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August 23 Tuesday Bicycle touring from Sprague Manitoba to Baudette Minnesota Sharon must be tired from riding her loaded touring bike into a headwind all day. It rained hard at about 3:30 AM last night with great cracks of thunder booming around the tent. Sharon didn't even stir. Those headwinds are great for insomnia. This morning I found that I had a cycling shoe full of water. It was in a perfect spot to act as a receptacle for water draining off the fly. The plastic blew off of the bikes and everything was soaked from panniers to bike seats to biking gloves. I went to the General Store to pick up breakfast while Sharon sat in the tent writing in her journal and waiting for the fly to dry. The weather forecast calls for clearing. Sharon complained about the lousy food I just bought. The carrots are rotten, the plums and oranges are tiny and I had bought a litre of white milk since there was no chocolate. The price of bread was outrageous and the price of baked goods were prohibitive, plus they didn't even look appetizing. After breakfast Sharon was still hungry, so we cycled to a Shell Restaurant on the corner of the main highway and tucked into their breakfast special of two eggs and toast. In the parking lot we talked to a bus passenger who was in high school. He said he had thought of riding his bike long distance "when I was younger," but now he is over the hill. I wonder how old he thinks we are? We point our bicycles down the road and head for the border. There is even a paved shoulder for a ways. We stop at a roadside campground. No one else is there. We are chased out by mosquitoes. We cycle down Hwy 11 to Baudette which has a population of 1300, but there is so much traffic on the highway through town it is nothing short of amazing. Everyone of those 1300 people must have jumped in their cars for a joy ride around town. We cycle to Ralph and Randy's, the food store at Amoco. It is huge. There is lots of stuff and the prices are cheap. I say to Sharon "Welcome back to civilization." She is not impressed with my attitude. There is even a Pizza Hut right inside the food store. After those little backwater towns across the prairies this place looks like the Taj Mahal. We buy fruit and a two-liter container of chocolate milk. We sit on a park bench that is situated under a huge oak tree beside a statue of a giant walleye fish. We have a terrific view of Rainy River as it tumbles by. A principal who is out jogging stops to chat with us. He says he used to work overseas teaching army base kids. Best of all he tells us where a free campground is located. "Just ride your bikes across the tracks past the American football fields." Unfortunately the pool is closed, so we don't get a shower. Too bad because it is very humid and sticky today. We wash down with cold water but I still feel sticky. We set our tent up under a picnic table shelter. One night with a cupful of water in my shoe was enough. We notice that the dogs in America seem yappier and less friendly towards cyclists. They are not as laid back as the Canadian pooches. The houses are closer to the road, which gives the dogs a better chance to run at us as we cycle by. In Canada, we rarely got chased, but here we were inundated right away. And we had two people take our picture already, too. The first was a couple just before the border. They were from Minnesota and said they wanted to take our pictures because "you look so cute with our little helmets." Gosh. |
