Day 4 - Powder King to Mackenzie - 75 km

OK - seriously - can you believe this weather???

Woke up to crystal clear blue sky and although the air was 'very' crisp - it promised to be a another great day! Thank goodness for the clear night skies as we wouldn't have been able to enjoy the 'full moon' to its full advantage! We felt the bite of the Northern air this morning and suited up appropriately with extra shirts, jackets, toques, gloves and leg warmers. Marissa didn't have any leg warmers but not to worry - she is so tiny that someone elses arm warmers fit her legs!!!

Wow - was it fun to head mostly downhill from the summit today! Made for some fast pace times and an on time schedule into Mackenzie. The winds were very cool today and a lot of us didn't shed those extra layers till we were at our destination. BBQ lunch and homemade goodies were served by detachment staff and family before we headed off to do two school visits. This was by far the funniest part of the day as we were interviewed by some grade school children about the bike ride. Some kids were pretty young so we kind of interviewed them instead and just got to know each other. The kids had 3 questions to ask:

1. How long have you been riding your bike?
2. What did you do to train for this ride?
3. What made you want to participate in the Cops for Cancer ride?

We compared notes later and the best reaction to question 1 was from Pat's student who's eyes popped out of his head when He found out Pat had been riding his bike for 50 years!! Other memorable comments "I though you would be sweatier" and "yeah - I trained for like a 1000m ride to my grandma's house and it took me like 7 hours"

We followed that up with a visit to the high school and a really fun all out water fight war with some of the high school students in the football field after class was dismissed! Now - ask yourself - when was the last time you did that? It was super fun - we were completely out gunned as we only had buckets and they had super soakers but skill and experience shone through and we all came out equally wet! Fun way to connect with the youth and see their community spirit. And even though Josh M kinda avoided the spray and sold out a couple of his teammates he got the last bucket full of the day right in the face - karma karma karma Josh!

We had a super lasagna supper at the Legion, followed by some fun camaraderie at the Elks hall which included some creative head shaving and fund raising! Our good buddy Doug (ambulance driver) is such a good sport and for the second year in a row he got his eyebrows shaved off and a funny tripe mohawk - last year he did it for free but he demanded money this year and wouldn't do it for less than $140 - there was over $200 in the hat in less than 30 seconds!

Amazing community - well done Rick!