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135km North Battleford to Warman

Under a darkening sky in the farming town of Radisson, we were just packing a bottle of wine into our bags and getting ready to make a run for the campground when a wiry man in his 70s rolled up and blocked our way with his own bicycle.

“Where are you guys travelling to?” he asked, his eyes scanning our bikes with unusually keen interest.

We didn’t really want to chat. Rain was coming. That much was painfully clear. But with no option for a polite escape, we answered his first question. We’d barely finished speaking when we were interrupted by a flood – not from the sky but rather a deluge of words, rushing out of our new friend’s mouth.

“The Olympics,” he began before moving on to how he had no stomach and used to be a world class runner and wasn’t supposed to drink tea but he did and how he worked as a pastor in Afghanistan and routinely used to eat breakfast with John Diefenbaker, Canada‘s 13th prime minister, and how he’d been saved by God and still wore his wedding ring even though his wife divorced him because marriage is forever but she was a Ukrainian girl and and how he once worked as a teacher in the far north of Canada and how he lived here because the water was good and you couldn’t  get good water everywhere in Canada and how sometimes there was hail and we’d better watch out because the hail around here could kill a man and wasn’t the route we took through Oregon great because he thought it was because he had a PhD in geography and on and on and on…. (more…)

394km Vegreville to North Battleford

They say the winds blow from west to east in Canada. Cyclist after cyclist told us this. “It’s just the way things are,” they said. With this knowledge in hand, our trip towards Saskatoon had begun with the expectation of nothing less than tailwinds.

Fools. What fools. Both them and us.

Murphy’s Law says that when you’re primed for a good push from behind you’ll get a face full of wind instead and that’s exactly what we got not long after leaving Vegreville. We put it down to the same meteorological phenomena that creates the bi-directional opposing headwind – a veritable gale which blows toward the cyclist both on the way out and the way home.

No matter which way the road turned (and yes, it does curve occasionally out here on the plains), the wind seemed to be working against us. Still, at least it was sunny and we plodded along towards North Battleford at a steady 13km an hour.

Along the way we met Stephen, on his way home by bike to Ottawa after tree planting in the far north. Maybe he’d go as far as Moncton, he told us, before announcing that to get there in time for an August wedding he’d need to do 150-180km a day. Our jaws dropped at his ambitious and slightly foolhardy target but we wished him good luck and waved as he sped away to Lloydminster. He needed those tailwinds more than we did. (more…)

253km Cochrane to Winfield and a ride to Edmonton

To call or not to call. We sat under a picnic shelter, hiding from the pouring rain and wind, in the hamlet of Winfield, debating this very question.

A few days ago, Andrew’s sister Marlene, who’s been the  most dedicated member of our support crew since Day 1 and who we’ve probably given more grey hairs to than anyone else on this trip, had sent us her phone number along with the plea to “please, please do not hesitate to call no matter where you are”.

Now we were 140km short of her home. The weather had turned. We’d promised to be there in 2 days and the forecast wasn’t looking good. Headwinds. Rain. Thunderstorms. It was a pretty compelling argument to pick up that phone. On the other side of the coin, we wanted to cycle everything we could across North America. (more…)