course; he’s a fantastic guy - with an equally fantastic sense of humor, I hasten to add)

Day 29 – Brandon to Portage La Prairie (T.D.:135.4km; S.T.: 7h36min)

Knowing we had a long ride ahead of us, we set our alarms for another early start today. As we came out of Brandon, the rain let loose on us – though not for long – for the first time since Rosedale, Alberta. It was over by the time we got on the highway. No wind meant we made reasonable progress to Carberry, where we stopped at the Robin’s Nest Café for second breakfast and breakfast dessert (it takes a lot to keep these motors running).

Coming out of Carberry, we hit gravel shoulders for the first time. A stretch of road that the construction crews forgot, I suppose. It lasted for roughly (no pun intended) 15 kilometres, during which time we white-lined/white-knuckled it with our eyes glued to our sideview mirrors. If it appeared that an object was too close (keeping in mind that objects in these mirrors are always closer than they appear), we would yell “watch out!” or “bail!” to one another, and hit the gravel while the perpetrator sped by – ignorant to the stress they were causing us. Needless to say, we were relieved when the paved shoulders returned.

Today was the first day when the prairie scenery started to feel a bit old. Perhaps it had been too long since our last rest day, or perhaps this part of Manitoba is particularly dull, but both of us were getting a little farmland-weary. Fortunately, Winnipeg was on the horizon – a bustling metropolis (and more importantly, a couple of rest days) to add a bit of colour to an otherwise monochromatic stretch.

The gravel shoulder monster reared its ugly head for a second time as we entered Portage La Prairie, but this time the traffic was too thick and we were too tired to pull our tightrope-walking act on the white line, so we slogged it through the dirt and rock instead. These final kilometers, a sour note to cap off a relatively flavourless day, made our arrival at Melba and Doug’s (our hosts for the night) taste all the sweeter (and not just because they fed us angel food cake and blueberries drizzled with maple syrup yogourt). The icing on the cake (am I mixing my metaphors yet?) was the arrival of a raging thunderstorm that blew in with gale-force winds, which we watched happily from inside their kitchen, warm and dry.

Stats:

Av. Spd.: 17.7km/h
Mx. Spd.: 33.1km/h
Days without rain: 12
Kilometres without rain: 1100
Days without shaving (this one doesn’t really apply to Caroline): 30
Kilometres without shaving: 2594.7
Most cringe-inducing roadkill incident: Caroline running over one of those fat green caterpillars. I heard it *POP* from about 20 metres ahead.
Strangest time warp: Having the classic cars drive by you in packs as they left a convention in Brandon. It’s as if we travel so slowly on these bikes, that we’ve actually gone back in time!
Best way to develop an ulcer: White-line it on the TCH for 15kms.
Best way to give Mom an ulcer: White-line it on the TCH for 15km

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)