Day 32 — Monday, July 21

Terrace Bay to West of Marathon — 78 km
This was one of our shortest days of the entire trip, which incidentally was the worst. Things started off okay as we took a short drive from the campground to check out some falls that weren’t too bad. We then headed on our way and immediately realized we had a headwind. Again.

My knee was hurting more today. My left one in particular. It worsened to the point that I had to put my brace back on. I didn’t wear my brace for the last couple days as it felt the same without it. I’m not even sure if it does much, but it made me feel good. But before long, I had to take a couple longer breaks to stretch out. My knee cap was killing me. We kept moving though.

Within five minutes of one of our stops, we saw a baby bear crossing the road right in front of Vanessa and I. It was awesome. I pointed it out to Vanessa, and as I was about to take a picture of it, a half-ton truck drove by and hit it. It happened no more than 15 feet in front of us. We couldn’t believe it. We slowed down, and as much as we wanted to help the little guy, it didn’t look good, and there’s little doubt it’s mother wasn’t far away. Unfortunately there wasn’t much we could do.

We met up with Kelly about 30 minutes later and told him what happened. My knee was still hurting but it wasn’t too much further into Marathon. We were about 20 km away. No problem. I could still cycle.

I was riding up one of dozens of hills and I noticed a billboard midway up. I started reading it and halfway through it felt like my kneecap exploded. “AHHHH!” There was EXTREME pain at the front and back of my left knee. I had to stop and I nearly fell over. Luckily there was a fence to keep me from falling down off the edge of the road.

I couldn’t believe the pain. It felt like a needle was pushed right through my knee cap and out the other side. It was definitely worse than in B.C. I sat on the fence and knew I was done. I am done. I couldn’t bend my leg or extend it. After icing it for a few minutes, Vanessa wrapped it and I climbed in the van.

A few days ago when I felt some pain I told Vanessa “It hurts, but I don’t know when to stop. I can’t stop.” Today, my knee made that decision for me. I was put out of my misery. It wasn’t as difficult to accept this time as it was in B.C. because riding was no longer enjoyable.

Kelly was ahead of us so Vanessa rode ahead and met him at a gas station, where Allan and I followed. We ate a truck stop and had an extremely overpriced meal and then took off for the hospital. Kelly wanted to get something on his neck looked at and we convinced Vanessa to get some sort of mysterious ailment checked out.

So there we were, all three of us in the waiting room at the hospital in Marathon. After doing some minor surgery on Vanesssa, the doctor saw me. I was not expecting good news. I still couldn’t extend it, let alone put weight on it.

I gave him the low-down on what had been going on the last couple months and he did some tests and examined my knee. He was certain there was no structural damage to the knee and no reason why I couldn't be back to 100% one day. I was in a lot of pain, but so relieved. As expected, he said I couldn’t continue riding for a while, and I agreed.

He said that if he knew of a way to take the pain away, he wouldn’t do it because chances are I’d get back on the bike and end up doing something more permanent to it. Today was Day 1 of rehabilitating my knee for when I complete my ride across Canada. Whenever that will be.

While we were in the waiting room, Allan was driving out to a campsite for us. He found one and set up our tents for everyone. Sweet! It turns out that Allan nearly hit a bear himself while driving out there. It about 11 p.m. at this time, and midnight by the time we got out of the hospital. We were there for about three hours.

We went to Mac’s and bought some snacks and then headed for the campground where we stayed in site #13.