A late start, a new province

We've had a few more flats than normal since Calgary (if you leave that day to Saltspring out), and some of our tires have gotten worn, so we needed to get to a bike shop before leaving Medicine Hat.

We had breakfast at a nearby Tim Horton's (we don't get coffee very often, or hot chocolate for Jon and I, so it's a treat), and had to wait until 9:30 before we could get to a cycle shop near there. We discovered Google Maps for the Blackberry, which will be very useful to us, and helped find it. When we got there, they didn't have any tubes or tires, but we were able to pick up some chain lubricant and, ahem, medicated vaseline (don't ask). We were in a bit of a bind, but the store owner was a super nice guy, phoned a different sports shop nearby, and they were able to get us what we needed. We could have been in big trouble if we had needed a tire or had popped a lot of tubes!

Fortunately, we needed neither today as we rode 90km to Maple Creek. The 11am start and continuing headwinds limited our progress, but we did hit Saskatchewan! When we got to Alberta, there was a huge sign and we took several pictures, but unbelievably there was nothing like that for Saskatchewan. We had to make do with a random sign that happened to have the name "Saskatchewan" on it, but we made up for it by doing a hat dance in front of it and getting it on video (our parents can rest assured that we got one 'normal' photo of us).

Saskatchewan is known for being flat, but ironically, as we crossed the border, there was actually a climb, albeit nothing compared to what we saw before Calgary. Along the way, we ran into Stefan Pincente, a friend of Pat, Mike, and I whom we know through our Fraternity back at UBC, Sigma Chi. He had passed us and stopped to say hello, which was really cool (he's driving to Toronto). He came back to the campsite with us, where AMAZINGLY they had a TV and we were able to watch the hockey game! We're all Pittsburgh bandwagon fans, so were pretty happy that they pulled it out in the third OT.

Tomorrow, we hope to make it to Swift Current, but the headwinds are making it tough to cover a lot of ground. If it's like today, we should be able to do it, but we'll take things as they come.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device