I got up, and was able to start on my way at around 9:30am. Much to my delight, the highway disrepair running from Peebles to Kipling appeared to end at Kipling, and I was able to enjoy some more nice roads.. at least most of the time.
Finally! Glorious, glorious tailwinds. I got a late start, having overslept, eaten a substantial breakfast, before dealing with problems with my bank card (it turns out that the post-dated paycheque that was deposited effective the 22nd had a 10 day hold on it. I had expected that with a post-dated item, they’d start to clear it early and get it a shorter-than-usual hold, rather than a longer-than-usual hold). Regardless, I was able to hit the road by noon.
There was another early start today, since the Moose Jaw host is the single father of a son who’s old enough to take care of himself (and get himself to school, etc.) if left home alone, but young enough for it to seem prudent not to leave him alone with near-strangers in the house. Since he had to leave for work at around 6:20am, that’s when we hit the road.
I got an early start in, and rode on for about 20km before deciding that, while I wasn’t going to be able to make Regina, I’d still make Moose Jaw with ample spare time, so when I came to Mortlach and saw it to be a well-serviced town, I decided to take a quick internet break, check the weather, and do other such relaxing things.
Chris put in an early start to the day while I was busy noticing that, in spite of the broken spokes not being drive-side, they were still more difficult to lace in than I cared to deal with, without removing the freewheel, so I went back to Big Sky to hire Dan to pull the freewheel, lace the spokes, and true the wheel. He did all this, and cleaned my drivetrain too, and then still refused to charge me for it, so since my handlebar tape was getting into pretty rough shape, I bought some new tape from him (though I didn’t put it on right then). Also, while the back tire was off for the spoke replacement, I swapped it with the front tire, since the back tire was carrying a good deal more weight, and had more wear to show for it.
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 winds continued to be strong headwinds, and I slogged out (mostly riding) the first 15-20km or so on gravel, but did get a neat picture of some alkali beds where some ponds have fairly recently dried up
I got up, and had an interesting interaction with someone who had become concerned that those food-containing panniers not brought into my tent had been abandoned and, either completely failing to notice my tent, or completely failing to figure that it might in some way be related to the panniers, had loaded them into the back of his truck to take down to the police station for safe-keeping (and noted to myself that, when in a population centre that isn’t smack in the middle of bear country, the food panniers should be kept in the tent vestibule with the other panniers). Fortunately, he’d just gotten them loaded up when he saw me emerge from the tent, and start looking for my bags, so he let me know that he had them, and gave them back to me.
Dreading the forecast weather, and having put away a reasonably long day the day before, I slept in a little, ate a hefty breakfast, procrastinated with weather reports, and got a late start.
I got a good timely start (around 8am) in substantial rain, but had strong northwesterly winds which pushed me along quickly enough that I really didn’t care if I was getting rained on. The rain lightened up, and it then rained on and off pretty much all day, getting heavy again once I got close to Medicine Hat.
