Day 14 out of Vancouver, 13 days of riding and 1448 k behind us. And our first experince with the "normal prairie tailwinds". They were not strong but it was quite pleasant to leave Taber doing about 27 to 30 kph rather than 14 to 21 kph into headwinds of the past 2 days. Once again we were layered but began to shed as the day progressed. We never set our rain jackets aside but did get to open pit-zips and front-zips for long periods. The day warmed and it promised nicer weather ahead but soon towering storm cells with obvious rainfall under them became visible on the horizon and we were headed into them. We were overtaken by a lady dentist from Taber who was peddling to her weekly dental clinic in Bow Island - about a 54 k commute. Her staff would come later in their cars. Nice commute. The priairie is really flat at this point and it was a pleasant ride as we neared the first big cell. We thought it would miss us and were wrong so we quickly got our rain covers over the paniers and luckily rode through the very edge of the rain fall. It was cold but brief and we thought there was ice in some of the drops. We stoppped for lunch in Seven Persons and when we came out of the restaurant, there were storm cells across the entire horizon in our path. We had only a few kilometers to go to Medicine Hat so pressed on hoping to get there before passing into a storm. We got in just in time. After a quick visit to the Info Centre, we headed off to a campground and almost got there. The rain started full force and we quickly sought shelter in an A&W where we had coffee, wrote postcards and waited out the storm which included thunder and lightning, some ice crystals in the large rain drops. It was a real deluge that created big pools of water quickly and large runoff streams on the street. We decided that camping was poor option and once again sought a nearby hotel.
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