We said goodbye to my dad this morning before heading on our way again at 6am. It was COLD out in Calgary. The day before it had been 25 degrees, so we were surprised to wake up and it be 8. This is the coldest weather we had encountered so far. We took out our warm gear and bundled up.
Leaving the city we got lost quite a bit. We ended up having to make a few circles and carefully maneuvered our bikes down the very steep bank of a river to the bike path. With all of this, our first 30km took us around 3 hours, not too speedy at all.
I had heard that the flats are the hardest part of the trip, and I didn’t believe that until today. Yes, prairie is flat, but it’s also, very windy, smelly, and incredibly boring. Today we rode 150km into head wind. It was very, very hard. The weight of our bags seemed way more than usual so that didn’t help anything either.
We are getting to the part of the country were there are no towns except for where we stop at night. I’ve had to plan stops according to where there’s accommodation, not so much mileage anymore. We rode from Calgary to Bassano today, 150km, and there was one, very run down, gas station. That was it. We carried 4 extra litres of water in bladders, because that’s our biggest worry: keeping enough water. Almost comically, one of the bladders broke in my mom’s bike bag so everything was soaked though. We got it dry, but a bit of a bummer.
We had a good dinner at the truck stop across from our motel, quite adventurous! My mom has started to realize that there may not be too many vegetarian options for her here in the mid-west area! Tomorrow we head to Brooks, a mere 50km. We had to break it up this way because it’s the only town between here and Medicine Hat, and Medicine Hat is too far for a one-day trip. Hopefully I get to sleep in a bit in the morning, we’ll see if my mom is feeling generous!
Join My Journey 