It Rains here too!
I have arrived in Winnipeg and staying with friends.
Winnipeg is so much quieter than Toronto. Much more laid back and I have no
rush to do things. I am taking the opportunity to lay in bed and do some
reading. I have finished Zoe Cano’s book “Bonneville-Go or Bust”. It is an
enjoyable book to read, well written and Zoe is honest with her feelings. It is
a book to inspire. I am now reading Graham Field’s “In Search of Greener Grass”
and it is a different style of writing altogether. I’ll tell you more when I
have finished it. Looking through the Winnipeg Free Press, the local paper, to
see what was on there is a report on a motorcycle race meeting at Gimli. It is
a small 1.3km track with a drag strip and events take place there about every
month. It is one of the few places for people to race outside Ontario. I had
missed the event by a week.
I tend to do that. I don’t seem to get the timings
right. Have acquired a few maps to do some exploring in the countryside around
Winnipeg and now I’d discovering that most of the roads are so straight a
cruiser suits that well. I track down a motorcycle hire shop River City
Motorcycles 286 King Street and organise to collect a bike on the Tuesday
evening after the thunder storms have passed.
On the Tuesday day time there are
reports of tornados in the e nearby town of Branston. The bike that is ready
for me is a 650 Yamaha V Star a little
cruiser with a big screen( to keep the bugs off) and the rain too!.Not used to
the rake of the forks I wobble off with Gita on the back to return to our
friends for an early start in the morning. We just managed to get there in the
dry before the rain set in. Our early start was a failure but by about 10:30
the rain had cleared and we were left with cloud. The roads were dry and we had
an ambient temperature of 20C.
The previous few days had been in the mid 30’s
and it fried your brains. Canada was in the middle of a heat wave with near
record temperatures and with that come mossies that exanguinate you. Cool was
better. I had a plan to go east to the Whiteshell Provincial Park and some
bendy roads then north to Victoria beach. The late start would curtail that and
we just went for the park. As we entered the park it started to drizzle. Bendy
roads in the wet were fun and after exiting the park it stopped raining some 40
miles later.
Me and the Highway.
We had covered some 120 miles and still had to get back to return
the bike by 5pm. It was nearly 3pm and we still had over 80 miles to go. Going
west we avoided some big black rain clouds by going a southern route and we
were back in the sun but it was windy they said gusts of over 50 mph were
recorded in that area. We know the wind was strong as Gita had to hold on to
her shades to stop them being blown away. We got back just on 5 and clocked 218
miles for the day. In spite of the rain it was a great day out on that little cruiser. I had some nice conservations with
people at the bike shop, one guy has been to Northampton. I left fliers behind
that were welcome. I didn’t manage to get to a local bike club meeting that was
a few miles away at a Tim Horton’s’ coffee shop on Main street but never mind
perhaps another time.
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