It was a thunderous kind of day for us, right back to last night. We were trying to sleep in our sauna/tent, but the heat made it hard to breathe or move, let alone fall into REM. Finally around midnight a thunderstorm blew in to our favour and cut the humidity by unleashing a torrent of rain. It was enough to allow a light misting into the tent. We basked in the cooling effect and marveled at the lightening show.
Then today in the middle of our hot ride to Espanola, we were stranded in Spanish for three hours due to a sudden and wild storm that literally stopped traffic. We took refuge under a motel awning and watched the sky unleash fury on the little town. When the rain lessened we continued onward but the storm was moving faster than our bicycles and caught up to us a few kilometres down the road. Combined with the rough shoulder and heavy traffic, this quickly convinced us to cut our ride short and set up in Massey for the night. In the end it works out to be a better split for tomorrow, which otherwise would have been a very short ride to Little Current, where we have a day-off. We've added in all of our extra rest and half days that need to be taken before Toronto so our pacing for the coming week is very relaxed!
Before signing off I'd like to wish our friends from last night a safe and fun journey. Yesterday we were camped next to Lori, Mary, and Mike from Arizona. They're driving around the great lakes on their way to upstate New York to visit Mary's brother. They don't see much rain at home but they survived the storm in good shape. Mary entertained us during breakfast and we bonded over our shared loathing for mosquitoes. As another thing impeding sleep, I thought I'd share a little tip for anyone else with the same plight. I've always been allergic to mosquito bites (more so than most people), so the itching is not just annoying but can be pretty violent. Afterbite doesn't help at all so I had been up scratching and scarring through the nights. Finally, Alex came up with the idea to try antihistamine: genius! Since taking them my itch intensity has downgraded from ferocious to resistible and I'm a much happier camper. I'm not usually one to drug-push but if venomous bites are preventing you from sleeping or enjoying life activities it might be worth a try. Of course the pills do nothing to decrease the number of bugs that bite you, we're still working on a solution to that one.
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