Cross-Canada Road Trip-Part 3

Today started off just great! I had been trying to do a better job packing each morning and was becoming proud of how small I could pack the tent and how much I could squeeze into the dry bag we were carrying on the back of the bike.

That morning I was especially happy with how small I had managed to roll the tent up. I had carefully taken it down, swept it off, folded it, and rolled it as tight as I could, kneeling on it the whole distance to push out any air that was lingering inside. As I stood up, with my tight little package in tow, I yelled to Nancy, "Have you seen my glasses?"

"The last time I saw them, they were hanging from the ceiling of the tent,dear," she shouted back.

Oops....After looking around the campsite and the bike, I came to the only possible conclusion. Yep, somewhere inside that nice package was a pair of glasses...at least the remains of a pair of glasses! And the only one I had with me. So I did the only thing I could at that point, carefully unrolled the "you know what". And sure enough, in the middle of the thing, there were the glasses, a little bent but not really any worse for wear. After a little straightening job they were as good as ever. To this day, I don't know how they survived. The moral of the story was "Check the tent carefully before taking it down." And we did just that for the remainder of the trip.

After we packed, we headed into town to Pro-Am Motorcycles to get the new rear tire put on. The folks there were great and we were on our way again by 11:00. This was my first trip into a city on the bike so was a little nervous. But I managed to stay upright and avoid any incidents. Luckily it wasn't rush hour and I had my navigator behind me hanging on with one arm and the map of the city with the other. At least she wasn't trying to smoke at the same time, as well. Another milestone was behind me; city driving or should I say riding.

And the rain continued and continued...all day. For the most part it wasn't that bad. Our rainsuits kept us dry and riding in the rain across the country had its good experiences. Although we were going to take a few sideroads, we decided there was no point since the weather was so bad and we were basically destination driving to my sister's place in Thunder Bay.

We booted it to Regina at an average speed of 150 km/hr. One small praire town after another, but there is something about the endless horizon that is spectacular, even in the rain. Seeing different storm fronts with their awesome thundercloud formations in all directions was something. Hoping to go between them instead of through them was our continuing thought. They were visible from miles away. You could see the lightening hits between clouds and to the landscape. It really was a sight. And the climax of the day was a double rainbow in the distance that stretched from one side of the sky to the other, a view that would only be possible in the middle of the prairies.

But as Nancy said at one point,"If it doesn't fuckin' stop raining I'm gonna kill someone," Ok, so it wasn't that pleasant. Maybe I got a little carried away in the previous paragraph.

We arrived that night in the downtown area of the prairie city of Regina in the middle of a raging storm. In fact, I think if monsoons occurred in Canada, this would have been one. The wind was roaring and the rain was coming down in sheets. No, it was moving horizontally in sheets. And it was pitch black and I couldn't see a damn thing. For the first time during the trip, this rookie was scared shitless. Cars roaring past me in both directions, in the middle of an unknown city, couldn't see a thing through my visor, had just narrowly missed being hit by a couple of cars, and the wind was blowing the bike over.

"I gotta stop," I yelled back to my equally terrified passenger. "I can't see a damn thing."

After taking the wrong turn and ending up on a strange freeway, I managed to backtrack and entered the parking lot of a mall. I had no idea where we were and didn't care at that point. We headed for shelter under the edge of the rooftop to get our bearings. Of course, the place was shut but at least we had a break from the rain.

We could see a motel across the street, kitty-corner to the mall. Getting there was another story. I had to traverse an intersection under construction. The far side had a newly paved lane with an edge at least four inches high.......buried under water because of the heavy rain....that I had to manoevre across. Sweet Jesus! I thought back to the books I had read, the course I took in the spring and tried to put it all together. "Just hit the edge of the pavement at a right angle and you might make it," I thought to myself and then said a little prayer before I gunned it. Through the water we went and up the side of the pavement. A big bump and we made it.

The hotel was a new Sandman Inn still under construction but there were a few rooms open and the bed never felt so good. I'm sure the front desk clerk wondered where these two drowned rats had come from that were booking a room for the night.

Things we learned that day:

1) Put on "entire" rainsuit when you see a storm in the distance.

2) Stop when you realize the weather is getting increasingly bad.

3) Stop before proceeding past large parked vehicles when you can't see what is coming on the other side.

4) Don't get so caught up in the weather that you forget to keep checking your mirrors.

5) Watch for large potholes in the center of the Trans-Canada highway across the prairies. On second thought, stay away from the middle of the highway....there isn't one.

(to be continued)