Milestones

Hello all!

Garrett here, at the Prairie's Edge community in eastern Manitoba.  We arrived on the evening of the 17th: a huge milestone for us, as Prairie's Edge is our very first official sustainability model of the tour, and we're now able to dig into this project in a big way: learning and documenting how everyday people have made exceptional strides towards creating a sustainable society.

During our next few days here, we'll be learning everything we can about a few of the most interesting and instructive technologies, skills, practices, and ideas being employed here.  This information will take a little while to organize, and then it will be placed in the presently-still-quite-under-construction Garden section of our website.

Another milestone: Arriving in Manitoba brought me a great deal of personal satisfaction.  Having cycled over 2000 km through Ontario, we were greeted in Manitoba by a small, unobtrusive sign declaring the distance to Saskatchewan as less than 500 km.  Although this tour is about a great deal more than reaching destinations simply for their own sakes, our next milestone seems a whole lot more readily attainable than the Manitoba border was.  From here on, the distances between borders -- and, much more significantly, between sustainability models -- are a great deal shorter than our initial push through Ontario.  The goal throughout Ontario was to get over there, and just as there becomes here in a sudden but subtle transition only evident in retrospect, so too has the project become subtly and suddenly much more active, exciting, and promising.

Passing these milestones, however, posed unexpected personal challenges.  Within a few dozen kilometres before reaching the Manitoba border, I left my bike at the side of the Trans-Canada to retreat into the forest for a pee.  Upon re-emerging, I saw my mount unsteadily pirouetting on its kickstand, bullied by the strong cold winds we've been riding against.  I ran to grab the bike before it toppled (it's a frustrating affair when a fully-loaded bike falls, as the brakes can be put out of alignment and may require an immediate and time-consuming tune-up) but I fell in the rocky roadside ditch and cut up my left knee.

The cuts themselves were nothing gruesome, but the swelling caused a steady ache under and around the knee cap.  Kristi tended to my injury with great care and skill, and I was back on my bike after a short rest.  Fortunately, riding proved a fair bit less painful than walking, likely due in part to my right leg putting in most of the pedaling effort.  This compensation proved problematic the following day, when my right knee also began to ache from overuse.  By the evening both knees were protesting my determination to reach Prairie's Edge.  Turning off of Highway 44 (the original Trans-Canada in eastern Manitoba, now blissfully vacant of traffic), we slogged along a gravel road that stretched towards the horizon and teased us with the constant promise of a destination.  The heavy hungries gnawed at our bellies in advance of dinner time, but my senses were sated by the sight and sound of a flock of cranes: several dozen gliding silhouettes chattered across the linear grass-and-forest landscape.  Fifteen minutes later, and we had arrived!

Speaking of the heavy hungries, I've had no lunch, so I'll end off here, but I have some more post ideas that I hope to get down in the next few days.