05travel.ind

Hey Kids,
Here I am in Maple Creek Saskatchewan. I'd be further but its been a Dorothy in Kansas type situation.

Got here after an overnight ride out of Medicine Hat, or Maniac Highway, as I've come to calling it. The place was a nightmare. Aside from sinking up to my axles in mud along the river trail, and having to spend the hours unsinking myself, then tramping the cowish smelling goop all over the public library, I found myself on the cycle unfriendly streets. There are no shoulders, and no walkers in that town. Both the curbsides and the sidewalks are littered with debris, broken glass, nails, sharp rocks, dead animals, all the fun stuff.

Nonetheless, I braved the place, found a grocery store, and a bike shop (Cyclepath) that wanted to charge me $170 for a $30 front wheel. Cyclepath is their name, be sure to visit them if you ever wanted to get bamboozled.

Anyway, it took a good hour, which included a stiff ride up a long busy hill, to reach Walmart on the east side of town. At Walmart I turned left, physically and metaphorically, and got the hell out of town.

It was a rough ride. I'd already expended an awful lot of energy getting out of the mud. Now, midday, and in a blue funk with some serious fatigue on top, I plowed my way through the brisk headwinds and out across the bald prairie. It took a couple hours, and a lot of roadside snacking, before I finally got my wind and my rhythm. It was 25 K of plodding, and then the last 16 K into Walsh, when I finally got steaming along.

Walsh was nowhere, physically, metaphorically, and geographically. Literally, the place is just a wind and dust hole, plagued by millions of nasty insects and a campground that consisted of nothing but a long row of picnic tables separated by crappy old pieces of fence. It cost $8 bucks to stay the night, and the only redeeming feature was a shower that was second to none, anywhere, anytime. The shower at the Walsh campground, known officially as the "tourist home" is the best. It was a $20 shower.

Next morning I steamed out along the Trans Canada Highway, seeing my first cyclists in nine days, a couple screaming along the other direction on the far side of the freeway. We waved madly at one another. I shouted to them that they were the first grinders I'd seen in over a week. They shouted back an affirmative. It had been their experience too.

A while later I met my first fellow grinder in many days. An Acadian with a thick French accent, from New Brunswick. He'd left Vancouver about the same time I set up in Fernie to weather the weather. A real high baller. He was on his way to Fredericton New Brunswick, but told me he planned to take a train through nothern Ontario because he'd ridden it before, and would not be doing it again. He too, said I was the first cyclist he'd seen since leaving the mountains.

He was continuing on, but I was turning in. I needed a day off something fierce, and had decided Maple Creek would be it. Many years ago, while a kid hitchhiking, I got a ride from a fellow who sang the praises of Maple Creek to me. Later on I met a tall gorgeous blonde poetess from here. So I decided to check in and take a day off. That was Canada Day. And to celebrate the locals were all chowing down on some beef and getting ready for the big event, a three hour performance by an Elvis impersonator! I'm not sure what it says about the culture here, when the way to celebrate Canadian nationalism is to have an Elvis impersonator perform! I think the guy was actually from Japan.

Anyway, I checked into a local campground, once the fellow running it agreed to let me stay two days for $20. That's four dollars short of the normal $12 a day fee.

Didn't sleep so good the first night, bugs and wind. In the morning I made sure my camp was all nicely bolted down and went off to do laundry. That was Saturday. The only businesses open in town that day were the laundry and the bar. I got change at the bar and did laundry. Then, as I was just about done, a storm hit. It was a deadly bugger full of sheet rain, gale force winds, great strikes of lightning, and featured several small twisters. Waiting it out in front of the town hall, as soon as it ebbed, I raced back to check my camp. It was torn to pieces. All my gear was soaked.

So, I packed it all up and headed for the laundry again. The day had become hot and clear. So I dried it all up. Took it all back to the camp. Set it all up again. Made sure it was all bolted down securely, then went off to give myself a treat, my first meal out since Penticton. And what a meal it was, a gigantic Chinese smorg rivalling the best Asian cuisine I've ever had, which was at the Tung Lock in Whitehorse, Yukon. A fine feast, and I ate for two. It was just as I was chowing down on desert, a mixture of canned fruit, cookies and peaches, that another storm rolled in.

This one was twice as mean as the first, and it wasn't anytime at all before people were coming into the restaurant claiming to have seen a funnel cloud. It was easy to believe. The rain was torrential and the wind was rocking the big rigs as they drove slowly by. I didn't want to think about my camp.

Instead, I ignored the catostrophic vision in my mind, and sat there watching the storm and the goings on. One guy came running out of the nearby bar. While holding his shirt to his skin his sunglasses blew off his head. They lifted a moment then fell into the street, where they were batted around by the wind and rain, narrowly escaping the tires of passing vehicles. Then it happened, just as they were lifting off in another current of wind, a semi came along and schmucked them. I saw them explode and disintegrate. A few minutes later I saw the same guy, searching the sidewalk, with the rain still screaming, for his glasses. I didn't go out and let him know what had happened, but then, when the storm ebbed, I was leaving the place and there he was again. So I said: "Hey Bud, I saw the glasses blow off your head and I saw the semi -truck that demolished them." He looked at me sadly. "So they're gone are they?" he said in a manner more akin to someone finding out their dog had been run over, than glasses lost. Must have been good glasses!

Anyway, I got back to camp to find everything torn apart and soaked again. Once more I headed to the laundry, but not before moving all my stuff under a gazebo in the campground. Once it was all dried up, sleeping bag and clothes, I headed back to the camp. It took until about 2 am for my tarps and mattress to dry out enough to use.

When they did, I hunkered down under the mosquito net and listened to the radio. The CBC was playing highlights from the Live 8 concerts. It was at this point I really began to doubt my sanity. I'd decided at Wapiti that if I got hit hard again I would quit. Well, I got hit twice as hard. And listening to Live 8, I began to wonder if I shouldn't be out there doing something to make the world a better place, instead of off on some solo pleasure cruise with no set destination and no real purpose, other than the fact I'm unable to think of anything else to do.

Then I realized how tired I was, got depresssed and all but decided to quit.

Then I decided to sleep on it.

Then I thought of going south to the Cypress Hills and of throwing BoB and Blu on a Greyhound and going back to the mountains. Then I thought about carrying on or just walking away. Then, again, of sleep, which finally overtook me.

The next morning most of my stuff was still wet and the sky was threatening. I decided to wait it out. My hosts, a middle-aged Albertan couple who just bought the campground, having seen what havoc the weather had committed on me, decided this would be a good time to treat me like a dairy cow and milk me. They made me pay full price for the last night. Nice!

So I stayed, and agonized some more over what I should do, or if I should do anything. That day, yesterday, I did nothing, almost. I finished drying my gear then packed up. I showered, cooked a big pasta and agonized some more.

Then I went to sleep. A good sleep. A deep sleep. A much needed sleep.

This morning I woke to a beautiful summer day with a light southwest wind and blazing skies. I packed, had breaky, and am currently at the library. I'm going east, towards Gull Lake and Swift Current, on the Trans Canada Highway!

Once down the road a bit, I may turn north and head towards Saskatoon, where there's a music festival happening in about 10 days. Or I may continue, but somehow, I don't think I'll be going much further east. The bugs, the effort, the expense, the simple fact that I don't know how much more I want to pursue the eastern trek, and the fact that, at some point, I'm going to have to transport myself west are all factors. But the bigger factor is this, I need to start enjoying myself, and a music festival seems like just the remedy.

So I'm off again. The adventure continues, it just might not continue in the same direction.

Hope you're all well.
Will

On April 1, 2005 I set off across Canada on my bicycle. Or at least I'd planned to cross Canada. These pages are an account of that trip, as told through travelogs I sent to friends. I hope you enjoy the ride!

All material contained herein is copyright by Will Webster.
All Rights Reserved.

On April 1, 2005 I set off across Canada on my bicycle. Or at least I'd planned to cross Canada. These pages are an account of that trip, as told through travelogs I sent to friends. I hope you enjoy the ride!

All material contained herein is copyright by Will Webster. All Rights Reserved.

All material contained herein is copyright by Will Webster.
All Rights Reserved.