Both of us slept really well last night and woke up feeling well rested. I was a little slow getting up because I knew we had a lot of miles to do today. When we looked out the window, it looked a little cloudy and cold, unlike our beautiful sunny day yesterday. Once we were all packed up, we went to the kitchen where Deidre was in the process of making scones. We had some scrambled eggs while we waited and some more tea. The scones were delicious, especially since they just came out of the oven and there was homemade strawberry jelly to put on them. I also had a banana. We got a pretty early start today compared to when we have been getting on the road lately. We said our goodbyes to Deidre and then headed down the road. We knew there was a sporting goods/ bike shop in town, so we stopped there. Joe's wheel already looked a bit out of true, so he was going to see how much it would be to get it re-trued. Unfortunately the mechanic doesn't come in until Thursday, so they weren't any help with that. But we did manage to get another set of tire levers (plastic ones this time!). Just as we were leaving the shop, it started to rain. Since it was already really cold (and we had another head wind), this didn't make it any better. About 3 miles into the ride, I had to stop to put my pants on because my legs were almost numb. Luckily the rain didn't last all day. After we had ridden about 10 miles or so it stopped and was just cold and windy. I was glad that the ride still remained relatively flat. One thing that I have noticed in BC is that a LOT of people pass. Not only do they pass often, most don't take into account the fact that we are riding on the side of the road. They wouldn't pass if there was a car coming in the other direction, but think it's fine to pass when we are there. Granted we are on the side of the road and there is room, it is REALLY scary to see two cars screaming down the road towards you! The people in the cars don't seem to be able to think about it from the perspective of a bike. The scariest one today was while I was crossing a bridge (where the shoulder is a lot smaller) and a huge work truck decided it would try to pass a semi/transport truck. I was a bit shaken after that one, that's for sure. Ever since we've gotten into CA we've seen people pass when we are right there 5 or more times a day. At least we haven't gotten "honked" at all the time like we do when we are in the States. Shortly after it stopped raining, we saw a sign that said there was a Subway "25 minutes" (more like 2-3 hours for us) down the road. We got a little excited and thought that we might have Subway for lunch since we hadn't had it since we were in CO. We passed through a small town called Fort Fraser where we stopped at a gas station and enjoyed some of the homemade cookies that Deidre had given us to tide us over until lunch. An hour or so later, we made it to Fraser Lake, where the Subway was. When we went inside, we filled our water bottles and then saw the price of subs- they were a lot more than they were in the states (which we thought they might be since everything in CA is really expensive). As much as we wanted subs, we opted to save our money and just make some rice. There was a nice visitor center in town that had a couple picnic tables outside. While I was making lunch, Joe took a look at his back wheel to see if he would be able to true it a little. Turns out in doing so, he found another broken spoke. This is getting a bit ridiculous all of the problems we keep having with his rear wheel. Joe took out one of the extra spokes that he had gotten back in Jasper and prepared to fix it. While trying to fix it, he found out the spoke was too long- the guy at the bike shop gave him the wrong length spoke! So, since he couldn't fix the spoke he put the tire back on and said we would just have to hope for the best. There was a sporting goods store in town, so we stopped there to see if they by any chance had a spoke. Unfortunately they weren't a shop that fixed bikes, just sod gear. On the other hand, we found out that there was a bike shop in Burns Lake (which we would be at tomorrow morning). That was a bit of a relief because we figured that we would have to wait until Smithers to find a bike shop. The remainder of today's ride was pretty smooth. Since we left Vanderhoof this morning, the scenery has increasingly gotten better. Yesterday's ride was kind of boring in comparison. Since the beginning of the trip, if I happened to see a coin on the ground I would pick it up (ya know the whole "find a penny pick it up.." thing). Usually I find a penny or a nickel and sometimes a quarter once in a while, but today proved to be different. At one point as I was riding, I saw a penny on the ground, then a dime right near it, and then as i was going along, I found 10 more pennies, all within about 15 feet. Later in the day I also found another penny, a dime and then a few more miles down the road a Luney! I thought that it was pretty funny that I found $1.32 in one day! After we had ridden 53 miles total, we stopped at a rest area to have a cookie break. At that point I was pretty tired, my butt hurt from being in the saddle and I was ready to be done. Our original goal was to make it to Burns Lake today, which was still a little over 30 miles away still, but the wind made that not possible for us. We plugged along for another 21 miles to then next rest area where we planned to stop for the night It was a very long 21 miles for me and I was moving pretty slow since I was tired. As I counted the miles down, it seemed like it would just take us forever to get there. It got a little hillier and the wind was still pretty strong; I was definitely ready to be done riding for today. Somehow, we made it to the rest area. I was so happy to see the "rest Area 400m" sign! We made some spaghetti-o's for dinner snacked on some more cookies and looked at the river and RR tracks which were right near the rest area. While I washed dishes, Joey put up the tent and then we got all of our food put in the bear box( back of the bear proof garbage bins). It was really cold and windy, which we were glad for because it meant there were no mosquitoes. We relaxed in the tent for a while and listened to the radio. We were surprised to find music because normally we only get one station: CBC radio that is mostly just talk shows. But, we picked up 98.1CHFI, which was a "normal" radio station that played "popular" music. The strange thing was that all it talked about was Toronto, Niagara Falls Canada, etc. and said "Toronto's Favorite Station." Needless to say, we were quite confused as to how we were getting that station. We rode 74.79 miles today. Despite it being a lot flatter, it still took us forever because of that darn wind.
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