Top Five Things I Learned While Biking Across Canada

I woke up today and realized it was Tuesday and that--hey!--I have a job and I AM ON DEADLINE in a very serious way. So, uh, I'm here to procrastinate! I kinda forgot about my writing job because there was a pause in the action, so I did a week of cushy temping instead (my hours were noon to five(!) and all I did was play Scrabulous while babysitting a phone that rarely rang) and somehow my brain preferred to believe the cushy reality was my permanent reality and, thus, deleted my inconvenient deadline from memory. Anyway, I remembered that it's Tuesday and realized I haven't done a Top Five Tuesday in a while. And, because I've been tinkering around with the Big Agnes blog lately, this week's theme is bike trip related.

5. Carbs are your friend. Period. They're even better when you wash them down with gravy. Oh, go on. Diet this, diet that, blah, blah, blah it's all nonsense anyway. Eat what you want, girlfriend. Only Jessica Alba can look like Jessica Alba and, fortunately for the rest of us, wearing a bikini and waving our fannies at the paparazzi is not in our job description.

4. Although, if you don't get enough fresh fruits and vegetables, you will start to feel a little funny. In the head. Your body needs fruits and vegetables. So does your brain. There was a day, at the height of the Vegetable Crisis, where I woke up, started weeping, and then was unable to stop crying (or explain why I was crying), so I spent several hours grimly pedaling while silent, persistent tears streamed down my face. It was bizarre. And pathetic. I was just...LOW. Low and vague and cloudy. And low. We hit a salad bar the next day and I was all "Whee! I'm fine now!" and went skipping down the street, all high on folic acid. Causality was typically pretty apparent during the trip. ME HUNGRY. ME SLEEPY. ME WANT STEAK. If you're biking over 100 kilometres a day, your body/mind is pushed to its outer limits anyway, so crises evolving from nutritional deficiencies will became obvious very quickly. For us, within about a week or so of poor nutrition, we were howling at the moon.

However, I think this same process of mental/physical erosion happens even if you're not engaged in extreme physical activity; it's just more vague and slow when you're physical expenditures are limited to shifting your weight from one ass cheek to the other or using your index finger to dial a mouse wheel. The erosion is there, but you're less inclined to notice it consciously. If you feel a little down, a little low, and also happen to be one of those people who has to count the catsup on their fries as a serving of veggies, that might be a big part of your problem.

3. Your body likes to move. Your body was made to move. Before we left, we didn't train all that much, considering we were embarking on a 7000 km bike trip. That started in the Rockies. Oh, sure, we worked out, we were active, etc. But, we also worked full time. So, we spent maybe an hour or so working out (almost but not really) every day (which actually isn't all that different from what we do normally). On the bike trip, we typically got in about seven to eight hours of cycling every day, while carrying about 30–50 pounds of gear. And did I mention the Rockies? Because they were really big. And mountainous. I wasn't sure if two moderately fit, not-all-that-young people could really pull it off without some physical repercussions. But, in fact, we were fine. We were more than fine; we were fantastic! Our bodies adapted so quickly and readily to the increased activity. In fact, our bodies gobbled it up and asked for more. No strains or pains. No back pain, no neck pain, no migraines. Sit at a desk for eight hours and you'll feel it. You'll be creaky and sore and your body will complain and get all tangled up and angry. Get up and move and your body will perk up, do a little dance, and then give you an impulsive hug before taking off in a gallop.

It was more than that, more than just feeling surprisingly great considering how hard we were working. The other thing that happens when your body is happy is that you're happy. Happy body, happy brain. Apart from the vitamin deficiency episode, we both marveled at how...solidly great and clear-headed we felt. In fact, I was so clear-headed that I—okay, you better sit down for this. Are you ready? I was so clear-headed that I even started to understand math. Yes. I no longer believe it's possible to be happy unless you get at least an hour a day of exercise. I don't care who you are or what you say, I won't believe you. You wanna feel better than you thought possible? Go outside. Move around. It doesn't matter what you do—walk, bike, stroll, roll over 75 times—just give your body what it wants. It'll thank you. As a bonus, you can eat gravy and still be a hottie.

2. When you're going through some ups and downs, hills will look much worse from a distance than they actually are. It's an optical illusion. Partway down one hill, the hill ahead of you will look steep and tall and daunting; get to its base, and it's actually not so bad. In fact, you'll zip over the base and be partway up before you know it. Typically, your dread will far outweigh the actual effort required of you to tackle a climb (procrastinating editors take note).

There is an exception to this rule: the mountain pass. If you can't see the top of a hill (because it's 50 km away!), your mind will play another trick on you and will make impossibly large uphill grinds look like they're slanted downhill. I could never figure out this optical illusion, although certainly it could just be straight up denial (Ha! There's no WAY I can't see the top of this mountain. That would mean...no. NO.) So, sometimes just when you think you're going to get to sit back and coast, you're actually about to go through an extended period of hell. And when you're going through hell? Too bad, suckah. There ain't nothin' you can do about it but keep on going. Amen.

As for coasting? I never once encountered the free downhill ride my mind sometimes expected. The only time life will let you coast is after you've earned it.

1. The world is full of good people. People you don't know will slow their trucks down to a near stop to protect you from bears, they will pull over on a hot day to offer you cold water, they will lean out their windows to cheer you on when you're struggling up a hill, they will give two strangers the keys to the town hall so that they have a place to stay, and no matter where you are, there is always somebody who will crack a beer for you and invite you to join them around the campfire. People love to laugh and tell stories and will welcome you into their lives if you let them. People are good. Life is good.

The Maritimes--Intro

It's been seven months. SEVEN MONTHS! Which means it's been niggling in the back of my mind that I never really finished this blog for seven months. (I have a tendency to put things off and then pick them up again long after someone normal would have let it go.) So, I'm gonna give poor Big Agnes her dues. Here we go...

The Maritimes. We entered the Maritimes via the Trans-Canada trail, which runs through a strip of forest and farmland from Rivière du Loup, Québec to Edmunston, Brunswick. Our arrival in New Brunswick collided with Labour Day Weekend and, right on time, the onset of fall. Our last night in Big Agnes was in the tiny town of Cabano, Québec and it was a very chilly last night. By the time we crossed the border into New Brunswick it was definitely fall. As in cold and rainy, with no end in sight.

The Maritimes, then, signified a shift in how the trip went. Not only did the cold, damp (wet!) weather make camping unappealing, camping also became less accessible. The Maritimes, well, they're sparsely populated. And we could no longer rely on a campground being within a reasonable biking distance on any given day. In fact, sometimes we were grateful to come upon any form of accommodation at all!

Something else happened too: we started to get tired. Really, really tired. Road weary, bleary, fatigued...as though at any given moment a nine day nap would be nice. When researching and planning the trip, we'd read that the fatigue borne of several months of riding is one of the reasons why it's best to start in the Rockies--get 'em over with while your legs are still fresh. I have to assert that this turned out to be very, very true. I can't imagine facing the Rockies at that point in the trip. What's weird about the fatigue is that we were, in fact, in fantastic condition and we easily gobbled up the steep climbs of New Brunswick without a second thought. But, all the same, we often found ourselves counting down the kilometres until the next stop. Our sudden reliance on motels was costing us a mint, but we were secretly grateful for the incredible luxury of dozing off to Law and Order while curled up in a real(!) bed.

So, in general, the Maritimes had a real feeling of winding down, the trip and us.

So, How Does It Feel To Be Done?

The first question everyone asks us. Well...It doesn't feel all that good, to be frank. Everyone, including us at some point, I'm sure, had an expectation that we'd be pumped up and proud of what we'd achieved. But really? On our last ride, we were both just quiet and sad and a little tearful.

And then it was just over.

It's not that we're not proud of ourselves, it's just not that "WHOO!" kind of proud. What we did took months and it was neither easy nor hard. And, more than anything, what we did was quiet. One day of ever evolving countryside slipping into another while we rode with the tacit understanding of mutual support. And, really, that's all there was to it.

What amazed me on a daily basis was not what I could achieve with my body, not how far I could ride or what hills I could grind out, but the easygoing peace of mind I was able to step into while my body occupied itself with getting strong, being strong, and, in that world of fresh air and sunshine and birdsong, I had nothing left to focus on but the surprising landscape of my own uninterrupted thoughts.

And then we found ourselves at the top of Signal Hill gazing out over the Atlantic and there was nowhere left to go but home.

So, how does it feel to be done? I think it feels like we're not quite ready yet for all the noise.

Believe it, Baby!!!

Yesterday, we dipped our tires in the Atlantic Ocean in "The Gut" in Quidi Vidi, Newfoundland!

Our quizzical, non-celebratory expressions are more of an "Is that camera timer working? Was that a beep? Did you hear a beep?!?" look than an "I'm wrestling with an existential crisis because I just finished biking across Canada and now there's nothing left to do but pack up and fly home."

While there's so much to say yet, I'm still on Newfoundland time, which means that I've woken up on the West Coast at 6:30 in the morning to discover that my body is outraged that it hasn't had its coffee yet.

A Final Word on La Route Verte

I know I've raved about what a fantastic experience La Route Verte is already, but really, I (we) just can't rave enough about how much fun we had cycling in Québec. I think the one detail I forgot to mention about La Route is that it provided us with numerous opportunities to meet other cyclists. We made friends with Benjamin, who was training for a triathlon and who lead us on a reckless whirlwind ride through Montréal, and Ken and Adrian, who were biking from the Yukon and Victoria respectively and with whom we passed a fun afternoon biking and chatting on the way to Rivière du Loup, and Anton who had biked across Asia--ALL of Asia--then flew from Japan to Vancouver and biked home to Québec, a trip that had taken him over two years. Anton's legs? Were like grain silos. It was just great fun to have other cyclists zipping in and out of our days and sharing a piece of our adventure with us.

The other great thing about La Route Verte is that is takes you right from Rivière du Loup to Edmundston, New Brunswick on a tree-lined trail. It was two of the best days of riding we had on the trip, with lush scenery, lakes, and rivers and even a few wheat crops! I could go on, but I think the pictures speak for themselves (and I have a ridiculous 20 minute time limit at this Internet cafe!).

No Detail Left Behind

Yet another disturbingly detailed sign in Québec.

I would like to know if this sign would be any less effective if the injured child's sock wasn't half off, or if there wasn't the dramatic pause created by the ellipsis before "le vôtre."

Pas de Ca-ca

I think perhaps this sign suffers from too much detail. Imagine being the graphic designer working for the city of Montréal and getting your original design back with a note along the lines of: "While we liked how realistic your silhouette of a Great Dane looked, what we want is a steaming loaf of crap somewhere on the sign. Just so there's no confusion."

Elvis Sighting!!

The King's disembodied head was seen presiding over the hostel bar in Québec.

Ed note: Apologies for the grainy quality of the shot. We had to use the camera phone because, as we all know, The King is elusive and fanatical about remaining underground, so we didn't have time to go back up to the room to get our camera.

Fell Down a Hole

After Québec City, I fell down a hole. That may sound like I'm trying to craft some metaphor for my morale, perhaps using a loose Alice in Wonderland allusion for just how fantastical my morale tumble was. But, no, my morale is perfectly intact. I'm being literal. We stopped at a campground about halfway between Québec and Rivière du Loup, and I fell down a hole. One second I was walking towards the fire to put another log on and the next second, FOOMPH! Fell down a hole.

Specifically, my left leg fell down a hole, its rapid progress to the underworld slowed only by the friction created between my flesh and the craggy rocks lining the hole, while the rest of me stayed above ground wondering what the hell had happened. It was so thoroughly dark out that my brain had very little sense data to go on and I spent a couple of seconds mentally grasping to put the pieces together: in many ways it felt as though I'd fallen...yet in many ways it didn't. And, wait...my left leg really kinda hurt.

At this point, I realized that I was very crooked and that straightening myself would involve a certain amount of careening towards the fire, so I grabbed Kieran's arm rather firmly. Kieran gallantly responded to my panic by barking, "Hey! What are you doing?!?"

Once I extracted myself from the hole, I sulked over my lack of a knight in shining armor for a few minutes. That is, until Kieran pointed out that when he tripped and fell into a tree in Ottawa, I had laughed out loud at him all the way to the Museum of Civilization.*

So, long story short, it's been a long time since I've been able to write, but it's been business as usual for us.

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*In my defense, I asked him if he was okay before braying with laughter.

Our Return to Montréal

I don't know if either of us knew what to expect when we returned to Montréal. It seemed a bit weird to visit a city where we used to live but where we no longer have any friends, as they have also moved away. So we weren't sure what we were going to do with ourselves, as we had no need or desire to see the sites nor did we have anyone to visit.

We also made a rather inauspicious entrance into the city, starting things off with--what else?--a bilingual screaming match as we waited on the train platform. Of course someone tried to steal our stuff at the train station. Of course. I would have been more surprised if no one had at least tried to nick our bike gear. It's Montréal. And, while thieves and large cities go together like bread and butter, I think Montréal can count itself among the small handful of cities where, if you catch someone trying to steal your stuff and have the gall to take it back from them, your thieves will get mad at YOU and offended that you have retrieved what they have rightfully stolen. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure that Montréal is the only place on Earth where the ensuing screaming match would be conducted in two different languages, each party understanding the other perfectly well but sticking to their native language simply because that's where their favourite insults and cuss words reside. Naturally, the classic response to being on the receiving end of a French/English insult is to switch to your non-native language to reply in perfect scathing French/English, "I don't understand what you're saying, [insult]; I don't speak French/English," before reverting back to your native tongue to hurl more insults: "Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, you don't understand. Understand this: FUCK. YOU. Yeah? Understood that, yeah? THOUGHT SO."

Obligatory bilingual scuffle out of the way, Kieran and I managed to have a perfectly lovely time. The hostel ended up being three blocks away from our old apartment, so we had no problem finding it and had the luxury of knowing all the best places to eat and hang out. And, perhaps for the first time in Montréal, Kieran and I had the even sweeter luxury of spending the entire day together. I think--no, I know-- that you could count on one hand the number of times one or both of us didn't have to work on any given day during our time in Montréal, so it was wonderful to spend a day poking around all our old haunts without deadlines or upcoming shifts or research papers hanging over our heads. As a result, we got to roll all our favourite stolen pleasures into one day: We went for brunch, we went for coffee and lingered over the crossword, we went to a matinee, we went window shopping along Ste. Catherine's and Sherbrooke, we poked around the second hand book stores, and we went for dinner. Also nice to see is that the gentrification seeds planted by Kieran and Louis' Starbucks have taken root and our old neighbourhood is significantly nicer. Far fewer sex shops and "danse contact" joints, with funky little restaurants in their place, flower pots along the sidewalks, and it appears that some effort is being made to minimize the, uh, ca-ca and other bodily fluids that used to litter the sidewalks. It's really an incredible difference and the whole area seems brighter and fresher. (Our old building still looks like a total mung hole though.)

Nous Aimons Beaucoup La Route Verte! C'est Magnifique!

That's French for La Route Verte is da shit! A network of bike paths that cover the entire province of Québec. In cities and on bridges, we have our own lane, our own traffic signals...in the country, we have quiet roads, parks, riverside riding. It's a dream. The route is clearly marked by signs and, along the way, there are hotels and campgrounds that are approved as cyclist friendly, which means there's safe storage for our bikes and there's food that has enough carbs, protein, and fresh fruits and vegetables to meet our needs. I'm not kidding. These places can't get approved by the government unless they're gonna feed us properly. Did I mention how much we love this? BECAUSE WE LOVE THIS.

This could also be easily called the House Envy Route. The Québec countryside seems to be populated almost exclusively by lovely little stone houses with freshly painted trim and terraces. The villages are equally charming, each with a Catholic church that's at least a couple hundred year's old at its heart, surrounded by, of course, more stone houses with freshly painted trim and a handful of pubs and bistros. I would give a cycling tour on La Route a heartfelt endorsement for anyone looking for a fun vacation.

Dana! Dana! Dana! Wait for It...

Elvis sighting! Elvis sighting! Elvis sighting!

The King, in all his gold lamé suited glory in Quyon, Québec.

More Tidbits

Kieran is uploading photos RIGHT NOW! We've found a place that accepts our USB cable and it is, of all places, an Internet cafe/karaoke bar, so there's some drunk kids warbling their way through some Usher songs right now, which is pretty hilarious and oddly not annoying (yet). Anyhoo, until the photos are ready, allow me to divulge the minutiae of our lives for your amusement.

The fact that I am a mouth breather is not only unfortunate for me in that it's rather inelegant, it's also inconvenient and unpleasant to be reminded of this bad habit by way of inhaling a sizable number of bugs on any given day. According to my dentist, my mouth breathing has to do with my historical atrocious overbite. Truthfully, I think I only fall back on mouth breathing when I sleep or when I exercise (I guess when I'm breathing deeply, then), so it's not like I'm Napoleon Dynamite or something. Or I hope I'm not. Bugs don't zing into my mouth at high speeds and hit my teeth with a faint thwack to notify me of my gaping maw when I'm, like, buying groceries or something, so perhaps I'm walking around slack jawed half the time without realizing it. When this trip first started, I used to pause to give my mouth a swish with water followed by a dainty spit after a bug flew in, but now I just swallow and keep going. Just goes to show you you can pretty much get used to anything. (Aside: Once when I was jogging, I had a BEE fly into my mouth and start crawling around my tongue and I had to stop dead in the sidewalk with my tongue sticking out and heavy ropes of drool hanging out of the corners of my mouth until the bee decided it was done exploring the surface of my tongue and flew away. For everyone's sake, let's hope that THAT never happens again.)

Speaking of the surprising things that one can become accustomed to, it didn't take long at all for our lives to rearrange themselves into a series of ironic new relativities. Okay, I totally made up that word. What I mean is, things we now accept as Normal Life are pretty darn ironic relative to Actual Normal Life. Here are some examples: On days when we do what we call a "Half Day" (it's become an official term for us), which amounts to doing between 50-75 kilometres or about three or four hours of riding, I find I end up admonishing myself not to get dessert or reminding myself to get salad instead of fries*. I've only had three and a half hours of vigorous exercise, after all, and I don't want to get crazy here. Of course, there was a time not that long ago where if I'd done a three hour workout, I would have heartily patted myself on the back before tying into a piece of cheesecake. "Oh, go on," I'd say smugly while my fork pushed its way through the cool, dense mass of cheese and sugar, "you've earned it."

Along with what we currently both consider to be inconsequential amounts of exercise, there's also the whole "Enh, you can only smell this shirt from four feet away, so it's good for another day" thing, the daily "This knife is dirty; I will wipe it...heeeeerrree on this patch of grass to clean it," and the classic "Ooooh! A grassy camp spot! What unimaginable luxury a night's sleep HERE will be!"

And now, an impromptu reader poll: Do you find this picture creepy?

Notice how the world behind me is all streaming and bent? Notice how there's blurry shapes superimposed over different parts of the shot? Yeah. We took that in the schoolhouse in Delia. The one we thought was haunted (before we knew how the pics turned out).

Anyway, just to prove that I'm not completely hysterical when it comes to sleeping in creepy old buildings, we ended up spending the night in another old one room schoolhouse in Dyment, Ontario and I slept like a log.** I also successfully managed to sleep in the old jail in Ottawa (now the HI hostel), even though it was once featured on "Haunted Canada" and, indeed, there's daily ghost tours with a guide telling a rapt group of people things I would force myself not to hear. Despite my best efforts not to give my avid imagination any more fodder than is naturally provided by a 145 year-old jail (that was closed down due to inhumane conditions), I was unable to avoid learning that the hostel used to have the eighth floor--the floor that used to be death row--open to guests. But too many times guests staying on this floor ran screaming down the stairs in the middle of the night, waking up and terrifying the entire building, because a man holding a bible sat on their bed, so the hostel eventually shut that floor down. This did not happen to us in our cell, thank GODDESS, because I would NOT survive if the ghost of Patrick Whelan sat on my bed.

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*Uh-oh. I think a ripple of anxiety has just gone through all the family members who read this. Believe me, I'm as healthy and strong as an ox right now. I pretty much mean that literally. I think me, my arse, and I could pull a plow up a hill right now.

**That is, AFTER I convinced myself that the fugitive who was on the loose in Ontario was not what was making the creaking noises on the deck. It did take a certain amount of Creak Analysis before I was able to reach that conclusion. Weirdly enough, when we spent the night in Portage du Fort in Quebec, it was just after they'd caught that same fugitive of whom I'd been scared in Dyment, five minutes from where we were staying.

Yup. Still Alive.

Ontario tried, but it didn't kill us. By "tried to kill us," I mean "threw us in front of speeding trucks." Literally. Ontario's homicidal tendencies towards cyclists could very well have gotten the better of us at any time, so you can go ahead and call us lucky or blessed or whatever else fits into your world view for having survived. We survived the province with absolutely no shoulders on its highways, highways that are populated almost exclusively by caravans of speeding semi-trailers, and highways to which there are no alternatives. There's just the one route, the Trans-Canada, so if things get dangerously busy or rough or generally begins to resemble a giant steaming loaf of crap, you gotta just keep going.

So, I guess you could say cycling in Ontario is a lot like life: When life dishes out a big steaming pile of crap, you gotta just be bold, mark out the space you need to keep going, and then inhabit that space with your held held high (and your left hand at the ready to flip the bird to people invading your little survival bubble, delivered along with a complementary daisy chain of obscenities of course).

Seriously, though. Cycling in Ontario is hella dangerous. It's quite simply a tightrope act of keeping your bike upright in a rough, all but non-existent shoulder on a very busy highway with a LOT of truck traffic. If you're planning a cycling tour for anywhere, don't go to Ontario. And if you're planning to cycle across Canada, get yourself a plan for Ontario. We cycled only at certain times of the day, packing it in shortly after 3:00 when the truck traffic really picked up. And, in the middle of it all, we had to throw in the towel and admit temporary defeat. We hit the reputedly worst and most dangerous stretch of highway (the 700 km ride around Lake Superior, from Thunder Bay to Sault Ste. Marie) right at the start of Drunk Driving Fest 2007 the long weekend. In fact, coming into Thunder Bay the traffic was already getting out of control, and I was literally blown off the road three separate times by trucks that came too close to me. Literally a matter of a couple centimetres more and the trucks would have hit me. As much as we hated to do it, we had to admit that our timing was off with the long weekend and it was too dangerous to continue at that point, so we took the Greyhound to Sault Ste. Marie to where there's less truck traffic (most of it takes the northern route that branches off at Nippigon) and to wait out the long weekend in order for traffic to thin out some.

Anyway, there was little to no joy to be had with the cycling part of our day. It was noisy and stressful at best. We did very much enjoy the places we stopped, though. Lakes and rivers and forests and quiet evenings steeped in moonlight. And now we're done! We're in Ottawa and simply have to cross the bridge and we'll be in Quebec. In fact, we've been zig zagging back and forth between Quebec and Ontario for the last couple of days and it's been lovely, lovely riding along the Ottawa River and The Joy is back. Indeed, things are lookin' up!

Some quick housekeeping items, which funnily enough is all I meant this post to be until I heard the pleasing and comforting clack of my own typing (what can I say, writing is home to me): Kieran left the cell phone in a motel in Northern Ontario and it's now on a cellphone version of The Incredible Journey, trying to catch up to us, so we've not been getting any messages or texts y'all may have been sending and we're sorry about that; although it's likely only our parents who have noticed, we've not been able to upload photos since Manitoba, which is becoming something of a gathering crisis at the same time as being annoying, as we don't have another memory card for our camera (nor can we buy one since it's outdated technology or something), so we're sorry about that too for all the people who have boring office jobs for whom we've not been providing sufficient distraction; on a related note, I find I can't blog about various anecdotes and spaces and places without their accompanying photos to jog my memory and, hence, the radio silence these last few weeks. Coming soon, though.

Until then, love to all!

You'll Be Glad This One Has No Accompanying Photo

While the girth, smoothness, texture and overall quality of the highways' shoulders changes from province to province, the detritus borne of thousands of passing cars--sometimes the only reminder that highways are, in fact, human landscapes--has remained both constant and consistent across the nation. Take a peek at the shoulder of the highway anywhere in Canada and you will find: Tim Hortons cups; brown plastic lids that have become disembodied from their Tim Hortons cups; empty beer bottles (great, so we're drinking and driving AND littering); small crescent shaped pieces of metal missing two bolts at the top (for the life of me I can't figure out what these pieces of metal are, but they are ubiquitous); empty water bottles sporting claims of various and sundry origins and pedigrees; the rubber shards that indicate a tire's violent death; and, yes, weirdly enough, dental floss (the kind that's threaded onto a little plastic pick with two points so that, presumably, you can floss with one hand while driving). Aside from the dental floss and the apparently disposable pieces of mystery metal, I could probably have predicted what Canadians are throwing out their car windows. With one other notable exception.

I noticed almost immediately, way back in BC, that people throw out a surprising number of half-finished bottles of apple juice. Sure, none of these bottles actually bore apple juice labels and were more often than not Pepsi or Coke bottles with faded, peeling labels. But what do I know? Hell, I even half-envisioned parents lovingly pouring apple juice into an old water bottle (in an effort to reduce and reuse even!) so that their toddler could have a drink on their long road trip (only to have their toddler throw the bottle out the window in a Terrible Twos fit of temper, or...something like that).

It took me until Ontario. And even then I didn't quite get to it on my own. No, I went and said it out loud: "You notice people throw out a lot of apple juice?" And Kieran's face got a kind of squirmy look and then, finally, I knew.

It's PEE. People are PEEING IN BOTTLES AND THROWING THEM OUT THE WINDOW.

Now, sure, it was ridiculous for me to labour for so long under my apple juice delusion, but where I come from, well, you just don't do that. No, where I come from, you pull over and scoot behind a bush to drop trow LIKE A CIVILIZED HUMAN BEING.

Have we not already taken things far enough? I mean, we've all but moved into our cars as it is: eating, and listening to music, and talking on the phone, and watching DVDs, and, apparently, flossing our teeth while we drive. Now we're reaching under the seat to find an old Diet Coke bottle to act as an impromptu toilet? And, uh, while you're, erm, using your Coke bottle,WHAT IF YOU HIT A BUMP?!?

Hello from Thunder Bay, Ontario!

We're in a little Internet gamers' den, which turns out to be not at all conducive to writing because I'm surrounded by teenage boys who are all yelling at each other about who's cheating and you're a cheater and stop cheating you cheater and there's a couple of other kids playing some game that involves learning to play a virtual electric guitar. I'm sure their parents actually PAY them to come here just to get this noise out of the house.

Normally, I have a couple of posts to upload but I've not been writing this week because...WE MADE FRIENDS! Alex and Veronique. Friends who we would hang out with at night and we would talk and they'd say funny things and then we'd say funny things and we'd all laugh and then we'd go to bed and talk about all the funny things our New Friends Alex and Veronique said. We met them at the campground in Ignace when they pulled their bikes into the spot next to ours. They're biking from the Yukon to Quebec.

We have met other bikers on this trip but, uh, they've all been assholes. There seems to be this unspoken element of competition for a lot of people and they ask you questions not because they're interested in you, but because they want to brag about how much faster they are, better their gear choices are, or how clever they are at choosing a superior route. It's always poor Kieran that these dorks will corner while I'm off brushing my teeth somewhere, and either it's against the dorks' Code of Honour for Socially Inept Conversations to try to one-up a female, or a female presence is simply too overwhelming, but my returning to Kieran's side is the only thing that seems to shut these guys up.

Anyway, Our New Friends Alex and Veronique were not like that. They had me at "The headwinds in Saskatchewan were terrible." When they admitted to one day being crushed enough by the wind to give up after thirty kilometres and hitchhike, I all but hugged them. So we had new friends to exchange stories with and compare notes with and to generally hang out with and it's been a long time since we had any company other than our own and I neglected the blog.

So, in lieu of having a proper post, being able to compose a proper post, or having the capacity to upload our pictures to Flickr, I present to you a long overdue map update:

Greetings from Kenora, Ontario!

We made it to cottage country! We are at a lovely campground overlooking The Lake of the Woods, which comes complete with loons calling and a low slung moon. This morning, we dragged our feet and made only half-hearted attempts to pack up the tent before we both conceded that we really wanted to stay here for a day. It's hot and there's beaches. And we loves the hot!

So we languished about the lake all day, soaking in the sun. Nothing feels as much like summer as jumping off the end of a pier into a cool lake on a hot day. And we saw the most amazing thing: A deer picked her way down the rocks to the lake and, without hesitation, slipped into the water and swam across the lake! She was smooth and graceful in the water and glided across rather effortlessly, her big sweet ears moving back and forth the whole time.

We're off to Dryden tomorrow. Today's posts are sans pictures and links because I'm doing this from the phone. I had hoped I would have a chance to talk about the highlights of Saskatchewan (the groovy little town of Craik and the amazing exhibits at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, but I would prefer to do both when I can provide the accompanying photos. So, until the next time we find a proper Internet cafe,I suppose. We've appreciated very much all the positive comments and emails we've received (from around the world!) and wish that we had time to respond. Thank you to all, though, for the words of support and encouragement.

We Heart Winnipeg Too!

We had the most fun in Winnipeg. First of all, we were absolutely spoiled by Kieran's Aunt Olive and Uncle Russ. Aunt Olive cooked for us at all hours of the day and Uncle Russ chauffered us around the city.

Second of all, Winnipeg is cool! It has so much history and you can feel all 10,000 years of it, especially at The Forks. I loved the idea that 10,000 years ago people gathered at The Forks in the summer and here we are today, doing just that.

Our first day, we wandered around The Forks and took it all in then had lunch at the Marketplace before exploring Saint Boniface. In Saint Boniface, we found a lovely little cafe. After, we explored the old cathedral and found Louis Riel's tomb.

On our second day, we went to the Manitoba Museum, had lunch at a fancy restaurant that specialized in regional foods (bison steak and wild rice and little mini squash things!), and then took in a play at the Fringe Festival. The play was an absolute blast: Giant Killer Shark the Musical. It's just silly. Wonderfully silly. And I've got a penchance for silly. (Aside: I also think silly is the key to world peace. If only facist megalomaniacs were more silly, maybe they wouldn't take themselves and their manifestos so seriously, you know?)

We Heart Manitoba

They say a change is as good as a rest. Indeed. Manitoba, humble little Manitoba, provided us with both.

I don't know that either of us had high expectations for Manitoba. In terms of biking, many of the Web sites we'd read in preparing for our trip spoke poorly of Manitoba as a place to bike. Almost universally, people complained about the roads and the fact that the shoulders aren't paved and about the bugs. And, indeed, the shoulders aren't paved. Anywhere. Even in many parts of Winnipeg. And the bugs! The bugs are something terrible. Whatever your worst bug experience is? It's like that, only worse.

All the same, we found Manitoba to be just lovely. We stuck to the secondary highways and people were respectful and cautious around us and the roads were blessedly quiet and it really didn't matter that we couldn't ride in the shoulder. And the bugs? Well, everything else was so lovely that it's okay that we had to sacrifice large hunks of flesh to their rabid maneating mosquitoes.

The difference between Manitoba and Saskatchewan/Alberta was apparent almost immediately after crossing the border. The towns are older and they have lovely Victorian buildings and parks and majestic old elm trees and oak trees lining the streets. And the campgrounds were equally lovely, many of them built in 1970 for the Manitoba centennial, which means they're all treed in nicely.

And, yes, the food is better. Our first night in Manitoba we stopped in Virden and wandered into a restaurant on Main Street that really didn't look all that promising, just more promising than all the other restaurants. But then, in talking up her turkey special (which I had no intention of getting as I'd once made the mistake of getting a ham special and was served Spam and mashed potatotes made from a powder), the owner leaned in and said, "I'm not like those other places. I use real meat. I bought it from a farmer this morning. And I make my own gravy." Uh, SOLD!

Kieran still talks about that turkey. I mean, you can't go wrong with anything soaked in homemade gravy, but you really can't go wrong with fresh turkey packed between two slabs of bread soaked in homemade gravy. Seriously, peeps, you simply can't revere the true meaning of the phrase "two slabs of bread soaked in homemade gravy" until you bike for eight hours first. Gravy is not food. It's God Goo oozed straight from the heavens into the open pores of your fluffy, fluffy simple carbohydrates..

It is incredible how much better we felt after that meal. That gravy seemed to simply washed away all our troubles. (The next time you're feeling down or demoralized, I would prescribe tucking into some turkey sandwiches soaked in God Goo. It's like a small injection of Prozac.) Turkey endorphins and longlost vitamins coursing through our veins, we both kept remarking, "I LIKE Virden. It's NICE here. Don't you think it's NICE here?" as we rambled about town after our meal.

But the food crisis met its official demise in Winnipeg, thanks to Kieran's Great-aunt Olive. Olive stuffed us with homemade bread dripping in homemade butter, raspberries and beans from the garden, fried chicken, and grilled salmon. It's impossible to maintain any semblance of low morale when you have a sweet aunt who scratches your back every morning while you sip your fresh coffee and wait for your hashbrowns.

Some Tidbits

I have a new appreciation for the Lions Clubs. Thanks to the Lions Clubs across the nation, we can pretty much count on even the tiniest of towns having a campground. No, better yet: a campground with a shower. Until we took this trip, I didn't realize how much the Lions/Kinsmen, etc. did for their communities.

I know, I know. It's a bit odd to have grown up in a small town whose only campground was the Lions' Campground and not realize that Lions do that kind of thing for their communities. Honestly, I didn't really put together that the Lions Campground in town was developed by, uh, the Lions Club. I think when I was a kid I just kinda thought that was the NAME of the campground (possibly having something to do with mountain lions). But then again, it was odd for me to be shocked by the quality of food served in small town diners. In my defense, we never ate at those diners (and now I know why!) because we always just ate my mom's cooking from the garden. Anyhoo, I can see how all the Lions parks and campgrounds and info centres can really boost these little towns and think it's pretty cool that the Lions give back to their communities so much. It all got me to wondering: Is there a similar women's group common to small towns? If not, I'm going to start a Cougars' Club (har!) if/when we have a town to call home.

Yes. We've certainly gotten to experience a big slice of life in a small town. Including witnessing first hand the gossip for which small towns are notorious. And, no. It's not the women who sit around clucking and cooing about the various misfortunes and misdeeds of their neighbours. (At least not publicly; perhaps women prefer to gossip by phone.) No, it's the men. Walk into a diner anywhere in the prairies and you'll find an ever growing cluster of men, ball caps perched on their heads, coffee cups in hand, and a river of gossip flowing between them.

Here's a transcript of a conversation overheard at the cafe in Delia, Alberta:
Farmer 1: I was kinda surprised how Tracey stood up to Ben there.
Farmer 2: Yeah? Naahhh. I wasn't.
F1: No?
F2: Nah. [Waves hand] You seen the way she is with them kids.
F1: [Chuckles] You got me there. You got me there.
F2: I heard he's staying up there on Griswold's couch now. [Chuckles] I guess the other gal he took up with there won't have him back neither! [Both laugh.]

And because I made a big deal about it last time, I feel obliged to provide some follow-up. The headwinds continue unabated. In fact, they've worsened. (Our ability to cope with them has markedly improved, however, thanks to some good hearty meals.)

In manner of true Canadians, we've taken on an attitude of a perversely healthy learned helplessness towards the horrible weather pattern by which we're plagued. A sort of "Sure, this is really terrible and absolutely everything would be easier and more pleasant if only the weather was different or if I lived somewhere more hospitable to human life, but I can be miserable and be happy and have fun at the same time!" attitude.

And, just as every March it seems that this this year might actually be the year that winter doesn't end and you resign yourself to that possibility since it's been so long since you felt the sun on your skin anyway and you've forgotten what you're missing, we've resigned ourselves to the idea that the headwinds might never end. It's been so long since we've been able to travel at speeds over 12 kilometres per hour or since biking wasn't a patella crushing grind that I think we'll be really surprised--pleasantly surprised--when one day we breeze along the road at a nice brisk clip with minimal effort thanks to the tailwind that's decided to show its face. (Are you listening Universe? If you could arrange that, that would be GREAT.) In the meantime, the headwind has become as integral to biking as pedalling and although we occassionally suffer from anxiety due to our slowed timelines, we don't fuss much over it anymore.

On a somewhat related note, Mom said that after my (admittedly) somewhat disheartened posts about Saskatchewan, folks were concerened that we weren't enjoying ourselves (such is inevitably the case when you have an extended network of concerned aunts and uncles reading your blog). Indeed we are. This trip is not easy--nor was it expected to be--and I don't think fun is quite the right word, but we feel alive. We're working our bodies hard and we're outside in the sun and the wind and the rain and there's deer and ducks and bird calls and dangling our feet off of docks and, all in all, we feel pretty much the opposite of what it feels like to sit in a cubicle rotting in front of a computer. In fact, in many ways this whole trip may have been an elaborate scheme to ensure we didn't spend another summer cooped up in an office. (For the record, I am currently in the market for a scheme that will prevent me from ever returning to an office job. I DON'T WANT TO GO DEAD INSIDE EVER AGAIN. I'm just saying.)