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Published: June 29th 2009
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Almost in Regina
This bridge is over the North Sascatchewan river, a river we crossed many times. And thats me. So here I am, the breaker of news.
My plans changed, about biking around the world. For now.
I have a job, instead. A guaranteed income, that will give me some savings. It starts Augest 16th. It starts in Halifax, NS. From arriving there, I travel 1 hour north to Truro, to do two weeks of training.
Come the beginning of September, myself and 2 other staff will be driving 36 hours/1900km north from Truro to Goose Bay, Labrador, where I will be a Katimavik Project Leader, until next July.
Holy crap. Holy crap. Im moving to Labrador. And I have a month and a half to kick it before then.. YEAH!
New max. speed record for this year: 77.7km/h. Obtained in Saskatchewan of all places, who would have guessed.
Saskatchewan, surprisingly, is actually full of surprises. This place is more beautiful than I could have imagined. From the rolling hills, to the sprawling forests, lakes, and rivers, to the beautiful valleys, and endless farmland. I would have NEVER thought that Id be so impressed by this place. My prior visions were totally skewed! I also feel that I understand completely why this place is
Kat and me
Well, Kat and my bike. (Photo Credit: Tyler Walker! Booya!) the land of the living skies. They're huge, for one. And they move, the clouds are like massive animals, thundering across the plains, changing shape as they go and pummiling with rain, snow, or wind when they choose.
The folk here are incredibly friendly, aswell. Towards the end of our tour (the part spent in Saskatchewan), we've had huge support from motorists. Tonnes of people have been honking at us, stopping to see if we're alright if we've stopped for lunch, or even just stopping to say hi!
There was a particularly bad storm, a few days before we reached Regina. It was incredible to experience.. for about 6 of us.
It was just hidden behind a sand of trees to our SouthWest when we first noticed it. We were all very excited when we saw it, but we didnt give it too much worry. A few of us started our routine hunting for tastey snacks at the local cafe', and after a minute or two, the visable portion of the storm had doubled in size. This storm was the darkest grey I've seen in quite a while. The idea came up about maybe finding some place to
Marauding storms
One storm of a whole bunch that walked right over us while we were travelling/camping/etc.(Photo Credit: Katrina Siks) wait out the storm, so we didnt have to bike in it. As we had ridden through a decent-sized storm in the morning, and were a few hours behind scedule on our ride, a few of us felt we should ride on.
2 more minutes went by, and the enormity of the storm was becomming blatently obvious. From the small grey puff that appeared only a few minutes ago, the storm now took up a quarter of the horizon. Our estimates of having 10 minutes before it hit dwindled quickly to 5, and then to much less, as our casual walk towards possible shelter turned into a sprint with our bikes. We just managed to get our bicycles under a roof and out of the wind, as 60 seconds later, it hit. It was thunder, lighting, HUGE gusts of wind that made the buildings shutter, POUNDING rain that stopped even some traffic, most of which lasted for about 40 minutes.
During this time, we went inside the bar that we had ran to for shelter, were donated a pizza, and sat around and ate chips and tastey pizza. We also ended up borrowing one of their pizza ovens to
Saskatchewan Hills
Yes, there are indeed hills here.(Photo Credit: Katrina Siks) bake our potatoes for dinner, for the rest of our crew that wasnt with us.
For the rest of our crew, 2 rode strait through it, somehow. 2 others, after stopping on the side of the road to try and find some shelter under a bush, were picked up and driven the rest of the way to our destination with their bikes.
All in all, it was a great time. Katrina and Kelsy washed their hair in the storm, by leaning their heads around the corner of the building into the wind.
I recently went to a forum in Saskatoon, about the possibility of Nuclear Power in Saskatchewan. I was estatic to hear so many educated people raising valid and very well researched points against developing a nuclear reactor in Saskatchewan (one of the people speaking was Katrina, as she shared her knowledge gained through her degree and through her experience working at a nuclear powerplant!). This is one of the reasons why I have decided not to ride South this summer, as Id like to explore methods of further educating myself, perhaps even at University.
Anyways, I best be off for now! Lots of love,
Fixing a Flat
Here's Kelda, fixing one of her first flat tires. And yes, that massive storm in the background definately hit us.(Photo Credit: Katrina Siks) Tyler
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