Monday July 27, 2015

The wind changed direction again, but we made good time to Winnipeg.

There was 22 kms of road-works on the TransCanada, which reduced the road to one-lane. The speed limit was reduced to 60kph and fortunately everyone seemed to be sticking to the speed limit. We had no shoulder on this section and we were cycling in the lane. All the cars and trucks gave us plenty of room.

At one point we pulled off the road to have a snack, and I went into the gravel. Due to the rain last night the gravel was soft and I got stuck in the soft mucky stuff. The gravel, sand and clay got stuck under my fenders and it took us about ten minutes to clean the tires and my shoes so that we could get going again.

Eventually the road widened again, and we had a nice big shoulder all the way into Winnipeg.

As mentioned in previous posts, trains and canola seem to be the mainstay of the economy.

We took a quieter road coming into Winnipeg and spotted this skinny deer at the side of the road.

We have no idea what Minions are, but we are seeing them all over the place. They are taking over the world.

We stopped at a Liquor Store for some wine for our host tonight, as we are hoping they will let us stay a couple of nights – bribing them with wine may help.

While I was in the store, Ralf was chatting to a fella outside (Art), he has a farm outside of Winnipeg and has invited us to stay for a couple of nights. It may be a little out of our way, but we will see how we feel. He has bee hives and is very knowledgeable about bees.

When we arrived at our hosts house, they were not home. We knew we were at the right house.

We couldn’t call them as the phone had no access to the network. Fifteen minutes later they arrived home. Chen is from Israel and Allison met him in Israel when she was a volunteer on the kibbutz. They are the same age as us and we have a lot in common, apart from loving cycling. Chen has cycled Paris Brest Paris in 80+ hours. They took 6 months in 2013/2014 to cycle from Denmark to Italy, through the countries we want to visit in Europe – Albania, Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia etc.

It was a great chat and we have a couple of extra nights here to relax and to get ourselves organized for the leg across Northern Ontario.

I am a little concerned about this leg through Northern Ontario, the roads are supposed to be busy and narrow, the distances between communities are further and the chance encounters with bears are higher.

Ralf really wants to stay in Canada as opposed to dropping down through the States and I can see where he is coming from – it is supposed to be the final leg across Canada. When I was working for Lehman & Associates and Meridian Planning Consultants, we did a lot of work in these Northern communities and I would like to see them first hand.

The other issue is the Canadian dollar is dropping very quickly and it would be much more expensive cycling through the U.S. and we would need additional travel insurance.