Journey Notes

What a difference a day makes! Actually just a couple of hours. Last night the wind howled and lightning lit up the sky. One of the trees in the Gull Lake Campground came down over night and they were cutting it up this morning. When I woke up, the wind was still at about 40 km/hr from the east. The weather forecast said that the wind would not abate but would switch to south and then south south west by mid morning. By about 10:30 it had turned around considerably so I headed out. I covered the 56 km distance to Swift Current in less than 2 hours. It was so nice to have a mostly tail wind again.

We ate lunch in Swift Current. Rochelle was going to do some shopping and I headed out to our destination for the day, the town of Herbert, 45 km further down the road. As it turned out, I beat Rochelle to Herbert but unfortunately our planned campground was not really ready for the season so we got on the internet to see what else was ahead. The little town of Morse was only about 15 km further down the road and it seemed to have a municipal campground. Turns out it is a nice, self serve campground with electricity, water, showers, etc for $20/night.

I love these municipal campgrounds that a lot of little towns have. They are cheap and usually very well maintained.

While we were in Herbert, we met another cross country cyclist from Duncan, BC named Dwight. At 4pm he was hoping that the tail winds would take him to Regina tonight. That is another 200 km of riding. I hope he makes it.

About an hour after setting up camp in Morse, a couple of women from Montreal, who are are also cycling across the country, set up camp right next to us.

Tomorrow's goal is Moose Jaw, 114 km east. I'm going to try to get an early start and if all goes well, maybe I'll get a little further.

I much prefer hills to wind. With a hill you at least know that there will be a top and you can freewheel down the other side. With wind, it's just a constant grind with gusts to make your life just that much more "interesting".

I think that today was the hardest day yet. While I only covered 80 km and there weren't many hills (but a lot more than I'd expected to see in Saskatchewan) the wind was relentless. For most of the day the wind was a direct headwind but it did shift to the south somewhat latter in the day. The weather was reporting 35-50 km/h for most of the day with gusts up to 70 km/h. I found myself at times going down hills and still having to work hard to keep any speed. I think that my average speed for the day was less than 16 km/h. Typically it's been more like 26 km/h.

I really seriously considered making today a rest day and hoping for better weather tomorrow. I wasn't really ready for a rest day, having only 3 riding days since my last rest day. I felt like I should keep moving forward, even if it wasn't as far as I'd have liked.

Unlike yesterday, I was ready for this wind. I set my expectations low and kept an even pace and energy output. At the end, with high cross winds and low energy, it was getting difficult to control the bike.

After recovering this evening, I added a little advertising for the trip on my bicycle. I don't know if anyone will really be able to read it while I'm moving but it's kind of fun to do anyway. It might spark some interesting conversations.

Tomorrow, the weather is looking a bit better. The wind might actually be worse but the direction will be from the south or south south west and our direction will be mostly east but some sections will be east north east. So what this means is that I'll have a cross wind with maybe a bit of a tail wind. I'm just not sure about the expected 50 km/h winds as cross winds. That might be a bit of a struggle so I'm leaving the option open to have tomorrow as a rest day. We will see in the morning. If I do ride tomorrow, we will likely pass though the small town of Swift Current on our way to the very small village of Herbert.

It was a brutal day on the bike. We had a 168km ride planned but I was done after 86km. I had headwinds in the 20-35km range for a good part of the day. It didn't help that I did not get a great night's sleep (badly aimed automatic sprinklers watered VanGo at 2am) and got a late start. After doing some ArtSites things and making some changes to my bike, I finally got on my way by about 10:30 am.

I didn't mention it yesterday but I hit a really bad series of big potholes crossing the South Saskatchewan River at high speed. I was surprised that I did not break something or get a flat. Well the effect of those potholes took effect today. My rear wheel developed a big wobble and the spokes started to make a very unsettling sound. Many of the spokes were lose. I ended up stopping about a dozen times in the first hour or so, tightening up the spokes and truing the wheel. I got rid of the noise and most of the wobble and hopefully tonight I can do a little more. Unfortunately this kind of punishment will severely shorten the life of the wheel. I may have to replace it soon.

I crossed into Saskatchewan a little after 1pm. Lunch was late, not only due to my slow progress but about 10km before out meeting point, I had a flat. A nice fine piece of wire gave me a slow leak. I notice that my rear tire is just about worn out and is cut up pretty badly. I'll replace that in Regina.

Oh, and who says that Saskatchewan is flat?! I've hit some pretty big hills once I entered the province. I look forward to the flat.

The weather is looking not so good for the next couple of days. They are talking about winds from the east (head winds) of 50 km/h gusting to 70. That would blow me backwards! If that's the way that it looks tomorrow, I think that we will make tomorrow a rest day.

It was a bit of an earlier start today as I got away at 8:30am. Winds were a light cross breeze but they built up over the day. I met up with Rochelle after about 4 hours of cycling next to a farmer's field for lunch at about 100km into the ride. There are not many places around here to stop other than the access roads into farmers' fields. At least it got us a safe distance off of the highway.

The road today was pretty desolate. There was Brooks, Suffield (CFB) and Redcliff and barely a house or gas station otherwise. If it wasn't for Rochelle's support and the fact that I had a 3-liter water bladder in my back pack, water could easily be an issue for a cyclist here.

The weather was warm but not hot and the cross winds were slight head winds sometimes and tail winds at others. All in all, I think that the wind was a net benefit although not nearly as strong as yesterday.

Medicine Hat has two deep river valleys that I had to climb out of before finding our camp spot for the night, another Walmart. At the top of one of the climbs is the worlds largest teepee, originally created for the 1988 Calgary Olympics.

It was a long day, the longest so far in terms of distance (but not in effort) and I am feeling pretty good. Tomorrow, we plan to reach Gull Lake, SK, another 160km day.

The trip changes today from mountains to prairies. But that doesn't mean there are no hills and that the scenery is uninteresting.

I left my Mom's place in Calgary at about 10 am. I headed east on 16th avenue (the Transcanada highway while in Calgary) and was out of town quickly due to some light tail winds. I passed Chestermere Lake and later Strathmore. Both cities have lots of new development.

The route was fairly straight. I think I turned about 6 corners all day. The winds helped for some parts of the day but on others, they were a hindrance. There was a big black storm cell that seemed to follow me for quite a while but it eventually passed me to the north and only dropped a few drops of rain on me. The wind was another matter. First, it hit me with a great tail wind but after a while it turned into a really gusty cross wind that was challenging to ride in.

There were some long shallow hills that weren't problems but did slow me down (or speed me up) at times.

My allergies really acted up while in Calgary and that stayed with me for most of the day. By about 3pm, my head finally cleared up and my energy came back.

With the hills and storms, it made for a more interesting ride today than I had really thought I would get.

Rochelle arrived at the "Homecoming Campground" in Bassano, which was almost full. It was surprising since most of the campgrounds that we've come across have been next to empty. It turns out there was a Cluny Lions Club Golf tournament at a nearby golf course and many of the participants are staying here. I think that we're the only non-Lions Club members here.

As I sit here, a big prairie thunderstorm is closing in on us! Thunder, lightning and it's starting to hail. Just a typical prairie storm. And, then the double rainbow!

Tomorrow's destination is Medicine Hat, 155km to the south east. I'm hoping for good west or north west winds tomorrow.

It was nice to sleep in this morning but not too much as we had a lot to do. First on the agenda was to see about getting a part for the sliding door in VanGo so we could open it using the handle instead of the complex dual screw driver technique we have developed over the last couple of days since the cabling broke. We had a local expert look at it and verify what we needed. He said that there were only 5 of these parts left in the world and they were all in Los Angles and would take a week to have sent here. We used this information to contact a VW place in Winnipeg and have the part on order and it should be there well before I get there roughly 2 weeks from now. I guess we will be using those two screw drivers for a while yet.

We meet up with some of Rochelle's friends and colleagues in the afternoon and picked up some other things for our trip.

Earlier this year, my cousin Jerry passed away from cancer. We spent the evening with his wife Heather and had a really nice evening with her. 2 years ago, she also lost her youngest son Tim to cancer. In part, my trip has been inspired by Tim's Spokeman Tour. The plaque in the picture is for a walk around a small lake in Airdrie where he grew up.

This morning, one of our ArtSites artists, Susan Elkins, came by to wish us well and send us off. It's great to actually meet some of our artists!

The ride today was really fast. I covered the 102km from Canmore to Calgary at an average speed of 30 km/hr. It didn't hurt that I had a 20 km/hr tail wind for a good part of the trip. In particular, Morley Flats and the last 20 km before Calgary had strong steady winds. I sometimes found myself riding at 50 km/hr with little effort! I hope I get more of this crossing the prairies.

Along this route I saw Pigeon Mountain, where I learned to ski and where I taught my father to ski. I also saw "the sleeping dinosaur" mountain, at least that's what we called it.

I saw 4 other cyclists heading the same way along the same route. I think that Rochelle passed a few more.

Today was an easy day. I don't normally think of 86km as an easy ride but compared to the last couple of days, it certainly was. It was very cold in Lake Louise last night (nothing new for Lake Louise -- I got snowed on in July once) so I slept in a bit and got away a little after 10am (MDT - Mountain Daylight Time). I bundled up fairly well but still wore shorts. My legs were fine but my feet were a bit cold.

The route was almost completely in the Banff National Park and followed the Bow River downhill and the highway followed the river fairly closely so there were only a few slight uphill sections and lots of slight downhill. I made great time covering the 59km into Banff, doing it in 2:15 (26km/hr). About half way between Lake Louise and Banff, I saw a pickup laying on it's side in the median. It had rolled at least once but the roof held fairly well so I think the occupants should have been ok. There were lots of people there and so I have hope that everyone walked away.

A few kilometers before Banff I spied a bicycle path that went to the Vermilion Lakes, just west of Banff. I did a little off-road to get to the bike path and had a calmer ride into Banff. Rochelle stocked up with food and we ate lunch in Banff. Upon leaving Banff I found a bicycle path heading east that took me right to the eastern edge of the Banff National Park and only a couple of kilometers short of our camp spot in Canmore. The path between Banff and Canmore was very busy. I think that a lot of the people that work in Banff live in Canmore so I bet a lot of that traffic was them.

I would have liked to have ridden further but the camping opportunities were limited between here and Calgary. Our camping spot today seems to be overrun with rabbits. They are a bit camera shy but I got a few pictures.

I am just 8km short of 1000km on this trip in 10 days of actual cycling. That's pretty much exactly what I was expecting as an average for the whole trip and much better than I had hoped for at the start, especially with the mountains.

Tomorrow I will head for Calgary, just 100km from here. It is mostly flat with a couple of river valley crossings and one odd foothill that the highway builders seemed to think was better to go over rather than around. We will hang around Calgary for a couple of days to regroup, get VanGo fixed up a bit, restock supplies and see some people.

I lived in Calgary from 1975 through 1987 but I haven't been back in a lot of years. It will be good to see it again.

After the long day yesterday and Kicking Horse Pass today, I decided that I would keep it relatively short and stop at Lake Louise. That's "only" 85km for the day.

I got a bit of a late start this morning but was heading out by 9:30am. Just outside of Golden the road tips up at an 8% grade right away. For the first section, you are still kind of in Golden and they have built a nice bicycle path instead of having to merge into traffic.

Then the rain started. Before leaving, I had debated about wearing full rain gear. It was only partially cloudy. 20 minutes into the ride I could see big, black clouds in front of me and I was getting drenched a few minutes after that. I was glad to have the full rain gear but it was still cold. I was cold for most of the day.

It has been a lot of years since I've been across this section of road and it has been improved immensely. The first 10km or so used to be very steep, windy and very dangerous. It's still steep but has been straightened out and good guard rails have been added. Further on it has been made into 4 lanes and takes a completely different route. A nice new road with wide, smooth shoulders. It was a long climb but it went by quickly.

The next 3 hours were just a slow grind climbing slowly towards Field, BC. The last hour or so was spent climbing the 6% climb east of Field towards Kicking Horse Pass and the BC/Alberta border. That last bit was tough. I think I was still feeling the climbs from yesterday.

I was about an hour late for my rendezvous with Rochelle and lunch. I guess I didn't estimate the climb well today. After lunch it was a fairly quick, mostly down hill ride into Lake Louise.

That was the last of the big climbs. Tomorrow should be a fairly easy trip to Canmore followed by Calgary the next day.

Today was a long day. I was on my bike at 6:45am this morning. It was about 6C so I bundled up. It was about 70km to the summit of Rogers Pass (1330 meters, 4320 feet). It was surprisingly easy. I was there by about noon. The picture to the right was taken by a Dutch tourist as I was attacking the last hill before Rogers Pass. He ran into us in Golden and gave us this photo.

Rochelle made lunch and I took off down the other side of Rogers Pass. It was a steep road with lots of potholes and snow sheads so I couldn't go very fast. I think that I took a lot of life out of the pads on the disk breaks going down that hill.

This was followed by brisk cross head winds and another sequence of large hills that turned out to be considerably tougher than Rogers Pass. That took a lot out of me. Finally, when I had crested this pass (I've not found the name of it) I could see into the valley that Golden is in. Unfortunately it was full of big black clouds and lots of rain. I wasn't really dressed for rain.

I ran into rain about 4 times heading into Golden although it never lasted more than about 10 minutes at a time so I didn't get too wet or cold.

I finally arrived at our camp spot in Golden at about 5:45pm MDT (Mountain Dailight Time -- I passed the time zone line on that last uphill) and an odometer reading of 155km.

It took a lot of me. I can tell because I'm cold and Rochelle is not.

We had some mechanical issues with VanGo. The latch that holds down the popup roof seems to not hold well and it came loose today while Rochelle was driving. As she was fixing that, a cable in the sliding door broke. I had to take it apart and now we have 2 screwdrivers that help us open the door but only from the inside. I think that VanGo will require some TLC in Calgary.

Tomorrow's ride will take us over the Kicking Horse Pass. It is about 800 meters (2600 feet) of climbing but it has a bunch of 8% grades so it's going to be tougher than today. I think that we may cut the day short and stay at Lake Louise, just at the bottom of the other side of the pass. It's also supposed to rain a fair bit tomorrow in the area so the 83km will be plenty!