Day 32: I woke plenty early today, at 6:45. I think this has to do with the fact that we just gained an hour by crossing a time zone. When we got packed and back to the highway, we found another tailwind softly caressing our backs. I think this is marvelous and not at all like the days and days of headwinds that I had expected. Every day with a tailwind we treat as though it's our last, so today we rode quick and fast to Wadena, lunched, and decided to make a century of it! (That is, decided to ride 100 miles or 161km -- a so called "century ride" and somewhat the cycling equivalent of running a marathon.) There isn't much more to say for this day. Between starting and finishing our ride, our feet touched the ground merely three times. We're getting used to long rides without breaks. I ate a lot of granola bars. In fact, I ate twelve granola bars. Hmm... The last two were after dinner, because Ian was goading me about how many granola bars I ate. The last one was after climbing into the tent because I was honestly and surprisingly still hungry. In the morning I decided I would record what I ate for the day along with the nutritional information, to get an idea of how much fat, carbs, and protein I was consuming. Here's how it looks:

• Breakfast: 1/2 bag maple almond cereal; 3/4L Vanilla soy milk with extra protein powder added; two granola bars.
• Morning snack on the bike: 2 granola bars; 1 banana
• Lunch: 1 pear; 1 bagel, each half making an open sandwich with salmon and marble cheese; just over two cups of autmn trail mix (about half dried fruit, half nuts), another half bagel with natural peanut butter and raspberry jam, one granola bar.
• Afternoon snack, mostly eaten while biking: 1 banana, 2 apples, 2/3 cup autumn trail mix, 4 granola bars
• Dinner: 340g quick cooking brown rice; 1/2 onion; 1/2 broccoli; 3.5 white mushrooms; 1/2 can chick peas; 1/2 can tuna; 1/2 can condensed cream of potato
• "Dessert": 2 granola bars
• Still hungry: 1 granola bar.

And the totals:

	Fat	Saturated Fat	Carbs	Sugars	Protein	Calories
Breakfast	42	6	256	111	66	1690
Morning Snacks	18	2	89	38	9	545
Lunch	122	40	378	202	102	2997
Afternoon Snacks	51	11	258	142	24	1535
Dinner + "desserts"	54	5	259	44	61	1601
Total	287	64	1240	537	262	8368

I knew I ate a lot of calories, but eight thousand surprised even me! I expected something around five thousand, on a regular day. I suppose it makes sense that I ate more today, as we did ride a century. Michael Phelps, watch out!

So, we finished our day just before Humboldt, tucking ourselves against the edge of a forest on a farmer's field, out of sight of the highway and neighbouring farm houses. This strategy works really well, we've found.

(I realize that Google Maps says we didn't quite do a century ride, but with all the extra riding in circles looking for places to eat and such, it certainly was a century!)

Day 33: We rode quickly into Humboldt and found the local IGA. Just before arriving I got a tiny rock stuck between my gearset and the plastic wheel behind them, and so when I would coast, it would grind between these things making this awful noise. I'm pretty protective of my bike, so I turned it upside down outside the IGA and started poking around, looking for this small rock. The manager noticed me and asked if I needed any help, offering to drive me and my bike to his brother's nearby bicycle store. Since it's just a little rock, naturally I'd rather poke at it myself, but we got talking anyways. I've come to realize that once a person is friendly towards you, and if they have the capacity to help you, they probably will, and moreover, they will probably make the offer. So I asked him if there was an internet cafe nearby to check our email, for we'd already tried at the library; he offered to let me use his laptop and internet in the store. On Day 10 I posted a quote by Tolstoy ("...with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them..."). I'm finding more truth in this as I go, and that makes me happy. Ironically, while the IGA manager, Dave, was letting me use his internet to check for a warm showers host in Saskatoon, Ian swipped a roll of toilet paper from the IGA bathroom, as our stock roll was almost out. Heh. Thank you, Dave and the Humboldt IGA! You were better to us than you know.

The ride to Saskatoon showed us our first Saskatchewan hills, and they weren't small. They went on and on, relentlessly. When we stopped for lunch, Ian took a photo as proof that they existed. But they were quite pretty, with their Euclidean geometric farms stretched over their non-Euclidean surface. In Saskatoon we called Kip and Karen, our warm showers hosts, and told them that we made it there a day early. No problem! After chugging some milk infused with protein powder outside of a Mac's (and wearing sunglasses while doing so), we met Kip and Karen at their house. As we were bringing our bikes around the side of the house, Ian told me that they looked very familiar. A while later, Karen recognized Ian to be a friend they'd met in Cuba, a year and a half ago! Is it a small world after all? One warm precious beautiful shower later, I met Rosie from Cornwall England, who is Couch Surfing with Kip and Karen for a few days. We all quickly moved towards Kip's enormous CD and LP collection. I had already started to like these three people, but when Kip told me that he'd seen Bruce Cockburn live five times, I knew I was in the right place! I left my iPod behind to focus more on bicycling and nature, so to find myself immersed in a room of music was immensely pleasurable. From Bruce Cockburn, Kip recommended John Martyn and Richard Thompson to me; from Bobby McFerrin, he recommended Sheila Chandra. We also listened to some solo cello by David Darling (album: Dark Wood) which were amazing. I'm very excited to get back to music. Kip and Karen eat organic (YAY!) and vegetarian (YAAAAY!!!). Kip cooked everyone a delicious tofu curry, accompanied by dongs (beans and peanuts in sticky rice wrapped in bamboo leaves). We ate, then listened to more music and had wonderful conversation for a few hours until we slept. I felt very welcome in their home and the good connection made them feel like old friends.

Day 34: A rest day for us, and Karen's birthday! Rosie, Karen, and Karen's friend Nicole went to a salt lake nearby (apparently more salty than the Red Sea), while Ian and I did some grocery shopping, as well as some serious shopping at a bakery. (Date squares are good.) And we went to the organic foods store where Kip and Karen are members, and finally got some more TVP and chia seeds! We spent the rest of the day hanging out, working hard to update this blog (and coming to the tough realization that we'd passed Manitoba while the blog still said we were in Thunder Bay). Though distracted by conversation and dinner and a group tour on bicycles with Kip and Karen's dog Blue, we managed to get two posts out. I think when we get to Edmonton, we'll take two days off and get caught up for real. It's hard work! This was a wonderful rest day, thanks to Kip and Karen's loveliness, and made twice better by Rosie's company.