After spending a rest day at Vélorution's free bicycle campground, and meeting a bunch of local cyclists in the store (and catching up with Andre, the owner, who I'd been involved in some provincial cycling advocacy with), I headed out, aiming to make it a little more than halfway to Webbwood (where lives another provincial cycling advocate who I was planning to visit).
In spite of a forecast with probable showers developing late in the morning or early in the afternoon, I lucked out and managed to get dry weather pretty much all day. I started at around 8:15am, and made a stop after about 40km to top up my water, check some newer forecasts, and ask after some brunch (another 6km or so down the road, I scored some brunch at a restaurant recommended by a fellow at km 40).
I woke up at 8:30am to heavy rain (again), and decided once again to be restful and slow getting going in the hopes of the weather lightening up as I dragged my ass. This included taking my breakfast in the ranger station, while checking various weather forecasts to help make a better decision on when to actually leave.
After a reasonably comfortable night in the park in White River, and a fairly sane and straightforward time breaking camp without really having to work around rain or bugs, I was able to hit the road by 10:15am in fairly nice weather. And then about 5km into the ride, going over a stone, I broke a spoke on the rear wheel.
As soon as I got back out to the highway from the access road down to the campground, and turned in my direction of travel, I encountered a novel sight (and one that I wasn't expecting for at least another 100km):
I managed to make it out on to the road by about 10:30am, and it wasn't raining, but there were still some significant hills to deal with before getting Schreiber (where I'd hoped to stop the night before, before I got cold and wet and cranky).
When I woke up it was raining hard, so I went back to sleep, hoping that the rain was brief, and would taper off before I woke up again. Repeat that a few times, spanning about 2h. Note that I was close enough to the road (though certainly not the closest I'd camped), and the granite bedrock was shallow enough, that the vibrations from passing trucks made falling back asleep a relatively easy decision, as the sleep I'd gotten at night wasn't as restful as in other ditches.
Having neglected to put on my replacement rear tire (but at least having purchased it) during my rest day, I quickly tossed it on before getting a lift back to the grocery store parking lot right near where I called from when I first reached Thunder Bay.
The extra mess of duct tape applied to the rear tire almost certainly made for a smoother and more reliable ride, but it was still a little bumpy as it didn't take long for the tape's adhesive to slip enough to get some of the bulge back in the tire).
I got going at around 10:15am, and had some good riding conditions, so I was able to make about 20km/h (including the non-riding time when I stopped to eat, drink, etc.) for the first 3 hours or so. At some point in this window, I took this picture
