Day 50: Kitwanga Lake to Meziadin Junction
After the long trek the day before, the team slept in a little bit later than we normally do, which of course keeps getting later and later. But I was wary to go outside since I remembered the raging, blood thirsty vampires from the night before. I could also hear people yelping about the bugs so, again, not too keen on exposing myself to the little beasts. But things needed to be done, first and foremost was using the bathroom.
This is a common problem for the team now since we drink so much water on the bike that we always need to get up in the middle of the night. But it’s so cold outside, or the bugs are raging, or you’re sleeping behind somebody who’s blocking the door that you choose not to get up. And then you toss and turn trying to find a position that will let you sleep a little bit longer without too much discomfort. And it just gets worse and worse as you start to cramp up, but by now we’ve made our choice and we’re too stubborn to admit defeat. A long story short, there’s usually a line of people looking for the restroom and we all complain that our bladders are out to kill us.
After packing and eating, we had a choice to either go down the road another two miles until it met up with the road or bush whack up the hill to the road. Leah led the way up the hill and we all peer pressured each other into going up as well. A short, but exhausting climb later we popped out of the bushes and onto the highway. I climbed on my bike immediately and headed out at a slow speed, trying to warm up the legs for the journey.
About five miles later, some of the team caught up and I caught on to the back wheels, ready to move a little faster. We were doing OK at a decent clip, but Channing wanted to move faster so he sprinted past us. A few of us were able to keep up and we went along for a good ways just following Channing as he went at his own speed, which was much faster than any of us were planning on going by ourselves.
A short ways up, Nick Bangia pulled up in his car and seeing Stephen scratch his head pulled over, thinking that Stephen was signaling to him to stop. I thought maybe it was the rest stop so stopped, but Channing kept going. After I heard it was just a miscommunication I yelled out “STEEE-PHHEN!!!” since he had passed me up with Leah and now I was way back and would have to go alone. D'oh!
So I got on the bike and went hard and fast, tracking to get back to the front three people. It took me a good couple of miles to finally catch up to Channing’s pace, but it kept me focused and it definitely got me to the rest stop faster. In fact, I wasn’t with them for very long at all before we did see the rest stop.
Channing blew by without stopping and then JJ went by after just a minute's stop, but I sat around for five minutes eating a lot and drinking more as I rested after putting in a tough effort to catch up to the group. I did take off by myself shortly thereafter and I enjoyed the next twenty miles largely just going at a slightly fast pace and enjoying the great outdoors. After some time I came up on Mallory’s rest stop and hopped off the bike for some food and relaxing.
The nice thing about working so much harder the day before is that what was supposed to be a 100 mile ride today had turned into a 70 mile ride. We had already gone about 40 miles, so there was only 30 more to go and with this in mind I chose not to stay too long with the group. But in the brief span of time that I was there I heard that Nick Bangia had left Christy’s bike back at the campsite and he had to take off to go the 40 miles back to pick it up. Pretty funny.
I took off a few minutes behind Channing and JJ and I rode at a fast clip. I was counting the milage markers, which in Canada show up every five kilometers, or three miles, and at 15 miles began to wonder why none of the team vehicles had passed me up. I knew if I missed the rest stop it would be 30 miles unsupported so I started to slow down hoping they would pass me. At the 18 mile mark I really slowed down, wandering around the road and exploring all the little turnoffs and such. At 21 miles I knew I was pretty much a goner and with no water left decided to just go for it. I picked up the pace and really, not too much longer I came up on the turnoff for the campsite, which was about a mile short of the gas station that represented Meziadin Junction.
Knowing I was way, way ahead of just about everybody, I went ahead and biked the extra distance to the station/restuarant. There I met up with Channing, who had slowed down himself and had been there about ten minutes before I showed up. We ordered soup and sandwiches and sat in front of the TV watching “The Simpsons”. A couple of episodes later, everyone else started showing up and after I snagged some ice cream we headed back to the campsite.
The campsite was next to yet another gorgeous lake, but it was a well maintained site and we had a manicured lawn to sleep on. We had a second dinner, but we had so much time left over that were able to pursue our own interests. I joined up with a few of the guys to play some “hacky-sack” and just goofed off for the next few hours. During this time Stephen got himself really sick and he was totally knocked out. We all felt bad for him and the team was quick to help him out.
Crawled into the tent late, much later than I wanted too, but the sun was still up, the weather was perfect and there were relatively no bugs to be found. Good times with good company.