Day 31: That's better

I often complain about the weather - too sunny, too hot, too cold, too rainy. Well today was a goldilocks day! A cool breeze and a warm sun behind a thin veil of cloud. And I had a mix of headwinds and tailwinds, which I can't really complain about.

The views were beautiful today - I could actually see the lake and the mountains instead of jut the rain! I saw a huge lady moose stood in the trees by the road watching me ride by. And a curious musk rat sat on a rock sniffing the air at me instead of scurrying into his burrow.

The calm of the day has allowed my brain cogs to turn and I have been wondering about the world around me. It doesn't look like Lake Superior is tidal, but how can it not be? What is that weird bird that looks like a heron mixed with a rhea? What are the strange black bits in some of the trees? And what is that song I have stuck in my head that I only know a tiny bit of?

Google assures me that Lake Superior is not tidal. I still don't know why. But it does have a phenomenon called "seiche" (a French word that means "to sway back and forth") that can cause water level to rise or fall by as much as a foot. This happens when water piles up on one side of the lake because of wind or high barometric pressure and then shifts back to the other side.

The bird was an egret with its head feathers fluffed out.

The black things in the trees are caused by black knot fungus, which infects trees and kills them.

The song is John Mayer's "Gravity", since all those hills were trying to halt my progress.

So there we go. Another 100km bite the dust and I'm spending the night in the crappy little run-down town of Schreiber. But I did get to chat some German with an Austrian shopkeeper.