2 - Riding, Snow, and Beers

The day was a brisk one, with a high of only 9° Celsius and thick, overcast skies. The wind was light, but out of the northeast which was to our advantage as we opened the throttle towards Calgary, our planned pit stop for the night. You have a lot of time to think when making the journey from Saskatoon to anywhere else; the roads stretch on towards the horizon as you pass Rosetown, then Kindersley, Alsask, and so on. To break the monotony of a drive we had done countless times on our way to the mountains we detoured off the number 7 highway to one that was just as straight; the traffic was much lighter though, which made it more pleasant.

As we detoured, straight as an arrow and bundled up in all our layers, we were in chase of the winding roads of the Rockies to be had. We just had to get through this first cold, long day.

Our detour had an ulterior motive to just getting off the main road - we were in search of a small town called Dorothy that was mostly abandoned. Dorothy lay in the bottom of a valley just south of Drumheller, and as we passed through we could see there wasn’t a hell of a lot going on. I stopped beside a dilapidated grain elevator and Colin pulled up beside. We looked back over the highway and saw an old steel bridge leading to a dirt road up into the hills.

“I really want to go check out that road” I said, muffled by my helmet. Colin moved his finger around his GPS and decided it might actually be a shorter distance so off we went. Well, that dirt road turned to slick switchbacks climbing right into the snow-strewn hills we had seen from miles back. Calgary and the surrounding area had gotten a bunch of snow the last couple days, and it looked like we were in for more.

For the next forty minutes or so we fought the slick, loose, wet dirt and gravel with visors barely translucent, trying to make our way to a more travelled road. It was getting later than we had hoped to get into Calgary, so with a few more tank slappers and visor wipes we were on the Trans Canada heading west once more.

Josh came out to greet us in front of his apartment in downtown Calgary as we hobbled off our bikes. We had covered 620 km of mostly straight, cold distance today, and the sleet coming down was really getting on my nerves. As we unloaded the things we thought we’d want for the night I managed to lean the wrong way on Mitzi sending her to the ground hard. That’s drop number two for me today after an embarrassing drop at the Kindersley Co-op this arvo. I really need to add more preload to my rear shock.

We woke the next morning with the intention of heading to Fernie; the weather, however, had different plans for us. It had snowed all night and the city was chaos. We saw the heavy, wet snow take down trees from the warmth of Josh’s place, one of which took out the phone lines to the building. The power was out and there was a pretty constant sound of sirens echoing through the city. Let’s wait this one out for a day.

As Josh had gone to work, our buddy Wonger picked us up to go for lunch. Something Asian inspired, Colin had texted. Well, I ended up having the best Pho of my life thus far, including both soft tendons and tripe which were new to me.

Back at Josh's place I snapped a quick shot of a world map he had on the wall and with a little photoshop magic drew a rough route south.

That night brought on beers and pizza and eventually a hike up Nose Hill to overlook the city. And drink more beers, of course.