Miles and Miles of Flat

If one thing characterizes our last week in the prairies it is an obsession with wind direction. We learned quickly that the winds out here are almost always strong and that wind direction was going to make or break us: it could be the difference between killing ourselves to push forward at a depressing 20 kph with the wind roaring in your ears, and a quiet, peaceful, practically effortless spin at 40+ kph (on one particular stretch of flat road with a strong wind dead astern we reached 48 kph!). The joys associated with the latter were sweet indeed but perhaps not exactly compensating for the struggles of the days when the wind was coming from the “wrong” way. After one particularly hard day between Brooks and Medicine Hat, AB (where we slogged all day long to cover only 109 km) we wrote in the day’s journal entry:

“cycling in a fierce headwind is almost soul destroying. Much worse than climbing a mountain, which seems like a justifiable challenge and (sometimes) has rewards on the other side, a headwind feels like the gods are punishing you … It is a costly price you pay for which it feels like you get nothing in return … And it is relentless: you never stop pedaling even on the downhills!”

Spirits soared or sank with waking each morning to see where the winds were coming from that day, and the lookout for road signs indicating upcoming passing lanes (code for big hill coming) we learned in the mountains was replaced with a lookout for signs indicating an upcoming curve in the road accompanied by a quick calculation whether this would increase or decrease our headwind/tailwind component. And given the wind’s direction seemed to vary wildly in space and time, I became fanatical about looking for indications of wind direction as the scenery whizzed by: flags, smoke, ripples on a lake, blades of grass, the flow of air past my ear …

Many people warned us of the monotony of straight flat roads and prairie scenery, however it took days and days for us to tire of it. The landscape itself was quite varied and took on very different characters in different weather and times of day. We cycled through flourishing fields of bright yellow and green and equally barren gray, windswept deserts, fields of sunflowers and dusty buffalo ranches, past large-scale working farms and plains dotted with big oil pumps. The skies were big and ever-changing in which the clouds seemed to take on a living character. We also had our first red sunsets and some beautiful evenings when the colors of the world would turn extra rich and the shadows extra long.

The prairies do however have a very solitary and isolated feel to them. Unlike BC, we had long stretches between towns and even passing traffic could become sparse. We became convinced the cows would watch us as we passed and would try to attract their attention. We also grew quite fond of trying to make the train conductors blow their whistle for us, at which we became quite skilled.

We had one unusually "big city" moment in the middle of nowhere in Rouleau, SK when we litterally rode across the set in a live taping of an episode of "Corner Gas", a popular Canadian sitcom about life in a small prairie town. We knew we were entering the town where the show was set but we had no idea that the gas station we were hoping to stop at for a cup of coffee wasn't a real gas station at all but was instead an active movie set. Despite messing up their take (apparently a tandem riding by in the window doesn't fit with their image of "local" traffic) we begged our way onto the set for a brief look and nodded heads with the stars.

Despite the solitude, we did meet a couple characters along the way. We had multiple run-ins with “Trailer Dude” who was biking solo from Vancouver to Winnipeg and also got to partake in some wisdom from “Crazy Woman”, a road-roughened woman who had left Toronto who knows how long ago and seemed to be cycling aimlessly in an approximately west direction. The tavern-owner in Gleichen, AB (a pretty depressing town consisting of only a liquor store, tavern and Chinese take-way on the edge of a reservation) had also cycled cross-country twice and was very keen to dispense his advice (obviously he was very starved for conversation) but it soon became clear that he had spent a little too long in Gleichen. This leg of the journey also included the event of our first passing of another vehicle on the highway: a farmer’s tractor barreling down the shoulder. After days upon days of cars and trucks speeding by at 110 kph, especially those that throw a wall of wind in your face, this was very heartening indeed!

Stage two of our journey also saw the first two exciting episodes of in-situ bicycle repair (up until now we had been tested only with a flat tire). Upon arrival in Medicine Hat we discovered four broken spokes and a buckled rear wheel. Steve set up shop on the sidewalk outside a dairy bar, and fashioning a make-shift chain whip out of the broken spokes, was able to replace them on site. His efficiency was undoubtedly fueled by the encouragement of a nice old lady who lived across the street, who kept wondering over to see if we needed anything, on one occasion delivering toasted tomato sandwiches made with the tomatoes from our garden. A few days later, we discovered that hidden under all the stuff we keep strapped to the rear rack, our rear tire had worn through all the rubber and was down to the canvas. I guess cycling 2000 km in a straight line had done that! We crossed our fingers and continued on 30 km to the next town featuring a “Canadian Tire”, all the way Stephanie feeling like she was sitting on a bomb ready to explode. We arrived an hour before closing and disaster was averted.

Now we sit in Winnipeg with the plains behind us and the rocks, lakes and trees of Northern Ontario and the Canadian Shield ahead. This upcoming leg of the journey comes with a lot of hype: it seems we have been receiving a continuous stream of warnings about the hills, the cold and the never-endingness of this stretch even before we set out to cross the Rockies … But things have been turning around recently: after a snowstorm outside Calgary followed by 4 days of a tormenting headwind, we have more recently enjoyed warming weather and a westerly wind and we are feeling more rested and stronger than maybe anytime so far. Next update as soon as possible: Thunder Bay? Saute Ste Marie? Ottawa? One week? Two weeks?