Bikely map

While I was waiting out the bad weather in Tompkins, Chris (another cross-country cyclist with friends who’d been at a party back in Vancouver with Graydon and Frances, and who had subsequently been put in email contact with me) arrived in town and was also put up for the night at the Buffalo Bean. Though I’d originally heard that the storm was supposed to pass over by Tuesday (the 27th), and that there would then be non-headwinds, the forecast changed to predicting light headwinds for the rest of the week, but no more rain starting on Monday. Figuring that this was good enough (especially having someone with whom some drafting could be done), we set out on the 26th instead.

The weather was pretty clear, and warm but not too hot (just generally nice weather), so the ride was quite pleasant (having company was also nice).

Not having a weather disincentive to take photographs, I took a good number of shots of grain terminals/elevators oil derricks (which have apparently been in the area for quite some time) and other bits of Southwestern Saskatchewan scenery:

Along the way, my rack swung around a bit in such a way that two of its mounting screws got caught in the spokes. The back of the bike being far too heavily loaded to pitch me over the handlebar, this just broke a couple of spokes instead.

The wheel now being substantially out of true, I messed around with its alignment a little, looking for a position where it wouldn’t rub too much on either side of the frame (the tire is really about as large as the frame can reasonably take, so getting it not to rub at all was pretty much impossible, but I was able to get it to rub very little, and lightly at that). Chris’ rear tire had also developed a small aneurysm by this point so I loaned him some duct tape to help with that, and we figured on stopping at the local bike shop in Swift Current as soon as we got there.

In getting some bike shop action, we ended up being doubly lucky. The first bit of luck was that the local shop Big Sky Cycles had just opened up last August (so had we done the ride a year earlier, there would have been no bike shop in Swift Current). The second bit of luck was that, although we arrived something like 2 hours after the shops posted closing time, Dan (whose shop it is) was still closing up, saw us pull up to check out the hours, and invited us in to check the place out and see if he could help us. In addition to being a really nice guy, and running a good shop, he has a whole mess of space in the back in which he’s built a little indoor BMX park for the local kids, put in some couches where they can sit between rides, along with a juice/pop fridge and a tv. He gave me some replacement spokes free of charge, and tipped us off to a good place to set up camp for the evening.