Rest Day at Last!

Dear Friends,

It's been 8 days since I left Regina for Winnipeg and all points inbetween. I left Starbuck, Manitoba fairly early Thursday morning and arrived in the SE part of Winnipeg at around noon. I'm being hosted by Lee and Wayne Anderson and am benefitting from their generous accomodation at present - very much appreciated! Lee and Wayne are related to Janey and John Talbot, good friends of mine back home. I was treated to a tour of the waterways of the city including the flood control system. Very interesting. Great food and conversation is an amazing antedote to solitude and a repetitive diet of Subway sandwiches.

The reason I haven't taken a rest day after my intended 4th day is because of the wind. The Weather network enables me to see forecasted wind directions for coming days ahead. I enter a window of opportunity to ride if a westerly is blowing to my advantage. As you know, a headwind makes for a tough day with decreased mileage. Sometimes that's life, but if you get a run of westerlies, you have got to take advantage of the situation. Three days ago, I covered 120 km without exhausting myself which was very satisfying.

Winnipeg is a beautiful city, rich in the fine and performing arts and higher educational institutions. Today I visited Assinaboine Park, specifically an outdoor sculpture garden. I also headed downtown to the Manitoba Museum to get more background on the amazing history of this place. As I walked down near Portage and Main, a fellow sitting on a bench beckoned me over to him..."Hey you, you'd better get ready because it's going to rain!" I looked up and although it was overcast, it didn't look like rain to me and I'm from the coast. Fifteen minutes later, the clouds unleashed their ample supply of rain and I was drenched. The farmers can't plow their fields for seeding at present because they're sodden which is a serious time sensitive problem for them (and us) at the very least. I also took my bike over to Woodcock Cycles, a great shop on St. Marys Street to get some repairs done. I'm a bit of a bike shop junkie and enjoy observing variations in bicycle culture best located in shops with the people who you find there.

Looking back at the Regina to Winnipeg run, a few experiences stand out...

Montmartre (locals pronounce it "Mo-mart") was my first stop after Regina off of Highway 48. One of it's claims to fame is the 30' Eiffel tower at the head of Main Street. Montmartre was settled by French Farmers in the 1880's. This is about as close to the subtlties of Parisian culture in Mo-mart as one will likely get in my opinion. I stayed at the local hotel that night and the cacophony of yelling, drunken revelry and fights coming out of the attached local watering hole may be similar to the times of the wild, wild west. Granted, it was Friday night and the establishment was full of cowboys and pipeline roughnecks enjoying themselves after a week of hard work but the noise was incredible. I took a walk outside to achieve a reprieve from the madness and noticed a long horse trailer out front being bounced around and bashed from the inside. Even the horses were going nuts!

All I can say about that experience is 'Yeee Haaaa!" I was glad to see that place in my rear view mirror the next morning. Sorry if I've offended any locals. I'm sure this community has some fine attributes which of course would be noticed over time.

The next stop was Kennedy, Manitoba. On my way, I stopped for lunch at the Red Paper Clip Cottage in a small town called Kipling. You may recall the story of a young fellow who traded up a red paper clip on e-Bay acquiring a fish pen, then a door knob and so on until he finally traded for a small house in Saskatchewan. Well this was the house he concluded his trading challenge with...the cottage where I had lunch. He moved to Montreal and donated the house to the town of Kipling which is now leased out as a Cafe. What a hoot!

Kennedy is smaller than Kipling with no ammenities like a service station and such. It did have a campground at the end of Main Street which was very rudimentary but it was home for the night. The only inhabitants were me and a couple staying in their modest RV. There was water and electricity as well a few delapitated picnic tables but the grass was cut and the view of the rolling prairie to the south was beautiful. I liked this place...not pretentious at all!

As I began to unpack my kit, one of those fast moving storms moved in with battleship grey brewing clouds and brief bursts of thunder. Gord dropped by and as we chatted, it started to rain. I spotted a run down old pavilion for holding picnics under cover, ran and threw my stuff under it's protection just before the deluge. I looked out at the torrent with a sense of satisfaction, security and wonderment at my good fortune. It rained so hard, a mist drifted into my little refuge but this was more refreshing than anything. The smell of prairie grass in the rain made me feel more alive as I stood there in my odd cycling gear watching this remarkable act of nature. The storm passed as quickly as it arrived with the restoration of blue skies and the songs of birds. I could've set up outside again but decided to go for a double ceiling with my tent in the pavilion.

Gord and Betty invited me over for cocktails and munchies which turned out to be ribs and rice. What a feast! Gord and particularly Betty have deep roots in the prairies...Gord is a safety officer for the pipeline and is a country music artist. I got to hear about 3 recordings of his originals. One song in particular was about life on the road staying in less than desireable motels, as country music can convey so well in a lonesome existential sense. Personally, I don't mind staying in cheezy little old motels because they're more convenient than camping but I found the lyrics a little depressing because I thought for a moment that maybe I was one of these sad and lonely losers. As long as those suckers are clean and don't smell too badly, I'm okay. I use the ice from the dispensers for icing my leg and soak in a hot bath tub and I'm good to go for the next day. Whoo Hoo! The Lazy Dee Hotel isn't so bad. I kind of like to rank the kitchy art and tacky wallpaper for my amusement, smug yuppie that I am.

The next morning, I was packed up and ready to go and thought I'd get a good head start on the day when I decided to pump my rear tire up a little harder given the weight I carry. Big mistake! I lost all my air and my crumby pump could not reain it's former pressure. I ended up breaking the valve and replaced it with another inner tube. Pump was broken and I was out of comission. I did have a valve adaptor if only I could get to a gas station. Kipling was 23 km away and fortunately Gord had a day off and offered to drive me to Kipling. Gord and Betty were my guardian angels and I got my tire issue resolved. With a 12:30 start, I was able to resume my journey to Redvers where I may have fulfilled the image portrayed in Gord's song as I stayed in the ancient Redvers Hotel that night. I used a beer bottle to prop up the window but the view was pretty good of the old Redvers Grain Elevator and the Co-op, a prairie institution. I slept well.

My next day was blessed by westerly winds which took me over 100 kilometers to Souris where I arranged B&B accomodation in a beautifully refurbished victorian house. Marilyn, the owner likes cyclists and gave me a great deal and I slept in a room that Lois XIV would feel comfortable in. Highly recommended! Souris is a larger Manitoban town and has a well documented history with the longest suspension bridge in Manitoba. I walked/bounced on it before I left. I did restock my Subway provisions at Marilyn's daughter's store and off I went to Treherne (past Holland) and Starbuck before landing in Winnipeg. I illegally camped near Starbuck but it beat getting hit by a truck at dusk on the shoulderless Highway 2. I watched part of the Stanley cup with some good 'ol boys at the Starbuck Hotel before I found my safe place to tent for the night. All was well!

So here I write this little tome in a Frank Lloyd Wright'esque design of a home overlooking the Red River in Winnipeg, waiting to fly home tomorrow morning to celebrate my Mom's 90th birthday. Hilda immigrated with her family from Norway in the early 1920's and settled in New Westminster. Our family grew up in Burnaby where I still live. Since I've been on the prairies, I have developed a strong sense of the importance of families and their significance to the development of this country. You can smell the family histories out here and time/space becomes even more palpable as I cycle past old country town graveyards and listen in on the conversations of old timers in local cafes. A town of 300 that has 3-4 churches speaks of a time past where communities were more populated and economically robust.
Lots of young people have moved to centers like Winnipeg where they obtained further education and stayed. Some young(er) people are moving out to the country as well to pursue an alternate life style to the urban one so change continues to occur in a variety of ways.

I'm signing off for a week or so until I resume the next part of my cycling journey across Canada.

North Western Ontario, here I come!

Best,
Doug Ibbott