Yesterday's ride started out pretty poorly. Again I was fighting a moderate headwind trying to ride the 150km into Souris MB. The wind was keeping my speed below 20km/h for most of the ride so it was quite frustrating knowing that I wasn't making much progress. Add to that the terrible road conditions, large sections with a 6"drop off of the white line onto a gravel shoulder, trucks blowing me all over the place and spraying me with rocks and I was less than pleased. Looking ahead at the weather it looked like I was pretty certainly going to get rained on all the way out of Manitoba.
I decided to quit. I was about 50km from my destination for the day and decided to see if I could wuss out and hitch a ride. Once again I got picked up almost right away. The truck had Saskatchewan plates and I figured I was only going to get a boost into the next town. As it turned out my new buddy Dave works in the oil field in Saskatchewan and was going home to visit his family in western Ontario. He was going to be heading to a small town called Emo near Fort Francis. When I got in I wasn't sure if I wanted to go the full distance with him or get dropped off near Winnipeg. One of the things I wanted to do on this trip was meet interesting people which up until that point had not been happening. Dave turned out to be not your typical oil worker and we wound up having some pretty interesting conversation. As a result I decided to hang out with him all the way to his parent's house where I cooked a quick meal for them and chatted with both of his parents for a while. It was refreshing meeting some people to have intelligent conversation with who also understand healthy diet.
Sure I feel like I lamed out on the ride but this way I got to meet some cool people, I'm 5 days ahead of schedule which means more time to visit my parents, and I wasn't having any fun in the rain in the prairies anyway. I still have about 12 days to go before I get home so there's still quite a bit of riding to go. I just need to get through the 20mm of rain that is forecasted for tomorrow then things look like they're going to clear up a bit.
Somewhere near the Manitoba border
...and I'm bored
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Jenny - Shane posted this on g+ so
August 24 2014