total km: 2497.0
Cyclists and the elements have a love hate relationship. Yesterday we saw no love. The wind pushed us around as the rains washed away our pride. Whereas today, we awoke to sunshine and the sight of a Canadian flag blowing directly in line with our route on Highway 1.
Cycling was a breeze as the winds chauffeured us our first 100 km into Manitoba. The sky was no longer a single brooding cover, but had dispersed into a collection of slightly disgruntled rain clouds. Each, a separate entity with its own will to roam and complain to whomever it wished. Thankfully, they had no interest in us and felt content just bothering the canola fields and wheat crops around us.
We did have our hearts broken though. We saw what we think was a spotted owl dead on the side of the road, it’s limp wing flapping with the breeze. It was horrible. They are terribly endangered and their population cannot afford mortality in the form of road kill.
Back to the road though. With 40km left we were laughing.
Eating our favourite snack.Even with the crossing of another time zone we were on schedule to reach Brandon by 5:00pm, and that was with a really late start (the TV was really distracting). We just got too full of ourselves and the clouds noticed. Once again they fused into a midnight grey fury, electric with lightning. 
<The sky directly in front of us and above Brandon was consumed. As we rode towards doom, the wind joined ranks and started trying to knock us down into ditches, which are not very far from the roads edge seeing as how Manitoba doesn’t see the need for paved shoulders.
We fought, were still relatively dry and were feeling pretty good as the change in wind direction only knocked us down to a still respectable 20km/h. And then the hail started. No baseballs, but still zingers, especially on ever wet, cold, bare legs. They even managed to find their way between the slits in our helmets. At first we were less than impressed as we could hardly even breath, let alone see through the density of the storm. But after a few minutes the calamity of the collaboration of events became too much to take seriously and we both just laughed. Our panic subsided and we began peddalling with ease down the middle of the crowded highway (well not exactly the middle, but having no paved shoulder puts you pretty close). We looked like two fools grinning from ear to ear, dripping with water as hail bounced from our bodies.
Repeating yesterdays performance we crawled into town
like drowned rats and chose to, once again, keep the tent packed away. Hot showers and the distraction of cable TV were just too enticing. Factor in waddling away from an all you can eat Chinese buffet
and we consider our recovery from the storm a success.B&K
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