June 15, 2016
Do you have enough food for three days?: Yes
I’ll admit I was beginning to lose my patience with Vivian. Please understand it was only due to conversations like this one, heard on Tuesday morning as we prepared to leave Fort Frances on 300+ kilometres of very remote and empty road:
Chris: “Do you have enough food for three days?”
Vivian: “Yes.”
Five minutes later:
Chris: “Do you have enough food for three days?”
Vivian: “Yes.”
Ten minutes later:
Chris: “Do you have enough food for three days?”
Vivian: “Yes.”
Fifteen minutes later:
Chris: “Do you have enough food for three days?”
Vivian: “Yes.”
Twenty minutes later:
Chris: “Do you have enough food for three days?”
Vivian: “Well, maybe not enough for three days.”
After Vivian went and got some more food we set off out of town on the long highway east. Initially it was a foggy morning as we crossed a long causeway/bridge over a lake dotted with small islands. There was a lot of construction going on along the road and we had to stop and wait quite frequently. But the fog soon cleared and left us with a pleasant enough overcast-but-dry day as we pressed on into the wilderness once more. At one point I saw a big animal crossing the road ahead of me. It was too far ahead to identify, but it looked big, like a deer or even a moose, but it seemed to swish a cat-like tail that made me think excitedly that perhaps it was a cougar as it disappeared back into the trees. I thought it might be best not to tell Vivian.
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We stopped at a school in Mine Centre, as it was the only place in the empty village where we could find anyone to refill our water bottles. We were greeted by a friendly old janitor who admired what we were doing even if he himself thought it a pointless endeavour. “Can’t see what you wanna be cycling all that way for. I don’t got the time for that.” He seemed a little close minded. I asked him how it was to live out here, and how many people lived in Mine Centre. “About 80 real people,” he replied, “plus about 200 mennonites.”
Vivian had organised another warm showers host for us in Thunder Bay for Thursday but the reality was that our pace wasn’t quite fast enough to get there. I tried to up the tempo and keep us moving but she kept stopping to look at her phone, and by the end of the day we had to concede that we weren’t going to make it Thursday and instead we’d aim for a Friday arrival.
A hundred kilometres past Thunder Bay our onward route plans differed. I wanted to go on the more northern highway on a direct curve to Montreal, whilst Vivian was insistent on heading on the main, more southern route, as she wanted to pass through her hometown of Sudbury. It was alright with me. I was starting to grow frustrated, and, while I liked Vivian and had really enjoyed riding with her, I was just about ready to go my own way again. We had just three or four more days together and I resolved to make them work.
The next morning we had a bit of a lie-in now that the pressure was off to rush for Thunder Bay. It had been another rainy night and I was annoyed to find my tent covered in hundreds of slugs. As I stooped to flick them off, Vivian was in an unusually good mood as she chirped to me, “I’ve never heard you complain before. And you’re not really complaining, you’re just grunting. You remind me of my dog.”
Vivian was ready before me again and she left first. As she got to the road I saw her flag down a car and I could just hear her asking “Which way to Thunder Bay?” There was literally only one road!
I was already in a bit of a grumpy mood as I set off myself, straight into a headwind. Just when I thought it couldn’t get much worse it started to rain. My legs felt so tired and it seemed like it was all uphill. Canada was starting to get the better of me. It was foggy, drizzly rain, that only got heavier as I went on and to be honest this was probably my worst morning in Canada. I was only halfway across and the Atlantic was feeling like a long way off.
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I was struggling and there was no sign of Vivian, who I assumed had raced on ahead to the only town en route, Atikokan, to seek shelter. Eventually I dragged myself there too. But Atikokan was three kilometres off the highway, and conveniently there was an information centre at the junction. If I could use wifi to contact Vivian, and get water here, there would be no need for the six kilometre out-and-back detour. I went inside and asked the gentleman behind the desk if they had wifi.
“Yes, but unfortunately I don’t know the password. My boss knows it but she is not here.”
“Can you call your boss?”
“No, she is on holiday.”
“Ok, well, is there somewhere in the town where I can access wifi?”
“Yes, probably.”
“Where?”
“Somewhere.”
As information centres go it wasn’t the best. I couldn’t even get drinking water, so I had no choice but to cycle into Atikokan. I needed to try and locate Vivian too of course, and I tracked her down at the library where she had apparently been waiting for me for a very long time, defining me clearly and incontestably now as the hapless sidekick of our partnership.
I collapsed into a seat for a couple of hours, quite exhausted. Vivian, by contrast, was in good spirits. She was looking at something on her I-phone and laughed out loud, before explaining to me what it was that she was reading:
“This is how much of an asshole people are!” she exclaimed, really rather inappropriately loudly, considering we were in a library.
“Aries 60%, Virgo 80%, Sagittarius 25%, Capricorn minus 400%, haha I’m a Capricorn! This is pretty accurate!” she said, with great sincerity. Then she went on “Libra 9000% asshole!”
“I’m a Libra” I told her.
“Oh… yeah…” she looked a bit confused for a moment, as if trying to work out how to justify my outrageous asshole score, until she figured it out: “Well, you do like politics.”
“Erm… Vivian, what exactly makes you think I like politics?”
“You talk about it all the time.”
“No, I’m pretty sure I don’t.”
“Yeah, you do. Remember, you said George Bush that time!?”
“What? When we were playing twenty questions?!!!”
I’d been having conversations like this for three weeks! I needed a change!
Tuesday 14th June - 113km
Wednesday 15th June - 75km
Today's ride: 188 km (117 miles)
Total: 52,194 km (32,412 miles)
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