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.