Days 17 & 18 of the EPIC Ride - Regina - Moosomin, SK; Moosomin, SK - Brandon, MB

Day #17 of the EPIC Ride

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Regina - Moosomin, SK

Distance: 230 km

Sunny, partly cloudy, light winds. Mid to high 20s.

Day #18 of the EPIC Ride
Monday, July 15, 2013
Moosomin, SK - Brandon, MB
Distance: about 130 km
Grey, windy - headwind @ 25 km/h

Today was one of our more eventful days of riding-and also one the longest. Starting from Regina, our goal was Moosomin, because friends of the Gerrards (we stayed with them in Regina) knew the pastor of a local church who said we could sleep at the church for the night.

The ride was going pretty well for most of the day. At one of our afternoon breaks we stopped in Grenfell, SK, and as we were eating lunch, we were joined by another cyclist named Joe.

Joe is a young man in his 20s who just finished at university in Newfoundland, for music, and is now riding home to BC this summer. So he's going East to West. We spent a few minutes talking with him and shared some of our food with him as well.

After leaving Grenfell, and riding about 15 km, Evan had to stop. He'd got his 3rd flat of the day and it was in the same spot each time. Unable to find the problem, and with some leg cramps during his final stop, he called me to pick him up. As I was going back from Whitewood (about 35 km ahead), Dave called me to say that Luke had fallen off his bike and was scraped, and had possibly broken his wrist. So I picked up Luke and his bike, and got him the first aid kit. While picking up Evan and then going to the nearest hospital, in Broadview, Luke cleaned and bandaged himself up as best he could.

We obviously picked the best time to go to the hospital, as there were no other patients there when we showed up, and all 3 women on staff helped clean up and take care of Luke. 

When the x-ray technicians came to the hospital, they x-rayed Luke's arm and confirmed that it was not broken, but just sprained.

So we left the hospital with instructions to rest and heal, and headed off to Moosomin. Dave chose to keep riding all day, and covered the last 70 km on his own, with some headwind, arriving at about 8:30.

After settling in at Moosomin Baptist Church, we went out to Dairy Queen for dinner, because the grocery stores were closed and the only place we could find open after 9 was DQ. Not a great idea-too much fat and grease for that to be called food, let alone a good dinner.

Thanks to Dr. Mel Konkel of Moosomin Baptist for letting us sleep in the basement youth centre!

Yesterday, after a later start in Moosomin-Evan spent some time working on his tire problem-Dave and Evan started out in a 25-30 km/h headwind, which they battled all day long.

From leaving Moosomin at 10 am, battling headwind, and going to just outside of Brandon, MB it took the guys until 5:30 (6:30 with the time change) to cover 130 km.

This was definitely one of the harder days of riding. Dave said later that when they started in the morning, that he didn't know how they were going to make it all the way, with the headwind. They only averaged 22 km/h riding, but at the end, they just pushed and as the wind died down, managed to get closer to 28 km/h. The only highlight to the ride was crossing the Manitoba border...

We stayed the night just outside of Brandon, MB with Audrey and Camille Brodeur, who were contacted by our hosts in Regina, the Gerrards.

After showering and eating a hearty meal of burgers, angel food cake and ice cream and strawberries, the Riders went to bed for a good night's rest.

I spent a while with Google Maps and Warmshowers, looking up possible places to stay for the rest of our journey.

God willing, we'll be in St. John's, NFLD in about 1 month. Today Evan and Dave left at 7:30 (CST) and are heading to just past Winnipeg. Probably at 250+ km ride. As I sit writing this post, I can see the wind picking up to about 20 km/h, and thankfully it's coming from the West.

We're taking a rest day tomorrow, so I'll write another post after that.

Thank you to everyone so far who has taken us in, fed us, donated, encouraged or otherwise supported us in our journey and goal to help the exploited and vulnerable.

As always, if you know someone who will be along our route, or who might have a friend along our way, let us know-we appreciate any connections and love sharing our stories and why we're doing this Ride!

Ben & EPIC - helping Exploited People In Cambodia