The week off was fairly uneventful. Lots of chores and running around to do, coupled with me feeling pretty terrible for a couple of days lead to, well, something. By the end of the week, Hillary was doing much better and we were ready to go.
Sort of.
Got up Saturday morning to a flat tire on both the road bike and the cross bike. Great. I broke the tire levers switching the road bike tire. Before the day was out, I'd have gone through three more tubes. Time to get more I am thinking.
From Ottawa, our route was to cross into Quebec and take the 148 until somewhere before Montreal and pass north of the city. Mom's only caveat prior to setting out on this trip was that she would not drive in Montreal. This was fair as far as we were concerned. After all, north of Montreal should be pretty scenic right?
Well, turns out, if you stay south of the hills, Quebec isn't the greatest province for riding, at least thus far. The three hundred or so km after we got outside of Ottawa rivaled the flattest roads on the prairies. Which wasn't bad I suppose. We had a nice tailwind for three of those days, which lead to lots of fast cruising. Hillary seems to be stronger after the rest as well, so we're going faster even when the winds die.
It's also much more civilized as well. For the first four thousand or so kilometres of the trip, we'd get waves from truckers and random people waving at us. For the most part, this was due to where we were. Virtually anywhere on the roads we've been on, up until midway through Ontario, the only cyclists on the road were the ones who were touring in one form or another. Now that we're in much more civilized, much more populous regions, we see people out for day rides all the time.
This 'much more civilized' is also the reason I haven't really taken any pictures for a few days. We haven't really been in the wild yet and I don't really know when we'll hit it again.
So we're in Quebec City now. Seemed like a good place for a day off, which was actually probably a mistake, I really should have gone on a couple of rides around the city, there are some awesome roads and steep little climbs all over. Ah well, I will need to find some cyclosportif ride in the city and do that one day. Bodes well for the next few days of riding. Hills are slower, but much more fun.
As for the roads, the highways aren't as bad as Manitoba, the towns are worse. Much worse. Catastrophic was a word that was used in some random small town that we hit.
We also had our first official wrong turn of the trip a couple of days ago. We were riding along the 158 and the directions for the day were basically: Ride the 158 until it ends, then take the 138. Turns out the 158 is very poorly signed in a few places and we lost it. About 10km later, we realized the highway signs were showing the wrong numbers and that set off the alarm bells. Fortunately we were going only about 45 degrees off the direction we should have been going on and ended up only adding about 10km to the day's ride.
We're back on the road tomorrow barring anything weird happening. Happy Canada Day if I'm not back before then.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Saturday, June 16, 2007
And the unplanned
So we'll be in Ottawa in two days.
Hillary is going to be at least a couple more days in recovering before she can ride again, so directly due to that, we have elected to get closer to the family doctor, now that we've recieved the okay to handle things ourselves. From there we can do a few short rides and our planned departure from Ottawa will be Saturday for the last threeish weeks of the trip.
Dissapointing? Yes, but you can't plan for everything. Fortunately, it's not more serious and just requires some downtime to heal. It's still a nigh on three month cycling vacation, so it's really all good in the grand scheme of things.
Hillary is going to be at least a couple more days in recovering before she can ride again, so directly due to that, we have elected to get closer to the family doctor, now that we've recieved the okay to handle things ourselves. From there we can do a few short rides and our planned departure from Ottawa will be Saturday for the last threeish weeks of the trip.
Dissapointing? Yes, but you can't plan for everything. Fortunately, it's not more serious and just requires some downtime to heal. It's still a nigh on three month cycling vacation, so it's really all good in the grand scheme of things.
Friday, June 15, 2007
Lake Superior Ups and Downs
Wow.
That about sums up the scenery.
According to the 9th edition of the Lonely Planet's Canada book, "The Lake Superior shore is one of those drives you must do before you die." Much of the writing in various sources touches on the fact that the Group of Seven was inspired and spent much time in the shield around the lake. I can certainly believe that.
The roads are generally fairly good, on Hwy 17, the traffic isn't atrocious, but it doesn't matter because you're just looking around so much that you don't care much about these things, black flies aside. The combination of rock, water and trees reminds me of my favourite parts of BC mountain country. Ancient rock with plants and trees clinging to it, digging the roots in. I've tried to take some pictures to show what I mean, but really, it doesn't do it justice. Nothing does.
Suffice it to say, we are talking seriously about making a point of going for a cross country ski trip up here somewhere within a year or two, simply to enjoy the scenery without the spectre of the madness caused by insects.
We also saw a cougar. That was very, very cool, you don't often see these dudes. Cruising along the highway somewhat north of Wawa and I see a shape crossing the road. The brain quickly goes through the choices: "Wolf, no way, not a canine. Obviously not an ungulate. Way to big for a lynx. A cougar? I didn't think these were around here. Awesome!"
That took all of about a half second, then it was point fast and yell at Hillary, "Cougar, mountain lion up there, look!"
It padded across the road and up into the trees. We talked very loudly for the next few minutes (since we were climbing, we weren't riding overly fast) but I really wasn't concerned. Better to be prudent though, we were downwind.
As far as the riding goes since Thunder Bay, good, with some downs, but we're getting to that.
We cheated on our first day out of Thunder Bay. There was a long stretch of construction. We drove over it a couple of times on our trips out to the mine and Ouimet Canyon. Enough to have a long and difficult debate as to whether we should actually ride it. Basically it was the extended gravel sections with lots of traffic that did it. Given that we completely re-routed our path through BC (Hwy 1 to Hwy 3) based on construction, we elected to skip it. So we missed 30km of road. I'm hoping skipping %0.4 of the trip isn't too bad. :) I'll make it up elsewhere, I promise.
We had decent weather that day though, the first 60km flew by and then we turned into the wind at Nipigon. Due to us feeling good, we ended up doing about 140km and stopping at Rainbow Falls Provincial Park. Spectacular, as were the bugs.
From there, we continued through amazing country into Marathon, where we splurged and got a motel for the night so we could have baths for pretty much the first time in months. The hills got pretty serious on this ride, we had at least two that were upwards of 7% and somewhere in the ballpark of 3km long. Nothing compared to the big mountain passes, but still difficult. Starting to get warm as well, which is a nice change.
Marathon to White River was flatter, but definitely rolling. Hot sun beating down on us most of the time. Note that I am not complaining, we've been waiting for the chance to do this. This part of the ride was not quite as scenic, the roads were straighter and the trees were closer. The dominant feature of the day was going through an area where a massive forest fire had gone through a few years ago. The road wound through the short trees and blasted trunks for probably 15-20km.
Finally, White River to Wawa, starting to get back into the rocks and climbs. Again, not as serious as Nipigon to Marathon, but you can tell it's coming again. And that's where we are now.
And likely to be for at least a few days. Hillary took a minor injury a few days ago, which got infected and now requires some professional treatment. So until we get the okay from the doctors, we're parked.
Depending on how long that is, we may have to skip ahead to Ottawa to get back on track, or I may be riding alone for a few days. Regardless, we'll see how it goes.
That about sums up the scenery.
According to the 9th edition of the Lonely Planet's Canada book, "The Lake Superior shore is one of those drives you must do before you die." Much of the writing in various sources touches on the fact that the Group of Seven was inspired and spent much time in the shield around the lake. I can certainly believe that.
The roads are generally fairly good, on Hwy 17, the traffic isn't atrocious, but it doesn't matter because you're just looking around so much that you don't care much about these things, black flies aside. The combination of rock, water and trees reminds me of my favourite parts of BC mountain country. Ancient rock with plants and trees clinging to it, digging the roots in. I've tried to take some pictures to show what I mean, but really, it doesn't do it justice. Nothing does.
Suffice it to say, we are talking seriously about making a point of going for a cross country ski trip up here somewhere within a year or two, simply to enjoy the scenery without the spectre of the madness caused by insects.
We also saw a cougar. That was very, very cool, you don't often see these dudes. Cruising along the highway somewhat north of Wawa and I see a shape crossing the road. The brain quickly goes through the choices: "Wolf, no way, not a canine. Obviously not an ungulate. Way to big for a lynx. A cougar? I didn't think these were around here. Awesome!"
That took all of about a half second, then it was point fast and yell at Hillary, "Cougar, mountain lion up there, look!"
It padded across the road and up into the trees. We talked very loudly for the next few minutes (since we were climbing, we weren't riding overly fast) but I really wasn't concerned. Better to be prudent though, we were downwind.
As far as the riding goes since Thunder Bay, good, with some downs, but we're getting to that.
We cheated on our first day out of Thunder Bay. There was a long stretch of construction. We drove over it a couple of times on our trips out to the mine and Ouimet Canyon. Enough to have a long and difficult debate as to whether we should actually ride it. Basically it was the extended gravel sections with lots of traffic that did it. Given that we completely re-routed our path through BC (Hwy 1 to Hwy 3) based on construction, we elected to skip it. So we missed 30km of road. I'm hoping skipping %0.4 of the trip isn't too bad. :) I'll make it up elsewhere, I promise.
We had decent weather that day though, the first 60km flew by and then we turned into the wind at Nipigon. Due to us feeling good, we ended up doing about 140km and stopping at Rainbow Falls Provincial Park. Spectacular, as were the bugs.
From there, we continued through amazing country into Marathon, where we splurged and got a motel for the night so we could have baths for pretty much the first time in months. The hills got pretty serious on this ride, we had at least two that were upwards of 7% and somewhere in the ballpark of 3km long. Nothing compared to the big mountain passes, but still difficult. Starting to get warm as well, which is a nice change.
Marathon to White River was flatter, but definitely rolling. Hot sun beating down on us most of the time. Note that I am not complaining, we've been waiting for the chance to do this. This part of the ride was not quite as scenic, the roads were straighter and the trees were closer. The dominant feature of the day was going through an area where a massive forest fire had gone through a few years ago. The road wound through the short trees and blasted trunks for probably 15-20km.
Finally, White River to Wawa, starting to get back into the rocks and climbs. Again, not as serious as Nipigon to Marathon, but you can tell it's coming again. And that's where we are now.
And likely to be for at least a few days. Hillary took a minor injury a few days ago, which got infected and now requires some professional treatment. So until we get the okay from the doctors, we're parked.
Depending on how long that is, we may have to skip ahead to Ottawa to get back on track, or I may be riding alone for a few days. Regardless, we'll see how it goes.
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Random Stats
I've put them all online with google spreadsheets. I'll keep this in sync with my local copy whenever I get updates. Link here and on the sidebar now.
Bunch of new pictures are up now too.
Bunch of new pictures are up now too.
Internet is scarce out here.
Long time no blog.
We supposedly had an internet connection in our campsite in Kenora, but it was... Flaky.
As it is here. I am learning that 'free wi-fi' means 'we have a cheap router and want to add the bullet point to our advertising'.
Anyhow.
The good mechanics at Olympia Cycle in Kenora were able to get my wheel back in business while I waited and the next morning, we were off. Happy days.
The route off the main highway we were taking was fairly deserted, which was a nice change after several days of fairly packed roadways. On the other hand, we had seen several signs which indicated we were entering bear country, which somewhat heightened the various senses which were responsible for scanning the woods.
About halfway through the day, Hillary starts dropping the hammer and mumbles something at me. I catch up and say, "Pardon?"
"There is a bear in the trees, on the left."
"What? Where?" as I slow down to check things out. Hillary then speeds up even more and I see her side of things and match her speed. I see nothing but trees, but whine for a few days that next time she should warn me before if some interesting wildlife is in the woods nearby.
The rest of the ride was fairly uneventful, save for some CN workers deciding to blow what I assume was a stump when we were less than 100m from it. If you've seen footage of mortar shells hitting the dirt in WWI or WWII and that's exactly what it looked like. We were close enough that I could feel the whomp in my chest. Worrisome, especially when debris started raining down on us. Mostly water and some light dead wood by the time it hit us on the road, but that's hardly the point.
We made it to Kenora and into Ontario later that day. Home province now, w00t!
From Kenora we were basically back on highway 17 and the Trans-Canada, which in large part meant that I missed much of the scenery. The traffic wasn't overly bad for much of the day, though by late afternoon it was pretty solid. The worst part was the transports. Not one at a time, but when you'd get batches going in both directions at once. Regardless,whenever traffic got busy, I found myself just focusing on the road and not the shield in general.
Which was too bad. For the first 100km or so east of Kenora was quite nice. Short little climbs and descents winding around rocky formations and lakes. As we got closer to Dryden, the rollers became more gentle and we broke out into farmland.
The next two days, ending at the Cobblestone Lodge and English River respectively, were pretty unpleasant. We had a fairly stiff headwind that kept our speed way down and it was cold and rainy. The high point of the two days was seeing a few moose and the gift of some freshly caught trout fillets from a camper at the Cobblestone Lodge. A most excellent dinner those made.
English River, really nothing more than a little fishing lodge, was not supposed to be the destination for the day, but after a 4 hour slog to get 84km up the road and encountering heavy transport traffic, we decided to pack it in for the night. The hope was that we'd hit better weather the next day, which really didn't require much.
That night, we got a pretty serious thunderstorm that lead into a great tailwind. Power got knocked out of the entire town for most of the evening, you can see Tanya's blog for more details on that... Anyhow, to make up for our short days, we did our first imperial century of the trip. Total mileage for the day was 167km, or about 104 miles. That was exciting.
We ended the century at Kakabeka Falls Provincial Park and celebrated our lengthy ride with a couple of pints and a hike down to the falls. The falls were pretty impressive, but Mom really didn't like the idea that the power generation company basically remotely controls how impressive the falls are. Essentially the power company has an agreement with Ontario that they will keep the water flow over the falls to at least x cubic metres per second at various times. Weekdays, the falls are less impressive, weekends, when more tourists/campers are out and about, they turn up the volume. It sort of takes something away from it.
From Kakabeka, it was a short ride through Thunder Bay to Shuniah. Rather than take a rest day, we elected to do a short ride, then tour around in Truck for a bit to see some of the natural things around here we'd miss on our bikes.
First stop was an amethyst mine. Not a whole bunch to actually see there, but the best part by far, was the mining part of it. They dump their tailings and cuttings in a 5 acre pit and let anyone root through it. The ground is speckled in purple and for $3 per pound, you can carry off whatever you find. I found a nice big chunk that is going to go on my desk and we found several smaller chunks with nice colour that we should be able to get cut into earrings or something similar. Not the highest gem quality rocks, sure, but still pretty cool.
Getting to the mine involved going up, then down, a 12% or so gravel road. It was a bit hairy, but no problems, despite some stress leading up to the descent. And I saw a bear on the way down! Gone before we could get the camera out, but still.
Next stop was Ouimet Canyon Provincial Park. On our way to the park, who did we see pedalling up the 17? Tanya and Attila. (forgive me if this is misspelled, I'm going from memory, I'm writing this offline and will just cut and paste and probably forget about checking) Probably surprised them, but it was good to see that they hadn't been eaten by bears yet. :)
The canyon is also pretty cool. It's basically a glacier carved hole in the ground 3km long and 150m deep. At the bottom, it's basically it's own microclimate and has a bunch of arctic plants that you can't find anywhere south of Hudson's Bay. Due to this, you aren't allowed to walk down there, but you can overlook it.
Finally, back to the Terry Fox monument. We all know about him, so it doesn't need to be repeated here, but still. Riding across the country is much faster than running and it's taking us a long time. A marathon a day would have been beyond ridiculous. Unimaginable.
So that about brings us up to date. We're heading back into the back country, so it might be a while before the next update. We're taking a real rest day today, we're utterly covered in bug bites and could probably use a real day off to do laundry, play some mini golf and just relax.
We supposedly had an internet connection in our campsite in Kenora, but it was... Flaky.
As it is here. I am learning that 'free wi-fi' means 'we have a cheap router and want to add the bullet point to our advertising'.
Anyhow.
The good mechanics at Olympia Cycle in Kenora were able to get my wheel back in business while I waited and the next morning, we were off. Happy days.
The route off the main highway we were taking was fairly deserted, which was a nice change after several days of fairly packed roadways. On the other hand, we had seen several signs which indicated we were entering bear country, which somewhat heightened the various senses which were responsible for scanning the woods.
About halfway through the day, Hillary starts dropping the hammer and mumbles something at me. I catch up and say, "Pardon?"
"There is a bear in the trees, on the left."
"What? Where?" as I slow down to check things out. Hillary then speeds up even more and I see her side of things and match her speed. I see nothing but trees, but whine for a few days that next time she should warn me before if some interesting wildlife is in the woods nearby.
The rest of the ride was fairly uneventful, save for some CN workers deciding to blow what I assume was a stump when we were less than 100m from it. If you've seen footage of mortar shells hitting the dirt in WWI or WWII and that's exactly what it looked like. We were close enough that I could feel the whomp in my chest. Worrisome, especially when debris started raining down on us. Mostly water and some light dead wood by the time it hit us on the road, but that's hardly the point.
We made it to Kenora and into Ontario later that day. Home province now, w00t!
From Kenora we were basically back on highway 17 and the Trans-Canada, which in large part meant that I missed much of the scenery. The traffic wasn't overly bad for much of the day, though by late afternoon it was pretty solid. The worst part was the transports. Not one at a time, but when you'd get batches going in both directions at once. Regardless,whenever traffic got busy, I found myself just focusing on the road and not the shield in general.
Which was too bad. For the first 100km or so east of Kenora was quite nice. Short little climbs and descents winding around rocky formations and lakes. As we got closer to Dryden, the rollers became more gentle and we broke out into farmland.
The next two days, ending at the Cobblestone Lodge and English River respectively, were pretty unpleasant. We had a fairly stiff headwind that kept our speed way down and it was cold and rainy. The high point of the two days was seeing a few moose and the gift of some freshly caught trout fillets from a camper at the Cobblestone Lodge. A most excellent dinner those made.
English River, really nothing more than a little fishing lodge, was not supposed to be the destination for the day, but after a 4 hour slog to get 84km up the road and encountering heavy transport traffic, we decided to pack it in for the night. The hope was that we'd hit better weather the next day, which really didn't require much.
That night, we got a pretty serious thunderstorm that lead into a great tailwind. Power got knocked out of the entire town for most of the evening, you can see Tanya's blog for more details on that... Anyhow, to make up for our short days, we did our first imperial century of the trip. Total mileage for the day was 167km, or about 104 miles. That was exciting.
We ended the century at Kakabeka Falls Provincial Park and celebrated our lengthy ride with a couple of pints and a hike down to the falls. The falls were pretty impressive, but Mom really didn't like the idea that the power generation company basically remotely controls how impressive the falls are. Essentially the power company has an agreement with Ontario that they will keep the water flow over the falls to at least x cubic metres per second at various times. Weekdays, the falls are less impressive, weekends, when more tourists/campers are out and about, they turn up the volume. It sort of takes something away from it.
From Kakabeka, it was a short ride through Thunder Bay to Shuniah. Rather than take a rest day, we elected to do a short ride, then tour around in Truck for a bit to see some of the natural things around here we'd miss on our bikes.
First stop was an amethyst mine. Not a whole bunch to actually see there, but the best part by far, was the mining part of it. They dump their tailings and cuttings in a 5 acre pit and let anyone root through it. The ground is speckled in purple and for $3 per pound, you can carry off whatever you find. I found a nice big chunk that is going to go on my desk and we found several smaller chunks with nice colour that we should be able to get cut into earrings or something similar. Not the highest gem quality rocks, sure, but still pretty cool.
Getting to the mine involved going up, then down, a 12% or so gravel road. It was a bit hairy, but no problems, despite some stress leading up to the descent. And I saw a bear on the way down! Gone before we could get the camera out, but still.
Next stop was Ouimet Canyon Provincial Park. On our way to the park, who did we see pedalling up the 17? Tanya and Attila. (forgive me if this is misspelled, I'm going from memory, I'm writing this offline and will just cut and paste and probably forget about checking) Probably surprised them, but it was good to see that they hadn't been eaten by bears yet. :)
The canyon is also pretty cool. It's basically a glacier carved hole in the ground 3km long and 150m deep. At the bottom, it's basically it's own microclimate and has a bunch of arctic plants that you can't find anywhere south of Hudson's Bay. Due to this, you aren't allowed to walk down there, but you can overlook it.
Finally, back to the Terry Fox monument. We all know about him, so it doesn't need to be repeated here, but still. Riding across the country is much faster than running and it's taking us a long time. A marathon a day would have been beyond ridiculous. Unimaginable.
So that about brings us up to date. We're heading back into the back country, so it might be a while before the next update. We're taking a real rest day today, we're utterly covered in bug bites and could probably use a real day off to do laundry, play some mini golf and just relax.
Sunday, June 3, 2007
Broken
Stop location: Outside of Elma
lat 49.93799N
lon 95.90592W
alt 305m
110km
4:36
23.9km/h
Our stop location was supposed to be another 20km up the road and we were feeling pretty good, so it wasn't going to be a problem. Unfortunately, as we got past Elma, I noticed that I was getting some rubbing from my back wheel. I looked down and could see a pretty serious wobble as I rode.
Stop, lift up the rear wheel, hit the pedals, yep, wheel's damaged. Broken spoke, which was pretty much the only real mechanical I wasn't setup to handle. Alas.
Given our location we drove on to Kenora knowing that as a tourist destination it should have a bike shop. So now we're sitting in a coffee shop waiting until noon to see if the bike shop can fix the wheel within a day or so. (or even if they are open) And if that fails, we'll drive on back to Winnipeg as they have far more options for repairs. Good thing we have a support vehicle, simplifies this quite a bit to say the least.
The ride itself was great up until that point. We hit the outskirts of the shield and got to ride over a nicely flooded road. That was awesome. I've uploaded a couple of pictures of the road and one of Hillary riding through the shallowest of the three 'creeks' that were crossing it. None were too bad, but one was probably 3 inches deep.
Following that we were chased by some gigantic bugs for about 20km. They were obviously sitting in our draft trying to land. Fortunately, they didn't actually manage to do that, it was still creepy turning around and seeing a dozen or so of these things swarming behind you. I don't think they were black flies, but I really don't know. They sort of looked wasp-like, but not quite the right colour.
So yeah, we should be riding again Tuesday. Perhaps tomorrow if we get really lucky. We shall see.
lat 49.93799N
lon 95.90592W
alt 305m
110km
4:36
23.9km/h
Our stop location was supposed to be another 20km up the road and we were feeling pretty good, so it wasn't going to be a problem. Unfortunately, as we got past Elma, I noticed that I was getting some rubbing from my back wheel. I looked down and could see a pretty serious wobble as I rode.
Stop, lift up the rear wheel, hit the pedals, yep, wheel's damaged. Broken spoke, which was pretty much the only real mechanical I wasn't setup to handle. Alas.
Given our location we drove on to Kenora knowing that as a tourist destination it should have a bike shop. So now we're sitting in a coffee shop waiting until noon to see if the bike shop can fix the wheel within a day or so. (or even if they are open) And if that fails, we'll drive on back to Winnipeg as they have far more options for repairs. Good thing we have a support vehicle, simplifies this quite a bit to say the least.
The ride itself was great up until that point. We hit the outskirts of the shield and got to ride over a nicely flooded road. That was awesome. I've uploaded a couple of pictures of the road and one of Hillary riding through the shallowest of the three 'creeks' that were crossing it. None were too bad, but one was probably 3 inches deep.
Following that we were chased by some gigantic bugs for about 20km. They were obviously sitting in our draft trying to land. Fortunately, they didn't actually manage to do that, it was still creepy turning around and seeing a dozen or so of these things swarming behind you. I don't think they were black flies, but I really don't know. They sort of looked wasp-like, but not quite the right colour.
So yeah, we should be riding again Tuesday. Perhaps tomorrow if we get really lucky. We shall see.
Friday, June 1, 2007
And then there were two
First things first:
Outside Portage la Prairie
lat 49.97556
lon 98.13530
alt 267m
136km
7:28
18.3km/h
Winnipeg
lat 49.86698N
lon 97.26195W
alt 228m
68km
3:14
20.94km/h
That gives us 2852km in 126 hours and 46 minutes of pedalling.
As you can see by the hour numbers, the ride from Brandon to Portage (pronounced portage, with the 'age' part sounding like morgage, not the more franglish portahj) was our longest for pedalling time, far and away.
We started out with yet another headwind, but since the weather reports pretty much indicated suckage for the next two days, we figured we might as well get as far as we could and then have a shorter day into Winnipeg. That was a wise descision, however ridiculous the ride was. Believe me when I say that riding into the wind at 18km/h for most of the day is not the most mentally stimulating task one could do.
The traffic was also pretty heavy, so we're looking forward to getting off of the main transport truck route, which should happen for at least the first day out of Winnipeg and then again after Nipigon. An informal survey done for 20 minutes on that long day showed a roughly 2-1 ratio of civilian vehicles to transports, so there are a lot of them out there.
We're staying in Winnipeg with a good friend of my family's, Aaron MacInnes. This means comforts of a home for another couple of days, which is exceptional all around. It also means we don't have to guess what's good and not in the city. We have a guide.
Tanya also departed today. She gets to experience both types of cross Canada touring on this trip, the supported and now the unsupported touring. While I respect that, I do not envy lugging that weight up hills (or around corners, or on rough roads, or stopping, or accelerating). We were originally talking about going that route, but now that we're halfway across, I have to highly recommend the support van approach. It will be interested to follow her reports and see which one works better. :)
Tomorrow we should be just brushing the outskirts of the shield depending on how it goes and by Sunday, the prairies will be behind us for good. Now for the most desolate parts of the ride.
Outside Portage la Prairie
lat 49.97556
lon 98.13530
alt 267m
136km
7:28
18.3km/h
Winnipeg
lat 49.86698N
lon 97.26195W
alt 228m
68km
3:14
20.94km/h
That gives us 2852km in 126 hours and 46 minutes of pedalling.
As you can see by the hour numbers, the ride from Brandon to Portage (pronounced portage, with the 'age' part sounding like morgage, not the more franglish portahj) was our longest for pedalling time, far and away.
We started out with yet another headwind, but since the weather reports pretty much indicated suckage for the next two days, we figured we might as well get as far as we could and then have a shorter day into Winnipeg. That was a wise descision, however ridiculous the ride was. Believe me when I say that riding into the wind at 18km/h for most of the day is not the most mentally stimulating task one could do.
The traffic was also pretty heavy, so we're looking forward to getting off of the main transport truck route, which should happen for at least the first day out of Winnipeg and then again after Nipigon. An informal survey done for 20 minutes on that long day showed a roughly 2-1 ratio of civilian vehicles to transports, so there are a lot of them out there.
We're staying in Winnipeg with a good friend of my family's, Aaron MacInnes. This means comforts of a home for another couple of days, which is exceptional all around. It also means we don't have to guess what's good and not in the city. We have a guide.
Tanya also departed today. She gets to experience both types of cross Canada touring on this trip, the supported and now the unsupported touring. While I respect that, I do not envy lugging that weight up hills (or around corners, or on rough roads, or stopping, or accelerating). We were originally talking about going that route, but now that we're halfway across, I have to highly recommend the support van approach. It will be interested to follow her reports and see which one works better. :)
Tomorrow we should be just brushing the outskirts of the shield depending on how it goes and by Sunday, the prairies will be behind us for good. Now for the most desolate parts of the ride.
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