LUUUCY,, I'M HOOOOooooooome!

We've had a fantastic couple of days.. exausting and very difficult, but very rewarding and fulfilling.
Yesterday I was dieing to update our blog and talk about how gorgeous Ontario is but we didnt have internet access.
We altered our route slightly when we got off of the ferry from South Baymouth to shave of some extra Kilometers and speed up the trip a little bit. So instead of following the edge of the lake, we headded more or less in a straight line for Toronto.We pased through so many great l'ill towns! Some of the buildings and old houses are like they were cut out from books. Over the last couple of days, we've seen beautiful little brick homes, graceful rolling hills and terrific people.
Yesterday morning we woke up at 5 am, and started out from Little Current, where we stayed the night. Our departure time was 7 am for the ferry from South Baymouth and we biked 60K's from Little Current and made great time. We had some great luck with weather the last few days, it's been sunny and,,, well,,, WARM. In fact.. I think I've been in rooms full of fire that were cooler. (I'm not kidding!)
The sun beamed down on us as we struggled with those headwinds comming off the ferry all the way to where we finally stopped for the night - in a town called Flesherton. Flesherton looks like a fantastic little town and I'm looking forward to visiting it on the way back! I couldnt believe the mosquitos though! The bugs ate us alive as we paused for the odd break and to refill our water bottles. We got to Flesherton completely exausted and dehydrated so we went to a local restaurant to have some appetizers and sing some karaoke! (Stole the show)

OUR LAST DAY...
Wow... one of the shortest rides for distance in the last week or so. We ended up biking something like 170 Kilometers through more gorgeous countryside. As soon as we got to the Durham region, we were met by some of Jamie's friends and had a Police escort from where we stopped for lunch right to our finish line in Ajax. (That is where the headquarters for the Childrens Wish Foundation is located.) We were very happy to see the officers as they personified the end of a very long and hard journey. They were fantastic! Two Officers on motorcycles led the way,, it was quite the boost. To top it all off, that furious headwind that was fighting us the whole way since Regina turned around and pushed us towards our destination! WE HAD A TAIL WIND!!! For the first time in something like 20 days!!!! lol.
We reached speeds of over 60Kmph on the way to Ajax. WE ALL HAD HUGE SMILES ON OUR FACES - shouting and cheering could be heard from our group and we raced through the city where we were met by members of our families and people from the Childrens Wish Foundation. It was an amazing experience getting off of our bikes, knowing that we had completed the ride. We slayed the dragon.. It's done.
It is also a great feeling knowing that someone besides us will benefit from this. We struggled and overcame our obstacles, pain and discomfort. Hopefully through this maybe someone else will overcome their pain and discomfort. Bringing some happiness to someone else who is suffering will make it all worthwhile. We are all so happy that it worked so well and that all of us are safe and healthy. We would like to thank everyone for their help and encouragement during our ride. Like we've mentioned, Randy would give us updates on who had left messages and words of encouragement for us, and that was HUGE for us. It was always so great to hear that someone believed in us and was cheering us on. Thank you.

Auntie Emm!!! It's a twister!!

Monday was the longest ride that we've done yet.. it was about 240K's. We saw another majestic Canadian Moose! Man those things are ugly! And they have this silly prance when they walk. It really is something to see. A few days ago we saw bullwinkle prance accross the road infront of us, it was a young bull. On monday we saw his girlfriend! Ms. Bullwinkle was standing by the road and pranced off into the forest we we rode by. Shortly after we spotted Ms. Bullwinkle, Douggie pointed out a fox that scurried off towards the tree line as we approached - pausing for a while to curiously watch us ride by. We were shooting for a little town that didnt really exist the other day. When we got there we were forced to ride on another 40 K's, bringing us to a little flea-bag motel that apparently experienced a toilet paper famine. Yes... It's true. lol. No toilet paper.


I feel bad because it seems like most of the entries in this blog have become centered around how bad the weather has been and not much else is said about the day. It is true, we have had terrible luck with the weather, but the trip is going well. I was thinking today as we were riding.. "holy smokes.. it's like mother nature hates us and heard we were comming." We had some nice sunshine, but I would probably say that today was probably the worst for winds. (Clark looks like a lobster! Let this be a lesson to you kids,, wear sunblock!)
We're all excited because we only really have a few days before we reach Toronto. Friday is when we we figure that we will get there. AND SOME GOOD NEWS!! Randy was telling us over dinner tonight that it's possible that we may have great weather right on in 'till friday! AND the winds may shift tomorrow giving us a good tail wind for the remainder of our trip.
We stopped tonight in a town called Iron Bridge. The winds were vicious today and it was a head wind the whole way from where we started. It is still very hilly - big rolling hills. We can usually reach some pretty crazy speeds on the downhills, sometimes breaking 60 Kmph. That speed on the downhill is fantastic for giving us a little extra push, helping us charge up a new hill. The momentum can carry you a LONG way up some hills. However, when you're going downhill and you're thinking that you should be going maybe 50 - 60 and your speedometer reads 25... Thats a STROOOOOONG head wind.
SO... we had a nice big dinner (we worked up a heck of an appetite) and we are all settling in to bed. One more down three to go.

Good to see the sun again!

We started off bright and early in Terrace Bay with the sun shining. The freezing rain was gone - staying in Terrace Bay yesterday was a smart move. There is no way we would have made it safely from Schreiber to Marathon, and there is no way we would have made it to White River at all.. The weather was nice today but with the terrain and those constant head-winds it was one of our roughest rides so far. We did 171 Kilometers over some pretty rough hills. We would like to thank the Norwood Motel in Terrace Bay again for the kindness they showed us when we were wet, shaken and delerious from the cold.

Double ouch.

Today was the shortest day of riding so far. We started out riding today in freezing temperatures, with a mix of rain and hail. We had head winds and cross winds that slowed us to a crawl and nearly blew a few of us off our bikes. We rode about 14 K's and with ice on our bikes and gear - we decided to stop where a motel graciously gave us free rooms for the night. It was getting so cold with the wind chill, that the temperature would make you dizzy.. Our original goal was actually a place called White river, and if the bad weather persisted we decided that we would make it to Marathon and call it quits for the day. In this weather however, making it to Marathon would be next to impossible. Thank God for good people.

OUCH.

Today was one of the hardest days of our trip so far. We started off with nice weather that lasted us about 100 kilometers,, then it clouded over and the winds kicked in. The second half of the trip had hills that were very much like the rockies.. endless, steep inclines. We are all completely wasted and cant wait to sleep. The trip in total was 210 kilometers, which makes it among our longest days except that we also had some of the biggest hills today too. I cant believe we're actually finished.
Tomorrow is going to start off with those same hills, but the weather forcast calls for "ice pellets" durring the day with a high temperature of 3 degrees. We may shoot for marathon which is 100K's away. Its gonna be very cold and very wet.

Another few days have flown by.

The last few days have been good.. We went from Kenora to Dryden, and from Dryden to Upsala and from there to Thunder Bay. We've had that pesky cloud following us dumping rain on us and giving us a vicious head wind. For the ride from Upsala to Thunder Bay we had great weather though! We were very surprised in Dryden, when we were satisfying a junk-food craving at McDonald's and the woman behind the counter asked if we were the firefighters that were riding from B.C. Apparently she heard about it on the radio, and she figured we were the ones.
Upsala is very pretty.. we were able to find a nice campground right on a lake there and stayed the night. In the morning we all had a hearty breakfast at the restaurant/gas station and started on our ride just after 8am.
We cruised through the rolling hills of northern Ontario at a great pace on our way to Thunder bay. A few of us had some problems with our bikes, so we drove into the Cyclepath at Thunder Bay to get them fixed.. it was all minor stuff like getting our wheels trued, and getting our gears all tuned up. They were really fantastic about taking our bikes in and fixing them on a moments notice. They charged us for parts and threw the labor in for free.. a great bunch of guys there.
We just picked up our newly tuned up bikes and are ready to go for tomorrow. It's exciting to see how far we have come on our trip.. even more exciting to think that we have less than 10 days of riding left. We are all pretty sore, and most of us haven't been home in a pretty long time.. (almost a year) So even though we are all havin' a great time and enjoying the ride, its safe to say that we are all itching to get home.
Thank you for the support and all the messages we've been getting on our guest book and our blogs.. Randy keeps us updated every time we get a message and cant check it for ourselves. It's always good to hear from friends and family and its awesome to see how many people believe in us and are cheering for us!

OUR PRESURE IS RISING!!!

Our pressure gauge on our pump panel is coming even closer to our goal! Updates show that we have now raised over 16 thousand! Thank you for your generous support!! We have had over 1000 hits on our website since we started on our trip - the support and interest shown is very encouraging.