Day – 17 – Youngstown – Kindersley – Saturday July 7th, 2012- 157 km

Today was another long day scheduled in the Prairie sun and when we woke up in morning things were moving in the camp pretty fast. Everyone was keen on getting out early as it was supposed to be a long day and the wind gods were, unfortunately, not cooperating in the right direction. 

We (Ron, keith, Michael and I) started put early as we were scheduled on cooking duty and we didn’t want to get in late like last night. We pace lined in the morning and powered through the first hour and had our first stop at a gas station in Cereal, AB. While we were leaving, the local city office personnel was filling up gas and requested to take our picture, which we obliged of course, a bunch of little posers J. Keith took off earlier to catch up with Michael and missed the picture. From there on, Ron and I pressed very hard in the crosswinds to catch up to Michael and Keith, but we never really saw them. Doing so we also missed the turn to the township of Oyen, AB which could have been a great stop to refill our water bottles, but we didn’t realize that until after 20km of the turn. We stopped and had a sandwich break. Beyond the break we realized that we won’t be able to catch up with Keith and Michael and we paced ourselves at a sustainable speed. 

Today we crossed into over 3^rd province, Saskatchewan, around Km 90 and after some pictures with the province sign we stopped at a gas station/restaurant to refuel (they only had fries and onion rings for vegetarians) ourselves for the final 60km in to the camp. Ron and I joined Howard, Alan, Adam (driver), Emily and Justine and powered into camp at an average of 25-27 km/h. Adam (driver) had offered to ride Cindy’s bike as her tailbone was giving her trouble and since truck was already carrying Fred (due to his leg injury). Adam sucked up the challenge with no bike shorts, no biking shoes, no cleats all while on a women’s bike frame that was too small for him; all thumbs up to him especially since he hasn’t been on a long ride since last 8 weeks. 

We rolled in to camp just before 4 and our galley crew cooked up some vegetable stir fry over rice noodles with pan barbecued pork (and tofu for vegetarians). It was a hot day and the dessert today was 5 flavours of ice-cream which everyone enjoyed. 

The prairies, in this part of Saskatchewan, are definitely not flat; we had rolling hills all the way till camp and I am not even kidding when we had to be in our lowest gears to pedal up some of those.  The fact that it was hot day with constant headwinds made it even more challenging and everyone just collapsed once they got in their tents. The water hose was a bit far from truck so our crew filled up jugs tonight to have a early start for tomorrow’s breakfast. 

Found this a little breakfast on the go - Cereal, AB

Province # 3