Left Minot, ND at 0900 in preparation of a long day. It was raining lightly but elected not to put on rain suit, thought I could drive out of it, which I did.

Crossed the border in Portal, SK. With a name like Portal I was expecting a Particle Accelerator Transporter or similar, but was disappointed. They did have Duty Free however!

I was having a nice chat with the Customs guy, he asked where I’d been and I said; Washington, DC. Click, his demeanor immediately changed and he became quite curt. He consulted his large wall map and questioned me why I chose to cross the border in Saskratchmybum, if I had been in Washington.

I politely offered that he may be confusing Washington state, with Washington city, especially as I could see he was looking at the far left of his very large wall map. He shot back that he was not confused about anything. Uh-oh!!

I offered, again politely, a short lesson is US geography and once his finger traced a line across the country to the far right, my choice of border crossing made sense to him and his demeanor changed back to polite. I was welcomed back to the country and allowed to proceed. They should test those guys for mood swings, or take them off the Halcyons!

I was headed up Hwy 39, which is a good road when you are headed West & North because it is a diagonal, then it connects to 11 and the 16 all running at a 45 degree angle in both desired directions. I had met a guy from Saskatoon in a rest stop a few days earlier in South Dakota and he told me that a bridge was out on 39 due to the flooding. In Estevan there were signs directing a 2 highway detour around that section of 39 and going to Weyburn. I don’t recall the highway numbers but I elected to take 2 different routes that also went to the same place.

One of those roads was highway 18 which was the worst highway I have ever been on with the exception of the James Dalton in northern Alaska. The pavement was shattered, broken and had numerous sections of gravel and huge frost heaves. I was driving in the full tuck position, basically laying on my gas tank when I hit 2 very large heaves about 20 feet apart. The first one bounced me straight up in the air off the tank, the bike recovered then hit the second one and bounced up to meet me as I was coming down! No loss of control, but it was like getting crosschecked or tackled, knocked the wind out of me. Took me about an hour to drive 60 km, prolly took a few years life span off both me and the Rocket.

Finally got the Weyburn and to put on my rain suit for 2 hours in the wet, but got back to sunshine just outside of Saskatoon. Put the hammer down and reached Lloydminster just as the sun was setting @ 2100. 12 hours in the saddle to do 950 km. Less than 250km from home. Briefly toyed with the idea of just going for it, but that is a long day already!

Hooked up with a former colleague in Lloyd for some medicinal R&C’s and was in bed by 0200.

Didn’t shoot any post worthy multimedia during the day as it was a full bore mileage day.