A new friend on our way to Brandon

With the time change at the border, we were losing an hour, so we decided to switch over the next day. We still need our sleep! The Visitor's Centre made for a great campsite, and funnily enough, as we were eating breakfast this morning, one of the workers showed up, and we weren't too sure what to expect. Luckily for us, she had no problems, and was just happy to hear that we weren't too cold the night before.

Mike, Pat, and Brian are big coffee drinkers, and love to get a cuppa joe when one is available, so it was a nice surprise to find that they served complimentary coffee inside (albeit a tad weak). As they sat enjoying it, they found a cyclist's guest book which had been signed by a number of people, including many charity rides. Almost every entry mentioned how great the Prairies were, how great the winds were, and how much they loved it. You can imagine that ours was the complete opposite! The Prairies have been a really tough stretch for us, and today was no different.

We got on the road to another headwind, blowing at about 20km/hr in our faces the 105km to Brandon. Making things worse, our tires have started to wear, so we are popping quite a number of tubes on a daily basis, slowing us down. We'll be getting that remedied in Winnipeg, and hopefully we can spend more time riding on our tires than changing them!

The roads in Saskatchewan were not the greatest, but Manitoba has one-upped them, as we now have no paved shoulder to ride on. All the shoulders are gravel, completely inconvenient for us. Thankfully cars are good about pulling out for us, but when we're trying to draft, it makes it tough when it's out on the side. We can't go on the shoulder, nor do we want to go out too far on the highway!

On our travels, we saw a cyclist loaded down with a lot of gear ahead of us. Once we caught up to him, it turned out to be a Japanese guy biking across Canada and the United States. He was carrying a TON of gear. He even had a generator running off his back tire to power his front lights! He was super friendly, so we got some pictures with him and wished him well.

Coming just West of Brandon, we were met by Lloyd Mennie, who was taking us in for the night at his place. We loaded our bikes and gear into his horse trailer and truck so that we didn't have to go down the dirt road to he and his wife Barb's place. Their son Mark was there, his girlfriend Erica, and their son Dallas' girlfriend Lacie. We're not too sure how I came into contact with him and exactly who knew who and where the degrees of separation were, but he was happy to have us and treated us to a fantastic rib dinner and some beers. We are big fans of red meat and hops, so it's always a treat!

Sitting around the dinner table, one of the guests, Drew, made some calls to try and get us some media on the radio the next morning. Well, sure enough the Japanese guy we passed earlier on had been on the radio that afternoon, and the mayor had presented him with a key to the city! At the right place at the right time I guess. We may pass him tomorrow, so we'll have to ask him about it.

Lloyd and Barb have set us up in their winnebago outside the house for the night, and tomorrow we'll have breakfast with them before heading out of Brandon. We'd like to get as far as possible, maybe Portage, leaving us a short day into Winnipeg the next day.
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