We're not here to steal any kids: Who do you belong to?

June 9, 2016

In the morning I walked to Walmart with Ryan to buy some final supplies and then it was time for Vivian and I to thank him, both for his hospitality and for not killing us in the night, and then hit the road once again. It was another sunny day and we were through the prairies. I considered us very fortunate with our crossing. We had been blessed with mostly good weather and the wind had been generally favourable, with just the occasional crosswind and a few hours of headwind/rainy weather. It really was as good as we could have wished for, I know some people with less good fortune have given up cross-Canada rides because of the wind being relentlessly against them all the way across. Our good fortune didn’t, however, stop Vivian complaining to everyone we met about it. According to her accounts it seemed the wind actually had been relentlessly against us all the way across, and what was more it had apparently barely stopped raining.

But now we were heading back towards forested areas as we opted to leave the Trans Canada Highway for the first time in weeks, due to reports that it lacked a shoulder in places between Winnipeg and the Ontario border. Instead we tried our luck on a few gravel roads before ending up on the number 15 highway. This was at first busy, with just a gravel shoulder, but the traffic soon thinned out to almost nothing and it seemed we had made a good choice. Then the only problem we had was with the flies that orbited around us as we rode. There were bull flies, horse flies, fruit flies, everything. Absolutely annoying and of course they provided more material for Vivian to moan about. She was also terribly afraid of ticks. Over the previous days we had seen a few without being bitten, and she was so afraid of them that she refused to remove any layers of clothing and cycled along in the midday heat with leggings tucked into her socks and a long-sleeved top. This at least gave her something else to moan about.

Unlike in Australia, where the small towns like to boast about how tidy they were in 1994, Canadian towns like to boast about sports stars that have grown up amongst them before going on to great things

This little town hasn't produced any great sports stars

There were few places to escape the heat but we stopped in a small village for lunch. An absence of benches meant we found ourselves sitting on the steps of the local church, in a welcome patch of shade. This was, however, right opposite a daycare centre and soon the head woman of said establishment came over to us to enquire as to what we were up to, assuming us to be suspicious characters.

“We’re not going to steal any kids,” I reassured her.

“They won’t fit on the bikes” Vivian confirmed.

The woman was reassured and offered to fill our water bottles for us. As she was doing so and we waited some kids came out of the daycare centre. A young boy of maybe five turned to us and asked “Do you like my t-shirt?”

“Yes” I said. I’m good with kids.

“What’s on your t-shirt?” he asked, pointing at my old shirt from Australia.

“Gold Coast.”

He turned his nose up, didn’t seem to like it much. He must have been there. But he had one more question for us:

“Who do you belong to?”

One interesting thing was that we had for a while been seeing thousands of caterpillars. They crawled out en masse into the road and were duly run over. Trying to dodge them on the shoulder was almost impossible

We were on a real nice quiet road and now we were finally among trees again I was happy. Vivian was moaning though.

“There’s nothing to see!”

“Well, what do you want to see?” I asked

“I don’t know. A sign?!”

It seemed a strange request, but just a short while later, with me in front, I came across an angel, attached to the back of a stop sign. This was a sign, in more ways than one.

“Vivian, look, it must be a sign! Stop! Look”

“Cree-py!” she moaned, not stopping.

We reached the peaceful little town of Elma and knocked on a door to ask for water. A kindly obliging elderly couple supplied us with that, and then suggested to us that we might like to camp at a nice spot in town down by the river. We followed their directions and found some benches and a flat patch of grass behind some trees next to it. Best of all was the flag in the middle of the very flat grass. This was a golf course! My long-held ambition to camp on a golf course was finally going to be realised. I was very excited. Except that it looked like actually this wasn’t really a public golf course, but the end of a very large garden, which the wealthy occupants of the manor at the top of which had turned into something of a golf course. That was good enough. I didn’t mind, and I’m sure they wouldn’t either. But then Vivian took things too far, and walked up to the house to ask for the wifi password.

Today's ride: 95 km (59 miles)
Total: 51,650 km (32,075 miles)

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