June Flatlander
Ride date: June 29
Permanent #18, 203 km, 10h59
by Karen Smith

It was hard for me to fit in a 200 in June.
Early in the month, my niece was due to give birth and I was “on-call” to help with their 18 month old, if Katey went into labour. So I didn’t plan to ride.
Then soon after the baby was born, I caught a cold that I just couldn’t shake.
So finally, on June 29, I felt good enough to ride. Another one of those “end of the month” rides….

I rode solo.
I started at 0639 hrs in 13 degrees. It warmed up to 24 and was quite humid.
It actually rained on me late in the ride on both Hope River and Camp River roads. It rained for about an hour, but it was very light.
Not much wind.

I had one flat due to a big, thick roofing nail. Grrrrr! It took a while to change my tire.

It was the Saturday of the long weekend and most of my ride had extremely light traffic except for a couple of spots where my route was near Highway 1.
The first place was along 56 Ave near 264. The second was on South Parallel.
In both of these locations, Hwy 1 eastbound was completely plugged and a lot of drivers diverted onto the road I was riding. : (
South Parallel was particularly uncomfortable with heavy traffic in both directions at high speeds. Several times vehicles passed me very closely with oncoming traffic.
And many times the vehicles were large.

I heard some of your ride out of Christina Lake from Gary.
Sounded really cold! I think you all made the right decision. There will be other opportunities…
Gary said that Bob will probably do a write-up. I will look forward to reading that.

: )
Karen

July 11, 2019