Day 25
Binscarth Sask, to Minnedosa, Manitoba
Distance: 138
Windy from the south east at estimated 30-gusting to 40 km/hour

Our driver is complaining that her arms hurt from trying to stabilize the truck on the blustery road, so you can imagine how our legs feel.
I think for many people today was one of the toughest rides of the tour so far, thanks to our reliable companion Hedwig and his second cousin SideWig.
Both joined forces today and lashed us with relentless and persistent winds that railed against our ears and battered us about the road, making riding in a group perilous at times.
On days like this I will try every mental distraction to keep me from looking at my slow moving odometer; the kilometers just would not come.
When I kept forgetting that I was trying not to look, and my eyes wandered down to my ‘dashboard’, I felt like screaming, as we had barely moved.

Usually after dinner our group will sit around the ‘living room’ and chat, but this evening we all look like extras from ‘Night of the Living Dead’.
It is now 9:20pm and most are in bed, hoping that the wind Gods will be kinder to us tomorrow.
If they won’t be, I would prefer not to know at this point, so that I can go to bed in ignorant bliss.
I am sitting on a picnic table beside a picturesque lake, where the light breeze gives no hint of the gale forces its predecessor whipped us with.

There was one highlight to the day; we stopped at one point to rest beside a field of horses, and I got to play and pat some soft furry noses; their reassuring warm breath on my neck almost made me forget that we still had over 100 km to do into the wind.
I tried to feed them a banana as a thanks offering, but they turned up their velvet noses at my suggestion.

Sometimes the kindness of strangers takes us by complete surprise.
Today a large truck passed us, and stopped shortly up the road.
We saw him get out, walk to the back and open up the truck, and take something out.
Being in the middle of nowhere, this can put anyone on edge, but as we rode up to him, he started to wave two boxes of butter tarts at us, waving us down with them.
He said that he’d been driving and passing a bunch of cyclists, and thought that we must be hungry since it was such a windy day.
We immediately broke into to a relieved grin, and gratefully took the boxes.
We waited for the group of 6 cyclists a few km down to the road to catch us, and flagged them down with the tarts.
I have never seen such happy people; we welcomed our break from the wind with little bundles of glucose joy.
We came across a similar experience way back in BC, on a particularly hot, hilly and service-free ride; as we came up from this long climb, there was a guy standing off to the side of the road with the back of his car open, which had an assortment of water, Gatorade, and power bars on display.
We all though it extremely odd that someone would be selling such things off a beaten road, in the middle of nowhere.
However since it was so hot and we were low on water, we stopped. It turns out that he was a rider from the Tour last year, and remembered this stretch to be particularly difficult, and had decided to buy all the goodies and give them to us as goodwill.
We all could have kissed him; what a totally thoughtful thing to do.
We all agreed that we would do this at some point along the route in our home area.

We are on galley duty again tomorrow (already) so we’ll see what excitement that brings.
We had group therapy last time after the drama that unfolded, so we’ll see if everyone sticks to their resolutions.
The suggested menu for tomorrow is ‘green lentil soup,’ but after last week’s fiasco with the no-meat, we are too scared to offer the hungry people a meatless meal, so Lewis has orchestrated making spaghetti bolognese instead.
I hope it keep the hungry people at bay.