Trying to Get Some Wind!

Trying to Get Some Wind!

Sunday, 5 August 2007

After yesterday’s near-waste of the day (I probably COULD have gone on the bicycle, as traffic had been no worse than what I’ve already seen), I really wanted to bicycle today. So I asked Bob to drop Silver & me off at the plaza mentioned in the previous journal. That way I could avoid having to begin the ride with a long hill (something I try not to do), and he & Panna could go for a walk along the nicer of the two trails suggested to us. Then, about 4 hours later he could come down the highway & pick me up.

And so I began what was a pretty uneventful ride. About the only source of difficulty, besides the hills, was the wind. Again it was in my face, sometimes as a cross-wind, but more often head-on. The traffic tended to come in bunches, with groups of pick-up trucks, all towing boat trailers, obviously having traveled together, passing me going one direction on the highway or the other.

And then there was the annoying (to say the least) transport driver, pulling some sort of tanker cars (as opposed to logs), who must not have wanted to work on the Sunday of a long weekend, or maybe he thought he’d have a little “fun”. Anyway, with a straight road ahead, and a clear lane in the opposite direction, he HAD to honk, then proceeded straight ahead, not giving me one extra inch of clearance, or so it felt. I mouthed the words “thank you” as he passed, but I was thinking other words, I’m sure you can imagine what they were…On a more cheerful note, there were two occasions where I heard or saw (fleetingly) deer in the bush along the road.

I decided that rather than doing the entire 60 kilometres going south on highway 71, I’d rather go about 40-50 km, then turn around & ride back heading north, to catch a little bit of the tailwind. So at a certain intersection, where the signs indicated that Fort Frances was about 60 kilometeres away, I took a bit of a break then turned back towards Nestor Falls. And after a while I saw Casper coming & was able to flag down Bob to give me the EASY ride back to Lakeview Lodge.

DAY 40: (I’m 2/3 through my journey!) 60.3 km, in 3:29 hours, ave. speed 17.3 km/hr, max. speed 40.0 km/hr

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