A brutal day of 67km of cycling but a complete hit on the people front. What lovely people live in this part of the world.
Uncannily, the wind was into us again, but today it was stronger. And while the landscape flattened out, some hills were still around. However, uphill or downhill made little difference in the wind – we hit our top speed of 21km/h pedalling hard down a 5% gradient which would usually have us over 40 in a freewheel.
We stuck on the paved road given Bron’s bike issues – and it was the right call since the pedal crank arm came loose again at 40km. We walked lots, both to take a break and to tighten the crank.
The people delights started at breakfast in the St Walburg Inn, where locals were full of chatter, and one man gifted us some of his special Indonesian coffee sachets.
On a coffee stop in Turtleford (sitting against a wall too tired to move) we met Robert Thunderchild and friends and had a long chat with them. They live on the nearby Thunderchild reserve and have been hard hit by unemployment, especially with businesses shutting down due to the pandemic.
While we had planned to ride to Vawn, we stopped in at Edam (10km short) because the village signboard advertised a mechanic. That took us to the Levasseur auto shop. Trying everything in the shop, mechanic Mike didn’t have a spanner to fit, so he went off and made one out of a piece of steel, two nuts and a bit of solder. His sister Angela referred us to the clever-named Thedam Bar for lunch and also offered to take us to North Battleford to a bike shop.
She later, fully understandably, decided she couldn’t take the risk with Covid-19 but rallied around to find us a lift. Braxton, the son of Thedam Bar manager Kevin, and his friend Chandler masked up and took perfect care of us delivering us to the bike shop 60km away, chatting all the way about their lives here. The guys in the bike shop couldn’t fix the bike but thought Mike’s spanner would do the trick to Saskatoon.
We checked gratefully into the Comfort Suites in North Battleford, 60km ahead of plan, dined with wine out of a real bottle at the Beaver Grill in the curling centre and will sleep on whether to take a day off here tomorrow given we trucked in a day ahead of schedule.
Today’s distance: 67km on Treaty 6 land
Total distance: 2,866km
#TransCanadaTrail
#TheGreatTrail
Uphill again 
Done 
Robert Thunderchild wanted a distanced picture 
Moose warning. No moose 
Delighted to have a forced stop 
A bit of a crosswind 
Stag surprise 
So Saskatchewan 
Smoke from the US fires is here now 
Mum’s 8-sided solution to a 12-sided problem 
Trans Canada Epic 