Day 3 Tuesday April 28th Carberry MB - Brandon MB

Soooo today was Day 3 of our Grand Bike ride and we only had a short ride today to do from Carberry to Brandon Manitoba which is nice because yesterday we were feeling the wear and tear on our knees and at points couldn't walk properly :S Despite all this we got to enjoy a lovely breakfast of overeasy eggs with avocado and cherry tomatoes and even a nice protein shake that Henry (the Rev.) made for us! Once we finished off breakfast and did some dishes, Henry made a few calls and found us a place to stay in Brandon for tonight! We are sooo soo soo thankful for all the help Henry gave us. He really was a blessing. Henry even saw us off down the road on our way back to the highway. Which we have to admit was pretty discouraging as our aches and pains from the day before seemed to be heightened but after we had biked a few kilometers we started to get into a good rhythm and were feeling much better.

The 20 or so kilometers just getting out of Carberry were actually really nice! There was some coverage from the trees around so the wind wasn't too bad and we started to figure out some good ways to minimize the pain. We also discovered that once we had gotten over our fear of the huge semi's that passed us that they actually provide a wonderful momentary tail wind ... or at least a momentary break from the head wind! We also have discovered over the past few days that there are a bunch of bike lovers travelling the number 1 highway! We have gotten several friendly honks and waves from passersby and even have passed a few cyclists heading the other direction (which we secretly wanted to shake our fists at because they had the tail wind). Anyway ... we finally made it to the Brandon exit after only 3 hours of biking (as opposed to our 7.5 hour trip the day before) only to encounter the only hills in Manitoba which unlike other provinces (like BC) only go UP! There is no down grrr! They did NOT feel good on the knees ... but after a short stop at a gas station and some lovely coffee we finally got the courage to start up our biking again to find the Rev Jim's house. Unfortunately we got a little bit lost and managed to go past one of the turns we had to make by about 8 blocks ... not fun ... but in the end found the house anyway. Upon arrival we figured out that no one was home! So we decided to go on a walking mission to find some knee braces and Traumeel. Sooooo we went on a 2 hour long walking adventure around Brandon and finally found our knee braces and Traumeel which ended up being only a few blocks from where we were staying! LOL ... oh well. The walk seemed to do some good for our knees as we have found that we haven't been able to do much for excercise besides our incessant biking.

Part way back to the house Jim pulled up beside us in his car and had a large vegetarian pizza and a large hawaiian pizza in the car for us! So very exciting! So we have really enjoyed our night so far here in Brandon getting to know Jim, his lovely wife Jackie and their daughter Christie. And are really looking forward to tomorrow where we are supposedly going to have a 20km TAILWIND! Which is going to be very handy for our 140km trek tomorrow. Anyway it is past our bedtimes and we hope to update you soon! Thanks so much for all your support and prayer! Please please please pray for our knees and for the tail wind!

Sachi and Melanie

ps. if you would like to track us you can visit our sweet awesome GPS tracking site at this link

https://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=1Xbl6cX2RxnWS4yS0HrYQIgOJTFaJcFaD
the password is : campcolumbia