The forecast today is for cold, wind, and rain. I woke up at 5:00 am and the rain hadn’t started, so I raced to get dressed and packed up. The wind throughout the night had kept the tent dry, and I wanted to be able to put up a dry tent tonight. Dry tents are good for morale.
I was camped at the edge of a field in the soil on the west side of some trees. If it rained, I would be standing in mud in no time. The sky was ominous, so I hurried to tear down the tent. It was 5:30 when I made my way to the highway and just as I turned the stroller into the wind, the rain came. It might have been 8 degrees C, but the 18 km/hour wind and rain made for a very cold start to the day. My hands were freezing, so I had to go digging for the waterproof gloves I bought back in New Brunswick and never thought I’d need again on this trip. But my hands were so cold that I couldn’t get them on. So, I wore my water-absorbing gloves instead.
I was walking through the town of Portage la Prairie before anything was open. It was an eerie quiet, with only the occasional car along a wide, empty main street. The rain had subsided to a drizzle when the familiar Tim Hortons sign revealed itself, a little oasis on this day. I was reminded of an old military slogan: “We do more before breakfast than most people do all day.” It felt good to be productive early in the day.
After breakfast, it began raining harder again, a virtual downpour. I was bundled up as much as I could be. Three layers on top and two on the bottom. The outer layer was my rain gear. I had barely left the Timmy’s parking lot when I noticed that one of the stroller tires was flat. Well, not exactly flat, but very, very soft.
The first place I could find that was mostly out of the rain was under an overhang at a Co-op store. There, I dug out my kit bag and grabbed my spare tube and my air pump. I thought I might just try to pump some air into the flat tire first to see if that would work. After all, I have never changed an inner tube on a wheel. Not once in my whole life. And I didn’t want my first time to be in the freezing rain.
I attempted to remove the cap from the tube, but I couldn’t unscrew it. My hands were numb with cold. I tried with both hands and had no luck. After a number of frustrating attempts, with my body shivering from the cold and the wind knocking me about, I looked up at the sky and said, “Does every little thing have to be so damned difficult? Can’t something be easy for a change?”
I removed the tire completely from the stroller and tried to get a better angle on the cap, but I still couldn’t unscrew it. Finally, I grabbed one of my waterproof gloves, wrapped one of the fingers of the glove around the cap, and then squeezing my forefinger and thumb together with both hands, I was finally able to loosen it. I pumped the tire up with air, and it’s held so far all day. Still, when I passed Canadian Tire, I bought a second inner tube, just in case.
It was a miserable morning for walking, but while my body went on auto-pilot, suffering the wind, rain, and cold, my mind was back in Guatemala, sitting in a hammock by the ocean, reading my Kindle, sipping banana smoothies, and eating slices of papaya. My body would rebel if it knew what my mind was doing.
It’s mid-afternoon now. The rain has stopped and I’m sitting in the wet grass leaning against a stop sign. The sign is jerking all over the place from the wind. Some pet dogs, minus their owners, have visited me. Cute little fellas, but shy for the camera.
