Day 38-Wawa, Ontario
White Lake Provincial Park to Wawa
Distance: 129km
Temp: 27 and raining

I was woken up at about 4:30 am by the distant rumblings of thunder and the light pitter-pat of rain on our tent.
I drifted in and out of sleep as the thunder continued to build until there was an ear splitting crash, followed by our tent lighting up completely by the lightning that then continued to flicker on and off for the next while.
The skies let lose and the rest of the night and morning we got hammered by the rain.
We tried prolonging getting up in the hopes that the rain would let up, but no such luck.
I’d left my shoes outside the tent, and got a rude wake up when I stepped into soggy, wet sandals, and squelched my way over to breakfast, where I had a soggy egg on bread (only because I stepped out into the rain from underneath the half-tarp.)
Since we were straggling, again we were one of the last to leave (as always.)

The rain did seem to let up enough by the time breakfast was over to trick us into thinking that it had exhausted itself onto our tents during that night, and had nothing more to give; boy, were we wrong.
No sooner had we left the camp grounds and were onto the road, did the skies let lose again, soaking us through within minutes (or me, as I had only brought my wind breaker, thinking I didn’t need my rain jacket.)

Before we left for the trip, Lewis and I did a big spring clean and got rid of a bunch of stuff; we had two piles, one for Goodwill, and one for The Trip.
Unfortunately some of our cycling stuff mistakenly made it into the Goodwill pile, namely our rain booties; we spent a good chunk of our time while in Victoria searching for booties-not easy to find in summer time.
We hadn’t needed them thus far, until yesterday morning, where they stayed nice and dry in our bag, on the truck.
I cursed as we trudged through the torrential rains that belted us as we made our way along; it rained heavily for the first 40km until we reached the air conditioned coffee shop, where we sat and froze while having coffee.
I created puddles big enough for ducks when I wrung out my socks.
Although the rain let up, I was still soaked, and squelched my way to our next destination, 130km from where we started-yuck.

I had started the day feeling really sluggish from our ride the previous day, which had really taken any umph out of our legs, but mid way through the ride we stopped for a peanut butter, cheese and jam sandwich, which must have been laced with speed, as Lewis and I rocketed back to camp, over the remaining 40km, passing most of the other riders.
I felt badly passing them (I always do!) and apologetically made it into camp only after a couple of others who had left in the early morning, through rain and all.

Since the skies were grey, and our feet wet, we decided to treat ourselves to a motel, also contributing to this easy- to-make decision was the fact that we were put miles away from town on our rest day, again, putting everyone into a really grumpy mood, as it means having to either bike into town (a no-no on a rest day,) or having to cab back and forth.

There is only one cab (not company, one vehicle) making this a difficult exercise to coordinate when 27 people all want to go into town at different times.
We removed ourselves from this equation and just put ourselves into town-much easier this way, plus having a warm, spider-free bed with a bathroom a few steps away is pure dreamy luxury-what more could one possibly want from life?
This trip certainly puts things into perspective.
Some camp sites we are so far from the bathrooms most of us end up riding our bikes over, or just going in the bushes.

One of the women on the tour used to live and work in Wawa, in the hospital.
She must have made quite an impression as all the nurses banded together and made a potluck for us; it was quite the feast.
Once again, we are so taken aback by the kindness of strangers-some of these people even made two dishes!
We all gripe and moan about having to cook galley duty for ourselves, and here are complete strangers cooking for us-definitely restores the yang to the yin of humanity to offset the bad vibes we get from the truckers, some of whom try to run us off the road.

Most truckers are good and when they can, will give us some room when passing. Some, even when there is no other traffic coming from the other direction, will come as close to us as possible-what they don’t (or possibly do) realize is when they come so close to us there is a draft which sucks us towards them as they pass.
They are literally inches away from us when they pass so close.
As mentioned most are pretty considerate, but there are a few who must be psychotic, as one tried to run a couple of fellow riders off the road the other day, and scared one of them so much, that she got onto the gravel side and stopped her bike every time one went by for the rest of the day.
We have all had run-ins with them; often we’ll get back to camp and compare notes and realize that often it has been the same trucker who has tried to run us off the road that day.
One can only wonder what is going on inside the heads of these people, if anything-do they think that we are not people on the bikes?

For pics see:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/Slideshow.jsp?mode=fromshare&Uc=w1ru7rm.1y15x25a&Uy=ca94vv&Ux=0