June 8th, 2017, Day 18,  Bassano Campground to a porta-potty on the side of the road between Tilley and Medicine Hat. 93 km

Charlie and I slept in a cement porta-potty last night. And we were so grateful for it!

How did that happen? Well, we packed up early yesterday morning to head the 156 km towards Medicine Hat. It was beautiful out; warm and dry. Our tent just needed a little shaking before we packed it up. Off we went, fresh and strong. I knew that getting to Medicine Hat would be a big stretch but I was ready to get as close to it as we could. The wind picked up around 9am, and it was directly in our faces. There’s nothing to stop a prairie wind. No trees, no shade. Again I wondered about the concept of sailing across the prairies. Sounds great, but so far for us, it hasn’t happened. The sun has been relentless. Despite using sunscreen with an SPF of 60 or 50, I am getting a weird splotchy tan. Most disturbing to me though is my nose, or more specifically the right side of my nose. It’s a deep dark brown. I look like a cartoon character with a big brown nose!

Around 10 or so km from Brooks, I heard a little bell behind me. Looking back, I saw a man  laden with panniers as well as a YAK trailer. Meet Guy, from Gatineau, Quebec. We talked about our plans, our journeys so far and then I asked him how his ass was. Not a typical day-to-day topic of conversation for most, I know, but it seems appropriate amongst cyclists. He said that he, too, was having pain and so far had used 3 different saddles, mailing them home when he found something else he wanted to try. He showed me the foam cover he had on top of his current saddle. I  looked at it with great envy. When we got to Brooks we went to Tim’s. He suggested I call Canadian Tire and see if they had seat covers. They did!!!! And now I have a much happier, not esthatically happy, but a much happier bum!

We said our goodbyes. He had another 107km to do to get to Med Hat. We weren’t going so far, and planned on either going to a campground or camping alongside the highway, if absolutely necessary.

Out of curiosity I googled weather for Med Hat and area. I really wanted to know what direction the wind would be blowing the next day. Severe thunderstorm watch! Oh wow; we were on severe thunderstorm watch.

We kept going and finally decided to stop at a road-side drive in bathroom. There was a winding road leading up the bathrooms and another area just for trucks. We had our makeshift dinner there, which was Stagg Chili, cold from the can, bagels and cut up peppers, tomato and cucumbers, We knew we would not be able to get much further, so we put up our tent, opting to place it on pavement as opposed to putting it over the prairie dog holes. In we went. It was stifling hot so we didn’t bother to unroll our sleeping bags, a very good decision as it turned out. Minutes after we went in, Charlie was asleep but I was just a tiny bit on edge. The tent was flapping around like crazy.

I was a bit nervous. The sky was black with long jagged streaks of lightening racing across  the sky, followed by resounding thunder. The wind picked up even more, the whole tent was being violently shaken and then the gusts threw Charlie up over and across me and we were both struggling to keep the tent and everything in it from disappearing into the night. We scrambled out, our clothing pulled and thrashed about our bodies. We grabbed what we could, and threw our bikes on top of our tent and everything else in the hopes that our things would be salvageable. Quickly we escaped to the bathroom, where we took turns sitting on the closed toilet lid as the storm continued its ravage. Eventually I sat between Charlies legs and he wrapped his arms around me. When things had settled just a bit Charlie braved the wilds and got our things. Note: Ortlieb bags are NOT waterproof. Every item we had, every stitch of clothing, everything was saturated! Fatigue eventually takes over and we ended up putting down our wet Thermarest pads  to try to sleep. It was gross, yeah, but we were both extremely grateful to find that cement toilet on that long stretch of highway. It was the only shelter available.