Day 111 August 25, 2011 Portage La Prairie to Middle of Nowhere 61km

I had breakfast this morning at McDonalds after spending the night in their parking lot. I feel like it’s the least I could do. Plus I wanted a big breakfast and a sausage and egg McMuffin. After breakfast, while I was taping up my feet I discovered that I was out of blister supplies despite having been in Winnipeg for four days!! Well planned. So we had to wait until 8am for the pharmacy to open, which caused a bit of a late start. In the meantime I tried unsuccessfully to get out Internet working but the Bell support guy wasn’t able to fix it.

There was a pretty strong headwind but it had a more southerly origin so it wasn’t as bad as yesterday. It was however super hot. And dry. Holy cow is it dry. If I breathe through my mouth it doesn’t take long before my mouth gets really dry. My nose gets super dry and there is dust everywhere that gets kicked up by the trucks that pass by. And it’s so dry and windy that almost no sweat forms on me, it evaporates before it can cool me down. I put my shirt under the taps but it would only stay wet for about 5-10 minutes. Incredible.

Almost as soon as I started out I noticed a plane circling around what I thought was an airfield. I thought he was practicing take offs and landings but when I got closer it looked more like he was crop dusting. I didn’t know people still did that, it’s the first time I’ve seen it.

I continued along highway 1, which is divided and sometimes has a pretty wide space between me on my side and Mike on his side. So today he would just meet me at the side streets. Also, for those of you who think Manitoba is completely flat, I counted 3 hills today. So I had three “H”s today: heat, hills and headwinds.

We are currently parked in a random picnic spot. Not sure if we’re allowed to stay here overnight but there are no signs to say we can’t so I guess we’ll see what happens.

Tomorrow I should make it to Brandon.