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Hell Broke Loose "Grow old along with me! The best
is yet to be ... " The day dawned, windier still. "If this keeps up," Sharon muttered, "we'll be blown backwards. In a couple of hours, we'll be back in Edmonton." "Won't Faye be surprised to see us?" It felt as if I was pedalling on a windy ice floe: for every three strokes forward, I slipped back two. It took a supremely long time to ride the few kilometres to Viking. Even though I'm notoriously cheap when it comes to eateries (to Sharon's chagrin), we skittered inside a restaurant - anything to get out of the hellish wind. Studying the map, we searched for an alternate route that would get us away from the relentless easterly that threatened to deafen us. Leaving the restaurant's comfortable confines, we turned south, out of the direct headwind. "At least it'll give our eardrums a chance to recover." "What?" Sharon kidded. In a short distance, my rear tire deflated. "Man! Not already!" I cried. "I hoped to make it the entire way across Canada without a flat!" Not taking any chances, I installed a new tire, a new flat-proof tube, and a Mr Tuffy tire liner. "That should solve my flat problems," I announced confidently. Killam, Sedgewick, Lougheed, and Hardisty passed by with no flats. On the verge of collapse, we stopped in the hamlet of Amisk and bought groceries for supper. As we left the small shop, the owner, Mary, presented us with a souvenir pen, the store's phone number emblazoned on its side. I took one look at it and asked, "Do you deliver?" Considering our state of weariness, that may have been a good idea. At an overgrown ball field on the edge of town, we found a decomposing picnic table. I pulled out our tiny WhisperLite stove, looking forward to mushroom soup and a ham, cheese and tomato sandwich. From a nearby residence, the aroma of barbecue steak lingered in the evening air, stimulating my Pavlovian reflex. "Maybe I should buy a steak and introduce myself," I said. Distracted by the mouth-watering essence, I overflowed the stove's fuel cup. With a whoosh, the picnic table was alight. Dull yellow flames danced three feet higher than our heads. "Do you think the fire department will hose us down?" I joked, silently complimenting myself on having had the good sense to purchase an extra-long lighter. "That'd be great," Sharon smiled. "I haven't had a shower in three days." Four minutes later, I plunged a cinnamon-apple tea bag into a litre of bubbling water. That little blowtorch was amazing. Before I took my first sip, a young fellow, accompanied by a slightly older woman, approached us. Mark and Jeannette introduced themselves. Mark lived next door to the ballpark with his mom, Luella; Jeannette lived down the road a ways in an old farmhouse. They had done some bike touring in the past. "We biked to Cypress Hills two years ago," Jeannette said. "It was scorching!" I rubbed my hands together briskly, hoping her comments would bring back a flood of warm memories. "I'd like to ride to Winnipeg next," she said. "That's the direction we're headed," I said. "Why don't you come along?" I had a nasty habit of making flippant invitations. I wondered if I would ever learn the lesson of thinking first? But before Jeannette answered, Mark shivered and asked, "Would you like to come over for a hot chocolate?" In a flash, we accepted his kind offer. Mark's mom, Luella, wasn't home. She had driven a neighbour lady to Edmonton for the woman's weekly chemo treatment. Mark was going into his third year of mechanics at Vermilion College. He drove a Volkswagen Beetle with a special tailpipe. "Does that stinger give you any extra oomph?" I asked, interested since I owned two underpowered VW's myself. "Oh, yeah!" Mark said. "One night, at a stoplight in downtown Provost, a tricked-out Camaro pulled alongside me. The Camaro driver gave me a sideways stare and revved his engine a couple of times. Rrrmmm! Rrrrrmmm! I gunned my Volksie. Poor old Betsy backfired so hard flame shot out her stinger six feet! I looked over at the muscle-car guy. He was slunk so far down in his seat I could barely see him." Mark laughed. "The dude was beat before the race began." After a second mug of steaming hot chocolate, sensation began creeping back into my fingertips. At 10 pm, fully thawed, we said good night to our new friends (we were past exhausted and Mark had to work in the morning). We wandered back to the ball field and erected our tent. Not taking any chances, I chained our bikes to the picnic table. Satisfied with my handiwork, I crawled inside the tent, ready for a good night's sleep. "Aren't you going to zip the vestibule?" "Naw," I said. "I'm going to watch the stars for a while." "It's overcast," Sharon said, glancing at the heavens. "There are no stars." Okay, she had me there. The real reason I didn't close the vestibule was that I wanted to have a clear view of our bikes in case anyone tried to steal them. Totally irrational - Amisk was tiny; our bikes were padlocked to a picnic table; and a six-foot chain-link fence surrounded us. Overwhelming fatigue did weird things to one's brain. "You're paranoid," Sharon smirked, guessing my real reason. "There's 300 people here," I countered. "Exactly!" she hooted.
At midnight all hell broke loose. Not anyone intent on absconding a pair of unwieldy, loaded touring bikes, mind you. Instead, bright bursts of lightning and corking cracks of thunder detonated in the heavens. The thunder was loud enough to cause the dead to sit bolt-upright. But not me. I barely stirred. After two more hair-raising explosions, one on top of the other, it began to pour. Torrentially. Rain spattered my face. Sharon wearily rose on one elbow and closed her half of the vestibule. "Now you wish you hadn't left it open?" she asked, lying back down. I was still too groggy to close my side. It gaped open like a yawning funnel. Rain continued to splatter my face. Maybe I should have broken out the shampoo? Not long after that, I remembered the ground sheet. Normally the vestibule covered it. But with only half the vestibule closed, the fabric channelled a runnel of water onto the ground sheet, and then beneath the tent. Before I was conscious, a sizable pool had collected inside the tent - luckily most of it was on Sharon's side. Still half asleep, she sat up and muttered something exclamatory. Using one of her bandannas, she set to work sopping up the puddle. "A hundred and one uses," she mumbled. "Quack, quack," I said, watching her paddling motions through half-closed lids. "Weather fit for a duck." "You're the one who's quacked," she spluttered, zipping shut my half of the vestibule. |
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