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Grand Central Station "As soon as you feel too old to do
a thing, do it!"
Sharon, exhausted from the brawny prairie wind (or was it that big hill out of Piney?), was ready for a good night's rest. Constant headwinds, combined with flat unchanging 'scenery,' and lack of amenities in small prairie towns had worn her down. Calling it an early night we cinched down our flapping tent fly in an impenetrable spot behind the local bingo parlour. At 3:30 am, booming cracks of thunder roused me. Wind gusts animated our tent like a German Shepherd shaking a rat. Rain splattered the tent fly. Claps of thunder rocked the bingo hall. Sharon didn't twitch a muscle. Who needed sleeping pills? Cycling a loaded touring bike into a headwind all day was a sublime insomnia buster.
In the morning, I discovered my shoe was more akin to a drinking vessel than it was to footwear. I had left it outside the tent in a perfect spot to catch water draining off the fly. I dumped the water out, and gingerly inserted my foot. My wonderfully warm and dry sock absorbed leftover rainwater. "Oh, man," I grimaced, "what a terrific way to begin the day!" Everything was soaked - from bicycle seats to panniers. Even my cycling gloves, left in an upside-down helmet, were sodden hunks of curled leather. And the plastic sheet we had covered our bikes with to protect them from inclement weather? It had flown the coop (no wonder I hadn't heard it flapping). I searched the area and found it some distance away, cloaked around bushes in a hearty hug, clucking gently in the morning breeze. Sharon wrung out apparel that had been strapped to her rear carrier to dry. We left the tent set up, hoping it would dry a bit (packed wet, it added considerable weight - and in our current physical and emotional slump extra weight wasn't what we needed). I strapped my still-dripping helmet under my chin and rode to a store to buy breakfast. I didn't have much luck. When I returned from my scavenging foray, Sharon peered into the bag. The carrots were soft and withered; Bugs Bunny would surely have rejected them. Tiny rock-hard plums would have made superb slingshot ammo. But as food they were nothing but dental bills. Oranges - so blemished and of such a despicable blue hue - more rightfully should have been called 'three-day old corpse.' "This stuff is garbage!" Sharon lashed out, none too happy about having to suffer the dual indignities of being wet and having nothing to eat but horrid tasting grindage. I picked through the morass and ate the less putrid bits. "I'm hungry," Sharon complained when I had finished. We rolled up our limp rag of a tent, hopped on our bikes, and descended upon the nearest restaurant to ravage their breakfast special. When I had licked my plate clean for the second time, we were both in better spirits. With a spring in our step we exited and retrieved our bikes from the parking area. A youth strolled over. "I'm in my last year of high school," he told us before asking the three usual cycle touring questions: Where are you from? Where are you going? How many miles a day do you do? He listened intently, then floored us. "When I was younger," he said, "I thought of riding my bike long distance." A nostalgic look appeared on his face. "But now I'm too old," he lamented. "I'm seventeen. I'm over the hill." Huh? Sharon and I looked at each other - startled - our eyebrows arched in wonder. But, before we could protest, the school bus pulled in and the driver honked. Leaving us dumbstruck, our old-before-his-time, young friend departed. "Jeez," Sharon said. "What age does he think we are?" "Less than seventeen, apparently." Feeling like two kids, we cycled to the Canada-US border near Middlebro, Manitoba, and crossed at Longworth into the state of Minnesota. "Where are you headed?" a border guard asked. "Rainy River," we answered (a town in Ontario about 80 kilometres away). "Have a good ride," he said, waving us through with a chuckle. "Hope it doesn't rain." Skirting Muskeg Bay, a pleasant portion of Lake of the Woods, we found something different between Canada and the States that only cyclists might notice: American canines took a much greater interest in us than their Canadian brethren. In Canada, it had been a rare treat when a dog chased us (I had thought of carrying dog biscuits to toss to them for encouragement). But in the States, the chase-after-cyclists affair dogged us all along our route. "Another item to add to our list of tribulations!" Sharon yelled, sprinting past another junkyard mongrel. So intent on welcoming us to the States it had even dropped the bone it was gnawing on to give chase. Compounding our dilemma was the fact that most American houses were closer to the road than houses had been in Canada. It gave the American dogs an unfair advantage - kind of like jumping the gun in a hundred-metre dash. And the American pooches were less friendly than their Canadian cousins, too. "Definitely not as laid back," Sharon yelped as a mongrel snapped at her heels. The canines pursued us, in ones, twos, and packs of three and more, yipping and yapping, snapping and snarping. It was all quite unsettling. As a smaller mutt made a run at my ankle I had the inclination to kick at it. America's first drive-by booting? But I thought better of it. As we raced past another unleashed crossbreed, a silly little doggerel ran through my head: 'Who, who, who let the dogs out?' Having momentarily left the dogs behind, a van pulled alongside. The passenger window rolled down. I wondered if the woman behind it intended to hold out her lap dog so it could bark at us too. "We want to take your picture!" the woman yelled. "You look so cute with your little helmets!" Gosh, golly, and gee whiz. We were tourist attractions! And cute ones at that. We complied. Smiling shyly, of course. Highway 11's wild flowers and paved shoulder swept us (and our cute helmets), into Baudette, population reportedly 1,300. I thought the population sign was missing a zero. The amount of traffic plying the streets astounded us. "All 1,300 citizens must have jumped in their cars for a joy ride around town at the same time," Sharon surmised. Traffic wasn't the only thing in the little town that was big. The Ralph and Randy's food store was humongous. There was even a Pizza Hut. "Welcome to civilization," I grinned. (When we had cycled across America, Sharon and I fell in love with the big people and their friendly all-you-can-eat buffets strung from one end of the country to the other.) "Americans know how to eat!" I stated with relish, enjoying my 'America is superior' attitude. After all the mom and pop backwater grocery stores we had the misfortune to come across in the Canadian prairies, Ralph and Randy's looked like Grand Central Station. The ripe fruit was immaculate. I scored a package of Nutter-butter cookies (my favourite, and not available in any of the prairie stores we had frequented). There was even two-quart chocolate milk. "What a country!" I said. We retreated with our spoils and found a seat beneath a shady oak, near Baudette's giant 40-foot walleye fish statue, and ate until we couldn't eat any more. I laid back, patted my stomach, and watched splendid Rainy River tumble past, sneaking through pools and spilling over rocks as it made its way downstream. Late in the afternoon, the low-pressure system that had been building since morning increased. "I don't think I've felt it this muggy since cycling in Kentucky," I griped, and pushed a button on our short-wave radio to check the weather forecast. But the radio wouldn't turn on. Moisture from all the humidity messing with the circuits? "I don't need a weather report to tell me the humidity is 98 percent," Sharon said. "Let's find a shower!" Feeling as sticky as two candy canes leftover from last Christmas, we set off. Luck was on our side. Or was it? We located a public swimming pool. Only one problem: It was closed. We continued on, shirts sticking to our backsides like flypaper, and came across a football field. Sharon spotted a spigot. She threw her bike down and charged the faucet in slow motion like a haggard explorer who had just crossed the Sahara. Sombre clouds the colour of old inner tubes bunched overhead as we splashed cool water over our bods. After throwing on clean clothes we hightailed it to a park and set up our tent. Once plastic bags had been securely fastened over our bicycle seats, we entered the tent - but not before one final check to ensure our shoes were high and dry. |
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