From Avalon Acreage across the prairies

I joked the Friday night (the 16th of September) before we left that we probably woundn't get away until 12 noon. We were all packed, had sandwiches, snacks, drinks, everything for a road trip. All we had to do was load the bike onto Phil's trailer to drag it to Thunder Bay.

We were up reasonably early and at 8:30, we were out manouvering the truck and trailer into position to get the bike up onto the trailer. The ramp is pretty short, so steep, and the bike is big for going up that short, steep ramp. It is not simply a matter of "riding it up the ramp"; the ramp is narrow- really narrow - and in fact, it is so narrow that the rear tire does not even fit on the ramp or for that matter, in the rails designed to hold the tires in place on the trailer. The rear tire is about 16 cm wide but the rails are about 15.5 cm wide, so the rear tire sits up on the edges of the ramp and rail.

We backed the trailer up to a slope so that the ramp would be less steep.

You will note the tire is sitting up on the edges of the ramp with daylight under the tire.

I'm worried about damage to the tire if it is sitting up on the edge of the rail, though I am not sure of the correct solution. My first thought is to deflate the tire so that it will be soft and pliable and the rim can sit lower however, I call my freind and neighbour Kenny, someone with much  more experience in these matters than me and he swings with his sage wisdom. His ultimate guidance: pound out the walls of the edges of the rail so that the tire will fit inside. Now, I realize Phil that you are reading this for the first time at the same time as the entire world and yes, we used a sledge hammer to pound out the edges of the rails on your trailer. I promise before I return the trailer that I will pound back the edges and you won't even know the difference.

Kenny doing his magic. He's giving that piece a pounding!

12:30 p.m. departure, by the time we get the bike off the trailer, pound out the rails, and the bike re-loaded and tied down securely.

That's o.k., we don't have anywhere we have to be Saturday night, we are just going to drive until we decide we have had enough but as a minimum, we want to make at least one third the distance to Thunder Bay, which would be about 150 km past Saskatoon, around 700 km.

The drive is uneventual, as you might have heard. We drive all the way to Regina and get there about 9:00 pm.

Those aren't raindrops, they are bugs that have been obliterated on our windshield.

 Regina is important to me because it is the city where I was born. My dad, who at the time worked for Imperial Oil in the heavy hydrocarbons division, was interred there from mid '57 to mid '59, not quite long enough to develop a taste for either Pil or the Riders. However, as a city it has a lot to offer and it is exactly how I remember it, even though we only saw it from the outskirts at night.

While not "eventful", it is still pleasant driving for the most part, as we are driving a long way east on Hwy 14, as opposed to 16, so it is not just double lane highway all the way. From Saskatoon, it is getting dark, which is a good thing because it is really dull from Saskatoon to about Ontario: just one, straight line, first across an endless wheat field and then across an endless flood plain.

Out door movie night, somewhere in Saskatchewan.

Nonetheless, this is virgin territory for us and so we aren't minding too much. However, we might kill ourselves on the drive back.

Once we hit Ontario, it is a new ball game. From perpetucal flood plain we go to perpetual boreal forest with lakes everywhere. It is a revelation to us both and really quite amazing. Of course, everyone had pretty much heard about all the lakes in Ontario but to see endless lakes where it is not quite possible to detemine where one lake ends and another begins is really quite stunning. I have a newfound respect for making this drive. At least, this one time.

The old hotel in Kenora, Ont.