WHEW. What a day. Just under 45km today, and we fought for every inch. Today seems to have been another day in the long against wind battle we have been fighting across the praries. The owner of the campground we were at in Swift Current told us that this long and hard wind from the SouthEast and East direction has never happened before - as with the rest of Canada, all weather rules are off this spring!!

So after facing the 40km/h wind with 60-70km/h gusts, Ian & I had to make a big decision. We are falling behind further and further every day, and the forecast for tomorrow is 50km/h winds, against us! Things don't seem to be changing. So after much debate and deliberation, we decided to be done with the praries, and fast forward to Winnipeg, via Greyhound.

It certainly wasn't an easy decision, but once made, things started to feel better very quickly. We started joking around again, and feeling overall, much happier. Skipping 750km is not an easy thing to do when your goal is crossing the whole country, but the factors were for it: winds, graduation, flat and boring landscape.

On a positive note, the people in Herbert (little farming town) are amazing!! They found cardboard for us, so we could box our bikes up, let us use thier garage to box them up, and let us set our tent up behind a gas station for the night. It was a nice break!

Sorry there haven't been any updates recently, but Ian & I have been busy biking and not doing much resting!! :)

Anyways, we are safely over the mountains (as you can guess if you look at the pictures), and are currently in the city of Swift Current, taking a break. You wouldn't believe this town! It is a reasonable size, and yet the following is true:

• There are no bookstores in town at all.
• No Internet Cafes. This isn't bad on its own, but as a local told me, there used to be such a cafe, but the "old people didn't like it" so it had to be closed down!
• No bike stores! Nobody here bikes. Ian & I have yet to see a single person on a bike.
• No Taco Bell. Not that this is a suprise either, but you wouldn't believe how much I want some Taco Bell, no matter what it does to my system (grin).

Other than this, it is quite beautiful - the weather is still holding out for us and it's nice and sunny and decently warm still! The winds have been against us here on the praries, which makes getting across them much slower than we were hoping (e.g. Medicine Hat --> Regina should have been 3-4 days, whereas it will now be 5-6 days). But we can always figure out a way to get to Waterloo on time (grin).

So I will fill in the missing days (and tons of missing details!) between here and the earlier posts as soon as I get some decent internet access!