Cycle Canada, Day 28, June 1/06

June 1/06, Thursday                                                                       Day 28             2671 Km's

Abandon building & ball diamond E. of Wabigoon, Ont.                                   116 Km's                       ~ 5:50 Hrs

We passed an older Quebecois fellow first thing this morning. He's riding Vancouver to Quebec City. The first cross-country rider we've met going our way. He's about 60, grey beard, tan legs and riding a heavily loaded skinny bike. We passed each other back and forth 'til early afternoon when he passed us for the last time. I can't keep up.

At the last townlet before Wabigoon we passed a hitch-hiker walking west. I thought he looked familiar and it turned out that we had passed him on the way out of Golden. He'd been hitching east at the top of the 1st hill out of town. I guess he got where he was going.

This place is a mess. It looks like it was built to accommodate a ball tournament or something but hasn't been used for a while. We walked passed the "No Trespassing" sign on the way in with the idea that the place was so derelict that it was unlikely to be checked.

The ball diamond is overgrown, as is the boarded up concession stand. There's a shed beside the main building, about the size of a double-dumper outhouse. The door has been pryed open and it's full of cases of empty liquor bottles. Some of the bottles have been removed and broken in the tall grass as well as being used to smash the windows of the main building.

The main building seems to be patterned after a mobile home. Single story, long, narrow by comparison, not much that would be called a hallway. In some ways it looks like it was built as a bit of a dormitory. There's what looks like about 4 bedrooms, a common room and an institutional bathroom.

It looks like someone has been living here, or at least hanging out, not too long in the past. In the common room there's a TV stand (no TV) and a few VHS tapes on the floor. The bathroom has a few personal items including a cup, plate and slippers. All with Chinese souvenir type markings.

The main door to the building has a lock that works. It looks like somebody came in through a smashed window and out the door, leaving it unlocked behind. The bathroom is a bit odd in that some of the fixtures have been removed but the toilet paper and paper towel dispensers are still on the walls and still contain paper.

Doug and I slept in the entrance way with the door locked. While rolling our bikes in Doug rolled over a piece of glass and got a big slash in his tire, flattening it.

We stopped in Wabigoon to pick up supplies. Wabigoon is a little nothing of a town, more like an intersection. It might be an Indian reserve, everyone at the convenience store was native. There was a small group of teenagers handing around on the porch of the store and I got a creepy feeling of malevolence from them as we came out. The ball diamond is less than a mile down the road.