Day 28 — Thursday, July 17

Upsala to Thunder Bay — 143.8 km
Crossed into the Eastern Time Zone in mid-morning, just west of a town called Raith. Kelly rode with the Australian guy who is pretty quick for having to tow a trailer behind him. Meanwhile, Vanessa and I rode at about 20 km/hr as I was still nursing my knee, which has decided to act up whenever it feels like it.

I had to stretch frequently. Basically every 5 to 10 km. It really dragged down the day for Vanessa and I, but it was necessary. Otherwise, I couldn’t continue. The pain was throbbing in both knees.

After a few steep hills to climb, we rolled into Thunder Bay. As you can see in the photo, I was pumped. Particularly because I had rode my bike backwards the entire way there. We decided to take a route that would keep us north of the city, and would end at the Terry Fox Lookout. After biking around looking for the site, we decided to rack the bikes on the van and drive to it. Turned out we had to take the freeway anyway and bikes weren’t allowed on it.

It was such an interesting feeling when we walked towards the statue of Terry Fox. In my opinion, he’s one of the greatest Canadian heroes. I would say he’s the greatest, but I have to consider war veterans and what they did for this country. I would say that he is an inspiration to everyone who’s ever heard about him. It’s remarkable what he did . . . on one leg . . . with cancer.

From the statue we could see a fair bit of Thunder Bay, along with the Sleeping Giant, which is some land that resembles a giant lying on its back. The population of Thunder Bay is about 110,000 to 120,000 and is fairly spread out. It is actually quite a nice city. I’m glad we’re going to take a rest day here tomorrow.

Kelly phoned his dad’s cousin (who had sort of lost touch for the last 20 years or so) and his family invited us to stay with them for the next two nights. What a treat that was. We hung out with Bruce Kennedy, his wife Tracey, their son Phil, and Bruce’s mother, Irene. We had a fair bit of stories to share, and so did they as it turns out they had once been world champions in curling. Who knew? Bruce also won the Labatt Briar. Pretty sweet!