Wowza. That was a day! By 7:30am, I was rolling south from Manning, sneaking in a calm 85 km leg down to Grimshaw before my brain had time to say, "Hey, what about coffee?" and finding my first gas, and quickly cleaning my chain. Those before-the-day-really-starts segments always feel a bit like shoplifting against the clock -- delightful. And with a big day planned today, I'll especially take it. |
Oh, and a ferry! Now we're going places. My ticket purchase (ha ha), wait time (2 minutes), embarking, and crossing were so efficient that I didn't even have time to get to my coffee thermos, so I looked for a place to briefly stop on the other side. I turned into Tangent Park but it turned out to be a gate-controlled, day-users-must-purchase-pass kind of place, in the trees with no view -- basically the exact opposite of everything I wanted -- so I U-turned out before human contact. A few corners later, I noticed a crop duster dancing on the horizon to my left, so stopped in an access pullout to the farmer's field, to take in a free mini-air show with my coffee and a cookie. (For those who may not know, a crop duster is a small single-person airplane that sprays the crops for weeds, looping back and forth at very low altitude; think of an aerobatics pilot, multitasking with a garden sprayer.) It turned out to be the perfect pitstop, totally quiet except for the sound of the insects and the wind, and it got me to my farmkid core.
Onwards, I had a nice 30 km/h tailwind out of the northwest, as I followed the country highways south and east to Travellers restaurant in Valleyview, where my in-helmet COUNTDOWN TO PANCAKES reached zero. As I was walking back to my bike after eating, I had the pleasure of meeting May Joy and Art Adolphson, a lovely couple who must have been in their eighties. As we passed each other on the sidewalk, Art pulled me aside to tell me, "You know, I'm more than just a little bit jealous of you," and told me that he rode a BSA 650 back in the day. (I think mid-to-late 1950s... I asked him what year his was, and as he thought about it, May wasted no time announcing, "Oh, that was before we were married, which is 65 years.") Art is a lifelong Valleyview resident, who told me that his Dad named Valleyview (it checks out - the school is named after an Adolphson), and his Mom was a teacher before teachers in this part of Alberta were paid. May was originally from Wyoming, which is where I'll be in a few days. I knew I could trust them when Art extended his hand and introduced himself by his full name, and May mentioned that they had recently been travelling somewhere "to go to the tractor show." They wanted to hear about my trip, and Yellowknife, and, of course, were happy to hear I was a grain farm kid. Such a salt-of-the-earth experience to have a chat with nice old people.
My second encounter with a fellow rider was at the gas station in Fox Creek, where a solo guy on a BMW R12GS pulled in after me, on Day 8 of his trip from Ontario up towards the Dempster Highway with the goal of reaching Tuk. He seemed maybe a bit lonely, or a tad uncertain heading into the North, having recently overcome some tire anxieties, and the first words out of his mouth being, "Hey, which way are you heading?!?" We chatted quickly about our respective trips and carried on our respective ways. Good luck, dude!
Approaching Whitecourt, maybe 2 km out, the divided highway suddenly transformed to a parking lot, and it became apparent that the "single-lane traffic, expect delays" highway status -- after yesterday's train-vs.-fuel-truck fireball incident -- was no joke. The road report had said, "Please use alternate routes and avoid the area," but a check of the map showed no real alternate routes, so I hadn't modified plans when I most recently peeked at it in Travellers. But, sitting there on the highway, imagining this could easily be a multiple-hours wait, I consulted Google Maps on my phone, and made a U-turn in the ditch. |
The rest of the day was a just-keep-going effort, running southbound on Highway 22, the Cowboy Trail, through Drayton Valley, Rocky Mountain House (memories of last summer's ADV training), Caroline (fresh gas station sandwich and kids' iced tea stand) ("Do you want the premium iced tea, it's a dollar?" "What's premium?" "Well, it's got Neo juice, which is this, well, it's, well, it's like this, um... it's green!"), Sundre, Cremona, Cochrane, Bragg Creek, Millarville, to Black Diamond / Turner Valley (recently amalgamated and renamed to "Diamond Valley," sort of). I had found an Airbnb, located in the country on the edge of cell service. As I have learned to expect of Airbnbs by now, it can be just a little weird, and a luggage pain-in-the-arse, but this was countered by friendly hosts (one of whom paved Frame Lake Trail in the '90s) and free garage parking for Badger. A hard sleep will now occur.
Day total: 976 km, 13h20m Trip total: 1,845 km | Start: Manning, AB. End: Turner Valley, AB. Soundtrack: Matt Good "The Audio of Being," then 12.5 hrs of earplugs. |