Weather is teh sux0rs

May 19

For the record, we stopped here in Richdale:
lat 51.61036N
lon 111.60322W
alt 768

So with the warnings of 50+km/h gusts and supposed tornado warnings, we elected to stay still. I mostly fought with the computer for the afternoon. The thing has a really nice lcd screen, 1280x800, but for some reason Windows thinks it's a 1024x768. So you either get a distorted full screen image or a smaller image with a bunch of unused screen real estate. It is massively annoying and fueling my hatred of all things Microsoft.

There are no monitor drivers that I can find for this thing, and the built in ones do not have 1280x800 as a default option. Madness.

Regardless, it was a relaxing day. A hot tub in the motel beside us was used for muscle relaxing and we were happy.

May 20

Stop location: Alsask, SK
lat 51.38827N
lon 109.98946W
alt 711
122km
4:54
24.85km/h

Heading out from Hanna we got most of the day finished in the real prairies. Flat, flat, flat until somewhere around the 100km mark where we got some gentle rollers. Our stop point, the town of Alsask (name came from the location, border of Alberta and Saskatchewan) was... Different.

The campsite, I hesitate to call it that, was a field with a couple of concrete patches and a few picnic tables. The town itself appeared to be a ghost town. A bit of interweb research showed that it used to be a military radar installation that was shut down in the late 80's and everyone moved out.

As for the ride, uneventful, I took a couple of prairie pictures and we hit Saskatchewan. Two provinces down!

May 21

Rainy.

Windy.

Cold.

Stop location: Kindersley
lat 51.46013N
lon 109.14436W
alt 695m
65km
3:49
17km/h

Check out that average speed. Hideous, but it really couldn't get much better.

Strong cross/headwinds for the entire day and it rained harder and harder over the course of the day. Fortunately, it wasn't overly cold, so our cores stayed warm, but none of us could unzip zippers or work the velcro on our riding shoes without serious concentration. Ten minutes after getting inside and getting changed, I still didn't have the finger dexterity to do up the button on my pants. Tanya couldn't get her gloves off and had to ask for help, it was ridiculous. For the last 10km or so, I was in the same gear since I couldn't get my fingers to work properly to shift.

Roger and Heather had soup and hot chocolate waiting when we finished, which was critical to our happiness. Hillary evidently decided that the weather was bad enough that she should sing, while riding. According to her it it was very unfortunate that she did not know more rain songs.

Kindersley was another location with relatives! That meant a most excellent dinner and a place to do laundry again. Thank you.