Day 43: 94.66 km

June 18, 2012

Agawa bay campground - Batchwana Bay (Sunset Shores Cottages)

Today was interesting. Weather certainly played its part today. Dad did his bit, and all the sudden the headwind got huge! Probably gusts about 25-30 km! And as I was getting on the bike, we heard thunder, then it started to pour. So we put the bike on the back of the truck and drove to a restaurant for lunch to wait out the rain.

As we were waiting out the rain, two bikers came in. They were an older couple, and they were biking across Canada as well! It is amazing, it is like a little community traveling across Canada. We hear from everyone that "oh! A couple hours ago some Quebec bikers passed!" or " oh! I met a girl just ahead biking by her self!" we are always able to keep tabs on where Annie, the Quebecians, Thomas, and now this couple. We all tend to meet up every couple of days. Everyone has a different pace and even a 1km/hr difference is a good difference. Plus everyone needs different breaks, meals, etc so it's hard to all stay together, but we are all within 20-30 km of each other, and there is a group of 3 brothers that have been emailing me that may meet up with my in the Maritimes! They started a little later.

 

While it was pouring, I registered for my classes and then we got bored and decided to drive back and see the Agawa pictographs that were about 85 km back. We had meant to see them last night, but it was late when we passed, and then we were going to see them in the morning but forgot. So we decided to avoid the down pour and just go and see if we could see them. As we were driving we noticed a pad on my seat was missing!!!! Not good. Without a pad I had no seat. We would have to drive into Sault Ste. Marie and buy one and then drive back, losing an entire day! We scoured the road for this seat, but I had lost hope. It is slightly round so unless it had a lucky bounce and landed flat, it would have rolled into the long grass or dense trees in the ditch.

Somehow, by a miracle, we found it on the road! It was still on the road and had not rolled anywhere! It had also not been run over! It was perfect! We half put it on the seat, we would have to glue it later, and then the rain started to slow down so we drove back to where we left off and I continued on.

 

I only made it 25 km past that point. I got this strange craving for ice cream and we stopped at the office at Sunset shores cottage and had ice cream. As soon as we got inside it absolutely poured! I tried to get a picture of it but that never works with rain. We waited a bit, but decided to end the day 60 km early because in that rain the spray from semis hides me from other vehicles. We rented a cabin for the night and started to move in.

Then, the rain died down. I hopped on the bike and pushed another 20 km so tomorrow would be easier to catch up. Then we drove back to the cottage, made spaghetti and ate it watching the sun set over Lake Superior.

That's the nice thing about the truck. I'm not limited. If the conditions are bad we can drive somewhere and then drive back. I love it! It makes the decisions of whether to quit for the day or not almost non-existent because you can always make it up and still have a place to go back to for the night. Perfect.