Kenora to Winnipeg

First thing I write.....Wake up feeling heavy, my legs and particularly my quads hurt to touch but i look outside and its not raining....

Later I write....
What a day....200kms to the outskirts of Winnipeg. I crossed out of the province of Ontario and into Manitoba and after the last few gentle ups and downs on the road it settles into flat, flat, flat terrain. JZ I think of you and you are right....the sky does get bigger.....today essentially rode on a dead straight road for 160kms!

An early town was Clearwater Bay which had little coves onto a lake with steep hills coming out of the water, people homes delicately and precariously perched on their slopes.

About 90km's from Winnipeg, on the long long straight road, I stop at a diner just outside a place called McMunn and had a major Cinammon Bun and a pleasant South African guy called Greg chatted with me. Meanwhile his daughter entertained the room with here antics on the baby chair. He is in HR diagnostics and he gave me his e mail address. Very friendly and like others the bike and my gear is always an entree into conversation.

On the flat roads my strategy is to stop looking more than 5metres in front of me and just aim for each next bump in the orad......a lot of Canadian roads have a consitent crack in the orad every 20metres or so. It keeps me from getting demoralised looking ahead and seeing that anything on the horizon hasn't changed or got any closer.

The pain of my saddle is bad and my right hip hurts and just the monotony of pedalling makes me groan audibly on a couple of ocassions. Not sure if it was physical or psychological but it feels like a painful process of cleansing myself is taking place....I notice I get tense and try to relax and release the tension i build up and hold (just from doing the same thing over and over again)

Also have the idea of each moment lying beside one another happened again. There is no beginning or end just different moments. These moments are not held together in a linear way with one leading to another it is as if they are separate.

The pain gets worse, I strongly desire to get there and I think about my pattern of wanting to e at the destination and I have a realisation (which as I look at it now is blindingly obvious) which is a bolt from the blue then that I needed to find the resources to enjoy this now more than the imagined now of my destination (in the bath at a motel for example).

Not sure if this is a catalyst but near the end of the this day I fell into a relaxed trance-like rhythm feeling near the end and tried to bolster this enjoyment as much as possible as I finish 200kms and arrive at the western side of winnipeg as the sun begins to set on the prairie horizon.

Overall I felt a euphoria of having done 700kms since Thunder Bay. Am also intrigued that each day I have reached my targeted destination despite self negotiating myself out of it at various tougher moments on the bike.

Still that conundrum of achievement vs process (or being) to play with though...