Day 102 August 16, 2011 Kenora to Falcon Lake 61km
22 Aug
Goodbye Ontario!
I had two interviews before I began running this morning. The first was with Good Morning Kenora hosted by Deb Crookshank, whom I met Sunday night when she sat at my table at the fudraiser, as well as her co-host Jack. It was a fun morning segment and Mike was able to join me as well as we talked about the run down at the local Shaw station.
My 2nd interview was immediately after, and was more of a feature than an interview. I was filmed, interviewed, and directed by Dana, one of the local news anchors for the station’s national channel. She interviewed me as well as my mother, and filmed footage of the inside of our RV and of me running. It will apparently run every night this week at 6:30pm on CTV Kenora on a program called Points North. It was a lot of fun but the filming took a while and so I didn’t start running this morning until 10:45am, about 4 hours later than normal.
Catherine Konantz and Jack were waiting for me at Husky the Muskie to start the run. Jack ran the few km back to the station while Catherine and Derek continued on. By the time we left Kenora and got back onto Hwy 17 huge black storm clouds were moving in. When it started to rain, it was so hard that we had to get into the RV due to complete lack of any visibility. All the cars that passed us were driving at a snail’s pace with their hazard lights flashing. Still more vehicles had given up on driving and were pulled over on the side of the road or in snowplow pullouts to wait out the worst of the rain. We tried to completely wait it out but it wouldn’t stop. The tape and 2nd skin that I had on my feet had come completely undone and so I removed them, wringed out my socks and put my shoes back on. It was raining so hard that it was exactly like standing under a shower, one of the hardest storms I’ve ever been in.
Catherine lasted 17km with us until Don drove by to collect her and take her home and with that we were out of Kenora. The rain lasted for a while longer but without the fury with which it had began. Derek and Mike alternated running with me throughout the day, which because of our late start had to be shortened to 60km as it was getting late.
Shortly after lunch I crested the top of my last hill in Ontario and pulled even with the welcome to Ontario information centre. Not far off in the distance I could see the outline of the Welcome to Manitoba sign, in the shape of the province. I FINALLY MADE IT OUT OF ONTARIO!!!
I stopped at the entrance to a small circular field with remnants suggestive of use as a campsite, so we parked our RV and settled in for the night.
