Dennis does his "Happy Dance".

WIND! The Wind today was absolutely, unanimously, the absolutely worst wind we have dealt with yet. The wind was sustained at about 35 mph and gusted to 40-45mph. It was constant and from the West. When we started the ride this morning, we were in Lethbridge, Alberta and began heading West to Fort McLeod. It was about 22 miles headed straight into that wind. At that point, we did get to turn North onto Albeta 2 and the wind was either directly hitting us from the left side, or slightly from the front or, gloriously but only occasionally, slightly from the rear.

When it was slightly from the rear, it allowed us to maintain a faster pace, but still threw us around the highway like rag dolls – especially when big trucks came by. When it was directly from the left side, we were all three leaning to fight it (at one stop, I had my hand on the handlebars, and the wind blew the back end of the bike about 5 inches around). When it was slightly at the front – we were barely moving and fighting every minute.

We stopped in a town called Claresholm for lunch, after going 51 miles. The food was good, but mostly we just stared out at the wind knowing that we still had 25 miles to go to get to Nanton. After lunch, there was nothing to do but get back on the bikes, so away we went. Fighting the wind the entire way, we arrived in Nanton at about 3pm.

We are staying at a very old Nanton hotel called the Auditorium Hotel. It was built in 1902 and has a bar and restaurant inside it that we will probably stay here and not move for dinner and breakfast. The rooms are upstairs, no air conditioning except the window, and the bathroom had no towels, but some were given when asked.

The owner of the hotel is a really cool guy that when he saw our vehicle and cut the room rate in half as a donation to the cause. Let’s just say the athe place has character, and the owners are gracious.

This is the second to the last night of this ride. We are at the finish line! I cannot believe that we are that close to being done, nor that we have actually ridden our bikes to Calgary. I am over 50 lbs lighter than when I started training 14 months ago and I have a beard (for now). It will be one heck of a memory, but I am ready to be back home. We changed our flights so that we will arrive in Calgary tomorrow, and fly home on Saturday! See you all soon!

Grace and Peace

Dennis

This entry was posted on Friday, June 26th, 2009 at 1:08 pm and is filed under Tales From the Road. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.