Trip VII.

____DAY 1. Most Memorable Sunrise: Febuary 1998, Mt. Sinai, Egypt. Waiting for dawn at the summit after climbing up in the moonlight. Looking eastwards in the chill air as the full moon sets in the west. Climbing down again before the sun gets too high and bakes the desert.

____Most Memorable Sunset: July 2005, Finsterra, Galicia. Sitting on the most western beach in Europe after cycling across northern Spain on "El Camino". Just as the sun dipped to kiss the sea, a school of dolphins chased a shoal of fish into the shallow waters of the bay. Golden flashes off silver.
____Longest Sunsets: Heading westwards at sixty miles per hour on the flat prairie landscape sunsets last seemingly forever. I don't know what speed you need to travel to keep the sun up in the sky. The Trans-Canada Highway and the Yellowhead Route are the backdrop to an ever-changing display of purples, reds, pinks, yellows and golds.
I roll into Carrot River long after sunset, finding a place on the forecourt of my delivery point.
____DAY 2. Carrot River is a lot livelier than I expect, a constant stream of B-train grain trucks trundle in and out of town. The Crossroads Family Restaurant is busy from day-break, the guys from the Viterra grain -handling terminal say they have sold eighty grain bins this year. I have 17 for them today. Farmers are buying grain bins so that they can store grain on the farm and sell it as and when they think they will get the best price. Before, they shipped the grain straight to the local elevator as soon as it was harvested and just got the going rate from the people like Viterra. From Carrot River reload instructions send me to Glaslyn, also in Saskatchewan, but 300 kilometres to the west, lumber back to Winnipeg. This is going to be a short'un. The lumber yard is a regular reload address and it's a surprise to find "Mr. Grumpy", the regular forklift-driver is no longer there. His replacement is a much more pleasant person but he lacks the forklift skills of his predessor, pushing the load straight on one side results in it going skew-whiff on the other. I leave with it looking far from perfect after telling him it was "great".
____DAY 3. From Saskatoon to Winnipeg is a regular days work, but with radio reports talking of temperatures dropping to --26 degrees C, I push on to Steinbach and a night in my own bed, plus I can plug the trucks engine oil heater into the electric and be assured of the motor starting in the morning.

____DAY 4. Lumber delivered and a reload of trellis for Ohio. When the full assignment comes through I find it's a tarp load, the load is scheduled for delivery on Friday but with tarping and customs to do, not to mention over 1000 miles, I can't see it happening and send in an ETA for Monday morning. A two day break, now thats something I don't see very often.