You know you are in the prairies when:

1) there is blue sky as far as the eye can see
2) you realize that the deer feeding near the side of the road have no place to hide or take shelter (where exactly do they go?)
3) you see the headlights of cars coming up behind you, but it takes another 45k before they actually pass you
4) the evening sky turns pink and travels off into the horizon, which goes on and on and on and on
5) people get excited to see a Harley pull up to the gas pump!

As you can tell, we are well into the prairies and we today find ourselves in Regina.  It’s really cool here, in both ways…temperature wise and also because Regina is a small town with benefits.  It’s big enough here to have every comfort of larger cities, but small enough that people still seem to care.  Morning traffic means a 15-20 minute commute across town and yes there are lots of traffic lights as they don’t need major highways and bridges to connect suburbs to the downtown.  It’s beautiful here and also extremely cold!  But, Glen and I are braving the weather and choosing to ride the bike in spite of it all!  We have come up with a new and inventive way to keep our hands warm by putting snowmobile gloves over the top of our leather riding gloves.  It won’t work for rain and we will have a chance tomorrow to see if it holds up in snow as the forecast for Saskatoon calls for it….the first on this trip!

This morning we headed out to Regina University where we hugged lots of students and handed out pamphlets on ALS.  It’s always incredible to talk with students and inform them about the disease as they genuinely seem to care.  I hope that we have done our jobs and helped the younger generation become more aware about ALS and how it affects those who suffer from it. 

We had a great day, complete with lots of media.  An ALS patient, Dennis, and his wife came out to meet us as well.  They had heard about our trip from there son, who lives in Vancouver and went to VFS (Vancouver Film School) and decided to make the drive to see us.  Dennis is 55 and although he walks with canes, he is doing reasonably well.  He is still working and trying to keep he daily routine as much as possible.  The hardest thing was hearing about how he and his wife are a team…they do everything together from paddling to hiking to solving problems and just plain old living.  For Dennis, the thought of his wife having to make her way in this world alone was more than he could bear.  It also made me think of how I might react in the same situation.  How hard it must be to know you are leaving this world and your loved ones alone.  How hard it must be to know you are losing your loved one to a terrible disease that has no cure and kills 100% of its victims.  How hard it must be to live with something where there is no hope of getting better (or even staying the same), you always get worse until death.  How hard it must be to stay positive each day…and yet they all do!  It’s truly incredible.  

For today I will put all of this aside and just be thankful that Dennis came out to say hello.  He believes that what we are doing is a great thing and for tonight, I am going to focus only on that…the belief in this project and that it is for the greater good.  

-jeannie

Last Modified : October 11th, 2007 Filed under : On Location Navigate : Previous post / Next post