The Difference Between a Friend and a Foe Is Only 90 Degrees

Hello from Binscarth, MB a different province and time zone from where we last left off. Incredibly, the weather has fallen into a consistent regime of high winds and calm, sunny evenings. Yes Virginia, there really is a summer.

Day 21 (Rest day in Regina )

Just wanted to show you how seriously the town (indeed the whole province) takes its football.  Because one of our crew was the principal at the high school a Rider (as in Roughrider, not cyclist) attended, we went down to Mosaic Field to attend a walk-through prior to the next day's game. It was all very casual: I got to ride my bike right out onto the field, and when the session was over, everyone got to approach the players.

 Rest day art shot

Day 22
Rest day had ended in a beautiful summer evening, but the rest of the province was not so lucky: the animated radar screen I looked at that night showed a line of thunderstorms just north of us rapidly moving eastwards. The display showed colours I had never seen in a radar shot before; indeed, later that night we could see amazing flashes of light in the clouds off in the distance. It was thus a surprise when we awoke to the now-usual conditions of howling winds driving dark, scudding clouds.
Fortunately, I had previously devised a breakfast concoction to give me the energy to cope with such conditions: the Saskatchewan Rumble. This consists of oatmeal with brown sugar sandwiched between two slices of French toast covered in syrup, crowned with a dollop of yogurt, and garnished with gorp.

In fact, the day proved not too bad, and a bit of effort against the raw, mostly crosswind early in the day when we were headed northeast earned us more free miles once our trajectory leveled off on a more easterly bent. We enjoyed dropping into Fort Qu`Appelle with a tailwind. As you can see, they really do have 'truck downhill' signs (and even ski hills) in SK.

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Of course what goes down must come back up, too.

 Later in the day the sun even came out, and I learned to get out of the way of things like this when they come up behind you.

We topped our ride with a great sausage barbecue with ice cream for dessert, and this fellow dropped by to show us how deep Rider pride is. The only downside was the road to the Motherwell Homestead, whose 3 km of soft gravel proved too difficult for my narrow tires to negotiate, so I had to forego a visit there.

Day 23

Just to keep things interesting, I started the day backtracking over 13 km we had ridden yesterday (putting me straight into the wind, which continued to blow as strong as ever), in order to ride 50km along the Qu`Appelle valley. The area sure doesn`t fit with most people`s stereotype of Saskatchewan's topography:

And we finally got to see some flax blossoms, which could easily be confused with the river.

Of course, there were also potash mines (not nearly as pretty).

And soon enough we were in Manitoba, changing time zones and crossing the beautiful Assiniboine valley