LUUUCY,, I'M HOOOOooooooome!

We've had a fantastic couple of days.. exausting and very difficult, but very rewarding and fulfilling.
Yesterday I was dieing to update our blog and talk about how gorgeous Ontario is but we didnt have internet access.
We altered our route slightly when we got off of the ferry from South Baymouth to shave of some extra Kilometers and speed up the trip a little bit. So instead of following the edge of the lake, we headded more or less in a straight line for Toronto.We pased through so many great l'ill towns! Some of the buildings and old houses are like they were cut out from books. Over the last couple of days, we've seen beautiful little brick homes, graceful rolling hills and terrific people.
Yesterday morning we woke up at 5 am, and started out from Little Current, where we stayed the night. Our departure time was 7 am for the ferry from South Baymouth and we biked 60K's from Little Current and made great time. We had some great luck with weather the last few days, it's been sunny and,,, well,,, WARM. In fact.. I think I've been in rooms full of fire that were cooler. (I'm not kidding!)
The sun beamed down on us as we struggled with those headwinds comming off the ferry all the way to where we finally stopped for the night - in a town called Flesherton. Flesherton looks like a fantastic little town and I'm looking forward to visiting it on the way back! I couldnt believe the mosquitos though! The bugs ate us alive as we paused for the odd break and to refill our water bottles. We got to Flesherton completely exausted and dehydrated so we went to a local restaurant to have some appetizers and sing some karaoke! (Stole the show)

OUR LAST DAY...
Wow... one of the shortest rides for distance in the last week or so. We ended up biking something like 170 Kilometers through more gorgeous countryside. As soon as we got to the Durham region, we were met by some of Jamie's friends and had a Police escort from where we stopped for lunch right to our finish line in Ajax. (That is where the headquarters for the Childrens Wish Foundation is located.) We were very happy to see the officers as they personified the end of a very long and hard journey. They were fantastic! Two Officers on motorcycles led the way,, it was quite the boost. To top it all off, that furious headwind that was fighting us the whole way since Regina turned around and pushed us towards our destination! WE HAD A TAIL WIND!!! For the first time in something like 20 days!!!! lol.
We reached speeds of over 60Kmph on the way to Ajax. WE ALL HAD HUGE SMILES ON OUR FACES - shouting and cheering could be heard from our group and we raced through the city where we were met by members of our families and people from the Childrens Wish Foundation. It was an amazing experience getting off of our bikes, knowing that we had completed the ride. We slayed the dragon.. It's done.
It is also a great feeling knowing that someone besides us will benefit from this. We struggled and overcame our obstacles, pain and discomfort. Hopefully through this maybe someone else will overcome their pain and discomfort. Bringing some happiness to someone else who is suffering will make it all worthwhile. We are all so happy that it worked so well and that all of us are safe and healthy. We would like to thank everyone for their help and encouragement during our ride. Like we've mentioned, Randy would give us updates on who had left messages and words of encouragement for us, and that was HUGE for us. It was always so great to hear that someone believed in us and was cheering us on. Thank you.

Auntie Emm!!! It's a twister!!

Monday was the longest ride that we've done yet.. it was about 240K's. We saw another majestic Canadian Moose! Man those things are ugly! And they have this silly prance when they walk. It really is something to see. A few days ago we saw bullwinkle prance accross the road infront of us, it was a young bull. On monday we saw his girlfriend! Ms. Bullwinkle was standing by the road and pranced off into the forest we we rode by. Shortly after we spotted Ms. Bullwinkle, Douggie pointed out a fox that scurried off towards the tree line as we approached - pausing for a while to curiously watch us ride by. We were shooting for a little town that didnt really exist the other day. When we got there we were forced to ride on another 40 K's, bringing us to a little flea-bag motel that apparently experienced a toilet paper famine. Yes... It's true. lol. No toilet paper.


I feel bad because it seems like most of the entries in this blog have become centered around how bad the weather has been and not much else is said about the day. It is true, we have had terrible luck with the weather, but the trip is going well. I was thinking today as we were riding.. "holy smokes.. it's like mother nature hates us and heard we were comming." We had some nice sunshine, but I would probably say that today was probably the worst for winds. (Clark looks like a lobster! Let this be a lesson to you kids,, wear sunblock!)
We're all excited because we only really have a few days before we reach Toronto. Friday is when we we figure that we will get there. AND SOME GOOD NEWS!! Randy was telling us over dinner tonight that it's possible that we may have great weather right on in 'till friday! AND the winds may shift tomorrow giving us a good tail wind for the remainder of our trip.
We stopped tonight in a town called Iron Bridge. The winds were vicious today and it was a head wind the whole way from where we started. It is still very hilly - big rolling hills. We can usually reach some pretty crazy speeds on the downhills, sometimes breaking 60 Kmph. That speed on the downhill is fantastic for giving us a little extra push, helping us charge up a new hill. The momentum can carry you a LONG way up some hills. However, when you're going downhill and you're thinking that you should be going maybe 50 - 60 and your speedometer reads 25... Thats a STROOOOOONG head wind.
SO... we had a nice big dinner (we worked up a heck of an appetite) and we are all settling in to bed. One more down three to go.

Good to see the sun again!

We started off bright and early in Terrace Bay with the sun shining. The freezing rain was gone - staying in Terrace Bay yesterday was a smart move. There is no way we would have made it safely from Schreiber to Marathon, and there is no way we would have made it to White River at all.. The weather was nice today but with the terrain and those constant head-winds it was one of our roughest rides so far. We did 171 Kilometers over some pretty rough hills. We would like to thank the Norwood Motel in Terrace Bay again for the kindness they showed us when we were wet, shaken and delerious from the cold.

Double ouch.

Today was the shortest day of riding so far. We started out riding today in freezing temperatures, with a mix of rain and hail. We had head winds and cross winds that slowed us to a crawl and nearly blew a few of us off our bikes. We rode about 14 K's and with ice on our bikes and gear - we decided to stop where a motel graciously gave us free rooms for the night. It was getting so cold with the wind chill, that the temperature would make you dizzy.. Our original goal was actually a place called White river, and if the bad weather persisted we decided that we would make it to Marathon and call it quits for the day. In this weather however, making it to Marathon would be next to impossible. Thank God for good people.

OUCH.

Today was one of the hardest days of our trip so far. We started off with nice weather that lasted us about 100 kilometers,, then it clouded over and the winds kicked in. The second half of the trip had hills that were very much like the rockies.. endless, steep inclines. We are all completely wasted and cant wait to sleep. The trip in total was 210 kilometers, which makes it among our longest days except that we also had some of the biggest hills today too. I cant believe we're actually finished.
Tomorrow is going to start off with those same hills, but the weather forcast calls for "ice pellets" durring the day with a high temperature of 3 degrees. We may shoot for marathon which is 100K's away. Its gonna be very cold and very wet.

Another few days have flown by.

The last few days have been good.. We went from Kenora to Dryden, and from Dryden to Upsala and from there to Thunder Bay. We've had that pesky cloud following us dumping rain on us and giving us a vicious head wind. For the ride from Upsala to Thunder Bay we had great weather though! We were very surprised in Dryden, when we were satisfying a junk-food craving at McDonald's and the woman behind the counter asked if we were the firefighters that were riding from B.C. Apparently she heard about it on the radio, and she figured we were the ones.
Upsala is very pretty.. we were able to find a nice campground right on a lake there and stayed the night. In the morning we all had a hearty breakfast at the restaurant/gas station and started on our ride just after 8am.
We cruised through the rolling hills of northern Ontario at a great pace on our way to Thunder bay. A few of us had some problems with our bikes, so we drove into the Cyclepath at Thunder Bay to get them fixed.. it was all minor stuff like getting our wheels trued, and getting our gears all tuned up. They were really fantastic about taking our bikes in and fixing them on a moments notice. They charged us for parts and threw the labor in for free.. a great bunch of guys there.
We just picked up our newly tuned up bikes and are ready to go for tomorrow. It's exciting to see how far we have come on our trip.. even more exciting to think that we have less than 10 days of riding left. We are all pretty sore, and most of us haven't been home in a pretty long time.. (almost a year) So even though we are all havin' a great time and enjoying the ride, its safe to say that we are all itching to get home.
Thank you for the support and all the messages we've been getting on our guest book and our blogs.. Randy keeps us updated every time we get a message and cant check it for ourselves. It's always good to hear from friends and family and its awesome to see how many people believe in us and are cheering for us!

OUR PRESURE IS RISING!!!

Our pressure gauge on our pump panel is coming even closer to our goal! Updates show that we have now raised over 16 thousand! Thank you for your generous support!! We have had over 1000 hits on our website since we started on our trip - the support and interest shown is very encouraging.

Winnipeg was a real treat, thanks to our new friends!

We have some pretty cool friends in the Winnipeg Police and Fire/Paramedic Department!
We were surprised and happy to see our Police escort pull in front of us as we rode into Winnipeg. With lights flashing and the occasional siren burst in the intersections, we rode into Winnipeg where we met up with 2 other Officers on Bikes who rode with us through the city. They took us around through the city center showing us sights like the parliament buildings, the train station, the parks and cool old buildings. They ended up taking us to a pizza place for lunch where they contacted the Fire Department and had a bunch of the gentlemen from hall#9 come down in a pumper and meet with us.
After lunch, the officers along with the firefighters in the pumper went with us as far as they could go, wishing us a safe and fun trip. George, the driver of the patrol car that led the escort, drove ahead to the Richer Motor Inn and arranged accommodation for the night!
Just as spirits were beginning to sag due to the bad weather, injury and sickness; the kindness shown to us by these people has helped us carry on through our half way mark and on towards the finish line with smiles on our faces.

It's been a while!

Wow.. these last few days have been pretty crazy!
It's been a while since we have had access to the internet so there are lots of stories to tell!
We originally planned on doing a lot more camping - cause camping is fun, and frankly,,, hotels cost a lotta money. However, after being pelted with freezing, driving, horizontal rain for hours on end, a place to thaw out seems much more appealing. lol. So we stayed the night in Virden in a lovely warm hotel.
(Along the way we have had the pleasure of meeting some fantastic people, some of these people have been very good and have helped us out by providing us with special rates and deals on accommodation.)

Here's a little update on what happened during the last few days.

Day #12
On the 12th, we started our from Virden bright and early and headed out with our sights fixed on Portage la Prairie. The weather was MUCH better, although those pesky winds were still against us for the majority of the way. It was a long day but we did very well! Despite the winds, we managed to bike to MacGreggor - 170Kms from Virden. MacGreggor is a really great little town! It's sorta tucked away, completely hidden from the highway by trees. We were able to find a camping ground there and stayed the night. We decided that we should get an early start on the day given our luck with wind direction so we set 7:30 am as our departure time for Winnipeg. (I believe we actually left around 8:10, hehe)

Day #13
This day deserves an entirely separate special entry.. cause it was fantastic. Thanks to some special new friends!

Day#14
After our huge boost in morale, thanks to the Winnipeg Police and Fire Departments, we woke up in the Richer Motor Inn refreshed and ready to go. We figured there might be rain and some of those headwinds again, but it started out much better than we had anticipated. It caught up with us though! hahaha.. We kept up a great pace on our course to Kenora Ontario! Happily crossing the Ontario border, we stopped for lunch and to fix another flat tire. We ended up blasting right on into Kenora through the rain that followed us from Richer. We were looking for a place to stay for the night in Kenora and decided to give the Super 8 Motel a try.. They shocked the heck out of us by providing us with free rooms, and arranging for us to have a free snack at the restaurant next door to the hotel!!! Special thanks to Tracy at the Super 8 Motel for being so kind and accommodating!!! They had free cookies! And hot soup! lol.. And as I type this, I'm sipping on a nice hot coffee! Our last few days have flown by thanks to the kindness shown to us by these great people.

We spoke too soon.

This morning started off with furious headwinds and horisontal rain that burrowed holes right through us. The speed we kept was a crawl, less than half of what we've done on other rides so far. Our original goal for the day was Brandon, Manitoba, but because of the winds and the bitter cold we only made it as far as Virden - about 112 Kms away from Whitewood, Saskatchewan. This part of the ride has probably been the toughest for us to stay focussed. There really is nothing for hundreds of Kilometers.. just wide open space. Getting Truckers to honk their horns was fun for a while,, and making faces and mooooooOOOOOOOooooooing at any cows we saw along the way. But it's still pretty boring. Clark scares away wildlife.

One of those days.

Today was described by a few to be the worst in our ride so far. Its amazing how much difference wind can make! It can push you along at break-neck speeds, or slow you down to a crawl and make you wish you were never born. On top of the weather, a few of us are showing flu like symptoms - making it difficult to eat and drink.
We decided to stay for the night in Whitewood and continue on to Manitoba tomorrow. We biked a total of 177Km today, so we felt pretty good about calling it a day when we got to Whitewood.

Day 8, Herbert to Regina.

Smooth sailing into Regina yesterday. More strong tail winds and beautiful blue skies welcoming us into Regina for our rest day on the 9th. The rooms we're staying in were donated by the Holiday Inn Express. They've been so great and helpful... they even brought cookies up to our rooms after we got in on the first day! Our rest day was great, it's good to get stuff done like laundry, etc. Regina is a cool city. We were all itching to see Spiderman3 so we all piled in the van and went out to see it. I've never seen a theatre clear so fast after a movie was done! During the movie, we thought someone was sawing some wood somewhere in the theatre, but it turned out to be Larry, one of our support guys. (he was a having a "power nap") We teased him about it on the way back to the hotel.
We would like to thank the staff at the Regina Fresh Air Experience store for their excellent service and help with the repairs to Scotty's bike after Douggie's rampage.

Doug tries to kill Scott! Day 7!

As we have mentioned, there was a collision on the way to herbert. Doug got a little close to Scott and their handle bars locked up, sending Scotty to the ground. He's ok, just a few scrapes on Scotty... Douggie feels terrible. Scott brushed himself off and carried on like a trooper. There's a bit of damage to his bike that we will hopefully fix now that we're in Regina.
As for the rest of the day, it went faaaaaantastic.. we had a nice tail wind that blew us along and beautiful skies with lots of sunshine. Day 6 was very much the same... Lots of sun and an amazing tail wind that helped us keep our 6&1/2 hour average on our daily 200 kilometers.
We decided that we would overshoot some of our previously planned destinations to help speed up the trip and average the distance out a bit better.. Today's trip would have originally been something like 245 kilometers, but thanks to our stopping in Herbert instead of Swift Current today was more like 202.
Stopping in all the smaller towns is giving us a really neat look at life in Canada. It's neat to see stuff like this! For us "big city boys", it really is kinda amazing to see people living out here literally in the middle of this huge wide open country side with nothing around for hundreds of miles. There are some really amazing people out here, lots of fun and very friendly and helpful.

WHAT A FANTASTIC DAY!!

WOW!! Our first day of good weather! We covered 206 Km in just 6&1/2 hours! We started off in Fernie with skies that were cloudy but showed promise. Everything worked really well today - the clouds lifted and we were able to see the magic of the mountains that surrounded us as we approached the Alberta border. We had a good strong tail wind as well that pushed us along through the last of the rockies and into the beautiful rolling hills and endless blue skies. Looking back at the rockies was pretty awesome,, knowing what we had gone through to get where we were.
Cowley, Alberta was roughly at our 100K mark so we stopped for lunch and then rode pretty much non stop to Lethbridge. The roads were smooth and flat and with that tail wind we finished our day tired but in great form.

We've never been colder.

Well.. we started our trip from Big White and ended up in Grand Forks our first night. We then biked to Castlegar, and then from there to Creston - from Creston to Yahk, and from Yahk to Fernie, and the whole way Its been either raining or snowing! lol.. So at each of our stops we've been lucky enough to find accomodation with nice warm showers and beds.
We stayed at the cozy quilt motel in Yahk, it was a nice cozy little place,, just like the name. lol. We started our in the morning on day 4 with a nice tail wind on our way our to Fernie.. but that tail wind turned into a headwind, and we were met with the coldest bitter rain. so we were very happy to see the hotel.
Tomorrow we wre going to Lethbridge.. its about 200K's away. we're excited to pass our first hurdle and cross the alberta border..
Time is tight fdor us... especially crossing from east to west like this because opf the changiong time zones and because of things we have to do daily... like clean our bikes,, and make sure we get enough food and rest.. so i can't update my site like i had planned. We have been blessed by a fantastic group of guys that have come along with us to keep us fed and protected by traffic!! We couldn't thank them enough for all the ways they've helped us. One of the support crew has a blog that talks about our trip, and has video and tonnes of pics.. check out that site by CLICKING HERE

From the send off to day two

We packed up early tuesday morning and were met by a whole group of the fire crew that we worked with all year. A whole crowd of our close friends from Big White came to see us off. Lots of hand shakes and hugs were goin around as we finally finished loading up the support vehicle that would follow us as we started our trip to Toronto. It was a beautiful morning!! LOL.. It was snowing in Big White! The first day of our trip went well... we made great time and rode 197 Kilometers to Grand forks where we set up camp. The camp had hot showers and we had a great dinner. The next morning we began the hard part of the ride - a lot of hills, not really steep, just grinding and neverending. The weather held up untill about 20 K's from Castlegar. We were blinded by rain we we began our decent to our Destination - we arived at an intersection near a hotel and all decided that it would be a good idea to stay here for the evening. Shivering and soaking wet we stood in the lobby waiting for our rooms. Some of us were distracted by a hot tub and soaked for a while till we got our feeling back in our extremities. We are all looking forward to crossing the hardest part of our trip tomorrow. Thank God for hotels. lol. For an even better blog than this one with more video and pictures frmo the trip check out
THIS SITE

Apr, 29th - the rest of the day

Four of the cyclists are graduates of the Big White Fire department Work Experience Program, its a 10 month contract with the fire department. The program runs from July to April every year and employs 6 firefighters to live in the hall and serve the community. The community up here is full of fantastic people and most of our fire department is made up of volunteers that live and work in the community year round. They have been throwing little goodbye parties and dinners for us all week - wishing us good luck on our searches for careers in the fire service and good luck on our ride. After a big breakfast with some of the members of our department this morning, we all packed our gear together and turned our uniforms and turnout gear back into the supply room. Its been a pretty crazy 10 months - good job experience was gained and some very strong friendships were formed. Time has flown by... all of us are gonna miss this place.

April, 29th

Just two days away from our departure from Big White. We are all very excited and cant wait to get going on our trip. This will be the place where we will post pictures and talk about the cool stuff we've seen along the way. This site may contain excessive spandex and dirty, sweaty guys,,, viewer discretion is advised.