So sleeping sucked. I barely had any last night. The crazy winds some blowing tents away and collapsing a couple others. Trains running what seemed non-stop overnight (I counted 4 different trains over night), and then I woke up again at 5:30am. But this time, I just hit the snooze and went back to bed.
When I woke up in the morning, I knew I had two choices.
1 – sucking it up, and getting on the road like any other day nice and early. This meant I would beat the heat, probably some traffic, and hit my destination by 1pm or so. Who knows, maybe I could even go further with all the day light I have left. But, doubtful because I was tired to start with, so I would’ve been dragging a piano behind me all day, probably averaging speeds of 15km/h (just shy of breaking the sound barrier haha), and probably would’ve felt worst like I did after Medicine Hat.
2 – sleep in, take my time and leave a little later and try and make the initial destination. Sure the heat will be hotter, the traffic probably 3 or 4 more cars than the morning, and I could’ve atleast pushed 20 km/h without feeling like I was going to die.
I will mention, I don’t like it when people say “I feel like I’m going to die”, or any reference to dying because of something they don’t want to do or something. I never really appreciated the “joke” before, and now, I feel stronger about it. Given this, I have said it before and will probably say it again in the future but when I say it. It’s because I actually feel awful.
I chose option number 2 and even squeezed in a bit of a nap before I got up and ate breakfast. When I did awake, the friendly neighbours were gone, and everyone else were packing. I just walked over to the bathroom, washed up a bit, then came back.
I had bought these mucous and phlegm plus cough suppressant syrup, but they didn’t suppress the cough at all. I coughed my lungs out last night keeping me awake.
At around 10:30am I hit the road. I rode for what seemed hours upon hours (only 29km’s in reality) when I reached Chaplin. Beside Chaplin is a lake with a natural salt deposit. It was pretty neat! I stopped and went for a walk on the white plains of salt stretching all the way from the road to the edge of the water (about 100 metres or so).
I was glad I had that break because my next stop was 40 km’s from there.
I came to a town called Mortlach which is the cutest little town I’ve been in. No more than 350 people the locals said and they were proud of it! I sat down for lunch at a little tea house and ordered chicken pot pie and eventually had 4 cans of soda. I wanted juice but they didn’t have any, and I was just craving the sugars again so I kept putting them back one after another.
I managed to have a nap on the patio there instead of the sidewalk and about 20 minutes later, I woke up, said good bye and took off for Moose Jaw. While I was there though, the locals who were jibber jabbering away were talking about a tornado that blew by just north of there and had just missed Moose Jaw. They asked me where I spent the night last night and I told them all about my experience. As they nodded their heads, they said yea, the tornado would’ve been 20 km’s or so north of ya. Woah. That’s lucky.
I made my way into Moose Jaw eventually and it was already time for dinner. I went called up all the inns, motels, and any accommodations I could find. I’m still feeling pretty ill, so I thought I better go inside tonight.
I contacted Dreamland Inn which was on the east end of the city so after a quick stop at the superstore to grab supper (watermelon and cough syrup), I headed that way.
Checked in, tv going, dinner ready. Not much better than this. I tried having a bath but the hot water ran out pretty quickly. (Yea I know, eww… That’s gross taking a bath in a motel. But this place is renovated and brand spanking new. And whatever. I’m going to see a doc tomorrow so if something starts to sprout, he or she will know).
Oh, I forgot to mention. I saw another pelican today haha. It was pretty cool. AND! 8 combines combing a field. Ya, 8! Crazy farmers.
Total time – 7hrs 44 min
Time on bike – 4hrs 59 min
Total distance – 121km
Caloric exp – 4031 kcal
We Are Made To Give 