This Is A Test, This Is Only A Test

Been awhile since we did one of these trips so have patience as old routines are rediscovered.  

Sunday started dark and early 

and soon after became just another cliche as we met at up a Starbucks in Abbotsford.  

A small ceremony was allowed as the first tracking point was sent.  And if you haven't seen it the tracking page it is pretty cool - in fact you can see that we have stopped for the night at the Holiday Inn Express in Medicine Hat.  

The ride from the Lower Mainland through the Province of BC to Alberta is one of my favorite one-day rides and Sunday was no exception.  As usual the closer we got to the Alberta border the quality of the other drivers' driving decreased remarkably.  Surprisingly a traffic jam was encountered on the Big Hill east of Field.  All traffic was being shunted down to one lane and then each direction then was alternated across a few miles of on-going paving.  Now this might not sound all that out of sorts except that for the length of Highway 1 in BC there are billboards proudly proclaiming that there will be 4-lanes all the way from Kamloops to the Alberta border.  The section we got held up at was only 3 lanes being freshly repaved but it was 3-lanes repaved from Field all the way to the Alberta border.

Arrived in Canmore without fanfare and had a fairly miserable dinner at the hotel - breakfast the next morning wasn't much better.  Overnight a nasty weather system had moved in threatening cool temperatures, wind, rain and snow.  Sure enough looking out our window the first three were observed and the fourth horseman of the weather-pocalypse was found soon enough after heading off down the road.  Bypassing Calgary to south ending up being a good idea for both avoiding Monday morning traffic and seeing the weather improved, sightly.

While drying out and trying to warm up in the Brooks Alberta Safeway deli department having lunch - have you ever been to Brooks?  There's not a lot of else to choose from - the decision was made to cut the day short and find a room in Medicine Hat instead of trying to make it all the way to Regina.