So I hitch-hiked for the first time yesterday....

This will probably be short, only 31 minutes left on the computer, and sorry, no pictures today we forgot the camera cords in our hotel room!

SO yeah, yesterday was the first time I've ever stood by the side of the road and stuck out my thumb... and you know what... when you look really desperate and you have a bike sitting upside down with one of the wheels off (we did that just for effect) people with pick-up trucks will ACTUALLY still pull over.

Yesterday started out badly to be honest. We had spent the night in the beautiful Quetico Provincial Park which made us both really want to take a rest day and go canoeing (I think it pulled on Neil's heart strings a BIT more than mine though). However, Neil's rear wheel had been acting up and so we needed to push on to Thunder Bay for bike repairs. Anyways, before we even left the park that morning Neil got a snakebite in his tube (which is a pinch flat, no actual snakes) and so we had to replace the tube. After that though we had an amazing day averaging 28.6km an hour (which is really fast with hills and weight) because we had this WICKED tail wind. Then at lunch Neil ran into a classmate Scott at a Gas station (which ran out of gas while we were there... pretty crazy to watch desperate people pull up and be told that the tank is dry and that the next pump is about 55 km away). So the day looked to be going well until about 50km outside of Thunder Bay when Neil heard a loud snap while he was climbing a hill and realized he couldn't shift gears. His rear derailer was stuck in the hardest gear on his bike- needless to say we didn't stop until we had reached the top of the hill. At the top we found that his rear derailer cable had severed in half.... no way to fix that by the side of the road. So after looking about desperately for a while and trying to concoct crazy plans on how to get ourselves to Thunder Bay (Neil's bike was still kind of bikeable.. but he did not want to pull 60-70lbs of gear in the trailer up hills without being able to shift... and honestly... who knows if he could have made it up some of those hills without gears).

We quickly realized that we were never going to get picked up at the top of a hill so we coasted down to the bottom and started to look as desperate as we could. We were hoping that someone nice would just stop (because we assumed those kinds of people would be the less creepy kind of people... logical? no?) and then we took off Neil's back tire to make it look like something was really wrong (his bike was also upside down at this point too)... and then we just started thumbing. Luckily the 2nd or third truck actually stopped. He was a really nice guy Alex who was coming back from setting up an expoloration mining camp out in the bush. He drove us most of the way into the city and then easily pawned us off onto his co-workers who drove us the rest of the way. This guy, Fred, actually called and reserved us a hotel room and dropped Neil's bike off at the bike shop for him! Super nice guy. Neil is getting a new wheel built for him and his derailer has been repaired. We are super lucky and getting his bike back this afternoon so we are only behind one rain day(to be explained shortly)

We've actually run into tons of nice people in Ontario. I have a gaurdian angel on the Lake of the Woods Search and Rescue team myself. On my birthday (thanks everyone for the birthday wishes!) we were taking a nice shorter day (only about 90km) and were going to stop at the Rushing River provincial park.. have a fire.. and Birthday Pie (imagine a semi-squished apple pie with matches in it instead of candles... it was super tasty) and just have a nice night of it. Well.... about 30km outside of Kenora Neil was tightening my seat post bolt on my bike because my seat had come loose... when it seriously snapped in half. I was devastated. That was the first time I thought I would have to hitch hike. But nope! Low and behold Mr. VE3EFS pulls up behind us in his pick-up truck. I never did learn his name but his H.A.M. radio name is VE3EFS... so if you are into that sort of thing, tell him I say thanks. Anyways... he calls up his buddy Walter who lives 5 minutes away and who's wife is into cycling and triathlons and Walter brings out a dish of metric bolts (sounds crazy I know).... and wow, one fit! So here we were, thinking we were going to lose 2 days (it was Saturday after business hours and the hardware store would have been closed on Sunday for sure and I could not have biked without this bolt) and these two random men who I had never met before in our lives pulled up and set everything straight in less than an hour. We are very lucky people.

We've had some crazy thunderstorms and rain the last little bit. I've never biked so quickly as I did on the way to Fort Frances as I was scared silly by having lightning and thunder on either side of me. We actually got hailed on for a bit as well! But we are safe and sound and everything is looking well for the rest of our trip. We just feel so blessed that there are so many kind people in this country!! Unfortunately I must end this blog here as I am literally running out of time. We will try to post some pictures soon if we can. We are off to go do laundry and pick up Neil's bike -nothing like stimulating a suffering economy! Everyone should take bike trips like us! The economy would be in GREAT shape then!

Hope all is well at home!