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.)