I woke early, about 0700, and poked my head out the door only to see I could see my breath. It was 3C. It was a good reason to go back to bed, which I did until about 0900. I ****** around until 1000 when I decided to start the day off with my 3 shirt solution and depart no matter what. It was about 7C, calm winds, blue sky day. It could be worse right? There are environmental conditions we had not experienced, right up to and including hordes of locusts!

I was continually struggling to keep my speed around 120 kph, my goodness I have developed a hard twisting right hand! Finally a couple of rabbits passed me (vehicles traveling quickly). I'd put him maybe 500' in front of me and keep my eyes on him for unusual behavior. They brake, I brake, they accelerate I follow. That saved me at least once between Nanton and Calgary as the High River po po were out trying to finance their small town attraction.

I passed through Calgary on Deerfoot, traffic was light and made good time right to Bowden where I stopped for gas. Everything was in order on the bike. Continuing northbound I decided for one last blast on an secondary road so I took the 2A turn off at Ponoka, and prolly as a stalling tactic because as excited as I am to be getting home, I am sad the trip is ending I stopped for a bite at the Ponoka A&W. When I got off the bike I found that the bungee cords holding my top Pelican case has lost their bungeeness. This meant the case was no longer in tension and pinching my map book between the top and bottom cases, and it was....................gone.

I loved that map book, it had each state and province in large detail which included all the roads right down to gravel ones. The map book had allowed me on numerous bike trips dating back to the mid 2000's to navigate across 'merica off the beaten path. This current trip had seen it completely soaked through on at least 3 occasions and I had almost completely dried it when I lost it, somewhere between Bowden & Ponoka. Again, the ironical irony of it all, after all our trips together including this one of 13 500+ kms I lost it with 150 kms of home.



A bacon cheeseburger helped to soften the loss, and the remaining 100ish km went by quickly and without incident culminating where we began 31 days ago, in my driveway.