Day 20: 101 Km-Goodbye Gas City

Had a great send off from Medicine Hat, the gas city, and are on our way to Maple Creek! A big thanks to Olwyn for all her amazing organizing in Medicine Hat, it was great to have you and all the others ride out with us for the morning, keep up the great work!

Another big thanks is in order; Joanie, Robyn and Daniel graciously put up with us pedallers in their house for 3 days! Thanks for the home away from home, your hospitality was above and beyond :)

During our rest days in Medicine Hat, I managed to get my first flat tire--actually it was two flat tires at the same time. Unfortunately this happened when we were already late for an interview which we ended up missing as I hobbled my bike to the event. One bonus of this mishap is that now, with the help of Malkolm's expertise, I can successfully fix a flat!

After dropping off a letter at Alberta Environment Minister, Rob Renner's office, we kept a brisk pace into Maple Creek. Again the mosquitoes force us to maintain a 20km/h speed at all times. There is nothing like a swarm of mosquitoes hot on your tail to get you hussling up the hills!


We have successfully crossed Alberta and are now in Saskatchewan--things are looking up!

Day 19 – 110km Mosquito armies and Tar monsters

Hightailed it out of Tillybrook campground this morning with swarms of mosquitoes on our tails! I promise never again to return there for fear of being eaten alive! More then 30 bites later (each) we were starting to get even with the mosquitoes but they seemed to have a never ending army so we waved the white flag and planned our retreat. It was quickly determined that 20km per hour or over was adequate speed to leave our pesky friends behind but any slower and the attacks began again. My legs were burning after some time, but afraid to look over my shoulder and see the swarms, I pushed on.

We cleared 60km before stopping for lunch. We paused only briefly in the morning to get a few shots of a plant burning off sour gas but paid the price with a few more itchy red bumps on our legs. At the 60km mark we reached Suffield and finally a break from all the mozzies. We lunched our standard of hummus wraps at a picnic sight before heading over to the gas station to refill our water. Suffield’s gas station looked like it hadn’t changed a bit from the 70’s or maybe even the 60’s complete with cracked vinyl chairs in the diner.

40km more of boring straight road lay ahead of us and I know for one I was not looking forward to it. The fields seem to stretch on forever, the end never in sight. The monotony is starting to get to me already and it’s only day 3. Who knows how crazy I will be by the time we reach Winnipeg. So I devised a game, amusing for a short time if not very efficient. In my head I called in tar monster (similar to lava monster), the object of the game being to stay on the new blacker patches of pavement with out falling off and succumbing to the tar monster. The only part lacking was that there was no monster as there is in lava monster since I was only playing by myself. That being said I used my vivid imagination and managed to occupy myself for about another 20km before my game reached a premature end due to a lack of new pavement not my lack of interest.

So you can see what kinds of things we have started to occupy ourselves with, children’s games for me, Malkolm has taken to counting anything and everything as well as mooing at any animals we pass and I’m not quite sure what Nadia does, but somehow she seems less bored then the two of us. So I ask you please if you have any amusing suggestions for ways to occupy our time while pedalling please leave them for us! At this point we will try anything! Or almost anything…