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.