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August 22 Monday Bicycle touring from Rosa Manitoba to Sprague Manitoba This morning Mother Theresa invites us in for a shower, then toast and tea. Larry phones and asks if we slept okay last night. We had pitched our tent right beside the graveyard. I told him that no one had gotten up for a midnight ride. We have met a lot of great people on our trip, but the caring attitude of Larry is nothing short of remarkable. It is windy. It is blowing 30 kilometres per hour out of the southeast. It is a hot 30º C. It was a long seventy miles today. We are in Sprague camped behind the bingo hall. We met several kids in town that had ridden up on their BMX and mountain bikes. They asked us all the usual questions, plus they wouldn't believe that we had cycled up the "big hill" out of Piney. "Naw, no one could cycle up that, especially on those things," they contended, pointing to our loaded touring bikes. "You must have had to push." I had to think for a long moment before I even remembered the gradual uphill incline out of Piney. Guess everything is relative. In Piney a Grade 12 student who was painting the town for a summer job went to his pick up truck and gave us each a Piney ball cap. We had been cooking lunch in the fairgrounds, where the only picnic tables were, when he came over and sat down to watch us. He didn't say anything until we spoke to him and then his answers were short. It was kind of spooky with him sitting there watching us like that. After I started to talk to him I asked him where we could get water to fill our bottles. He took me in his truck to a church hall where there was a kitchen. He had a key to get in as he was just finishing painting it. We meet some pretty interesting people when we are out on our touring bicycles. |
