People who have toured with me understand that I prefer to sleep outdoors and as far away from humans as possible. “What about wild animals?” one might ask, to which I say that the only “wild” animals of which I’m generally afraid are the savages that dump sodas on my tent while I’m sleeping and throw Slurpees and Frosties at me from their speeding vehicles while passing me at dangerously close distances. Metamorphosis has been a recurring theme with this undertaking and it seems I may be undergoing a growth change in the direction of giving humans another chance. It all started in “Canada’s gateway to the west,” Thunder Bay, Ontario.

Allow me to back up a little to my northern crossing of Ontario and its accompanying isolation and albeit beautiful, but physically challenging terrain and environment. The whole time I’m riding “over the top” on highway 11 I’m thinking, “just a little farther to the first town on the other side (Longlac) and I’ll be back in civilization with clear drinking water and a place to replenish my dwindling grocery supply. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Here is a little advice to American travelers who intend on visiting northern Ontario (all three of you- ha ha). Your bank card won’t work. Canada uses a different system to process debit card transactions and in many remote areas the businesses have no means to process credit card purchases. It’s still about 180 miles to Thunder Bay when I’m figuring this out so a “real” city is starting to look more and more like an oasis to me. It actually is funny in retrospect but you can imagine that at the time I didn’t appreciate the irony of the fact that my bank is Toronto Dominion, my card has the word “DEBIT” printed across the front, and it still doesn’t work. My readers should also excuse me from not having agreed with the grocery store cashier’s assessment of the situation, which was, “hmmm…that’s funny.” Yeah, consternation and starvation at the same time- that’s hilarious! At my next camping stop, a little rest area outside Macleod, an ornery, 200-pound adolescent (and wicked retah-ded) black bear kept me up for two hours while he tried in vain to pry open a permanently mounted, bear-proof garbage recepticle. Maybe it was better after all that I was running low on food.

Three black bears and three days later I made it to the fabled bay of thunder and found myself comfortably settled in at my host Annie’s house and chit-chatting with another cyclist named Marie while dinner was being prepared. Annie cooked up an absolutely amazing and visually appealing meal of which I couldn’t partake (because it was a pasta dish) but I got some other food in me belly and had a great time hanging out that first evening… and the second… and the third. We even accosted a random Japanese cycling tourer at Tim Horton’s and convinced him he had to join us at Annie’s home for wayward travelers. I was having a blast in town and it seemed completely natural when I basically moved in next door with Annie’s neighbor, Gary, with whom I had already become friends.

I ended up spending a week in Thunder Bay, cooking, hanging with my new peeps, eating ice cream, partying with Ojibwe natives, and learning about everything from exploring Nepal to timber framing houses in the wilderness of Ontario. On one day I spoke French with a girl from the Francophone Association of Northwestern Ontario and the next day I spent an afternoon working on a mobile soup kitchen for the Salvation Army. I was having the time of my life but all that sleeping indoors and drinking beverages colder than ambient temperature was making me soft; I figured I had to either get back on the road or get a job and an apartment. It wasn’t a happy parting but I did ride away from the experience with renewed enthusiasm for commingling with my fellow homo sapiens while traveling.

…don’t get me wrong- I still love hanging with wild critters!

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