Cycle Canada, Day 16, May 20/06

May 20/06, Saturday.                                                          Day 16                            1450 Km

Grove of caraganas, north of Hwy 15, Saskatchewan.                        ~60 Kms + 115 by truck                   ~ 5:20 Hrs

Pedalled hard all day into a head wind. Not as hard as yesterday's when we could only do about 7 Km/Hr. (This sentence doesn't make a whole lot of sense unless I left off writing journal entries for a couple of days then went back to catch up. 7 Km/Hr was definitely our speed into Nokomis) Took about 4 hours to do the 38 Kms into Outlook including breaks. Stopped for lunch at a local restaurant and Doug approached some folks about a ride to the intersection of #2 Highway near Amazon. No one had ever heard of Amazon. In fact there's no sign at the intersection once we arrived there. This is the point in the horror movie where you think, "Those guys are so stupid. Why do they keep going that way? They're obviously going to die" We chatted with the guys at the next table for a while and finally Ken said that he could give us a ride. We did a quick shopping trip across the street and loaded the bikes into his truck before we learned each other's names.

At the intersection of 2 & 15 there is a bit of a gravel pit. We unloaded, cracked a beer and paid Ken $100 (Jane's mad money) for his time and fuel. As we stood there a couple of guys that he works with drove by. It turns out that he was playing hooky from work and giving us a ride in the boss's truck with the boss's fuel. We took a bit of film of the group of us and I told Ken that we would have to scrub the sound and replace it. I asked if he would mind having a Newfie accent. He laughed.

I don't remember the wind being such a problem after Ken dropped us off. I do remember heading into Outlook, going down into the Saskatchewan River valley, standing on the pedals and pushing until my legs burned, trying to get my speed up to 20 Km/Hr. I couldn't do it. Eighteen was my best. I had made it a goal of the trip to exceed the speed rating of my BOB trailer every day. I managed it most days. Not today.

We set up in the caraganas and were pretty well protected from whatever wind there was. Doug set the camera on the tripod and we ran off a whole tape of us doing a typical camp. We had supper and a draw and a couple of drinks and yakked. I recorded it on minidisc as well because of the sound problems we are pretty sure to have.