All week I thought I was departing Sunday, but on Saturday Adam reminded me I still had one more day in my 'Birfday Month' that being July 31st, so BuBu and I enjoyed one more day together Sunday and I was prepped for a Monday morning departure.

I was up around 1030, leisurely packed the bike by 1130 and was ready to depart by noon.

I shot this departure video with my wife, who was home on vacation, whom I miss already! The video is a little long, but I sped up the slow parts. It shows packing the bike and then driving away. I come back for the camera, but you don't see that......the magic of television! Due to the non-magical properties of my Goldfish-like memory, I say it is Sunday, when, in fact, it is Monday.



I stopped for gas at our local Shell station and I was excited to use my most excellent Birfday gift from Nan & Auntie, they got me Shell gas gift cards. Sadly they were not activated by the guy who sold the cards to them so I could not use them. They are going to fix that this week and maybe I will get a fuel bonus, if not it's not a deal breaker. Together the 3 cards totalled $225 which is about 7 full tanks of gas or about 2800 kms.

I took the Ring road out of town and there was nothing noteworthy until just past the Leduc flyover where there was a Moose strike on the side of the road. The body of Bullwinkle was still on the shoulder along with the shattered remains of a windshield. Nasty! Who cleans up dead animals at the side of the road? I had a homeroom teacher, Mr.Merrills, from grades 7 - 9, who was a science teacher. Our homeroom was also the science lab and Merrills would often bring in road kill in order to boil it down and get the skeleton. Shoulda called him for this Moose!

After taking Hwy 2 south towards Red Deer I turned onto 11A to take the Nordegg route, running through David Thompson country and eventually hitting Hwy 93, the Columbia Icefields Parkway. One thing I noticed all day long was that I would be travelling in packs of, say, half a dozen cars. I could pass them all and then I would be alone in my lane for 5 or 10 minutes until I caught up to the next 6 pack. But the other lane, going the opposite direction, was bumper to bumper traffic, often at low speeds stuck behind an enormous RV or tractor trailer. Boy, I sure am happy I am headed South.

Why am I headed South anyway? I thought we're going..........wait for it!

North!
To Alaska!

You have to say it that way every time by the way. And if you're not driving, or in church, or maybe getting audited, it wouldn't hurt to do the pointy thing too! Anyway, I am headed south to pick up my Brother in Law (BiL) Bill who will be joining me on this trip.

Bill rides a 650cc BMW scooter, of which, in the past, I may have belittled or scorned somewhat. That is in the past now as it proved itself a worthy wingman weapon last year when Bill rode with me to the bottom of Wyoming. It also has a lot of bells & whistles and creature comforts...............such as heated handgrips, that also invited my ridicule, but look who has heated grips now?!

From Hwy 93 I connected to Hwy 1 and was Westbound. I stopped for a pee along the side of the road and after takin' care of bidness noticed a van stopped a ways down with its hood open. Despite having no mechanical inclination I thought I would investigate, and upon reaching the van I found 2 bewildered cotton top ladies from Virginia in a VW camper with a blown lower rad hose.

As it was the lower hose I knew their coolant was gone so there was not much I could do for them. They had a cell phone and were on it to their Auto Club, so I said my goodbyes and departed.

Traffic was quite light, at least in my direction, so I made good time towards my eventual goal of Revelstoke. One experience of note was going through a section of highway that had numerous tunnels. The first one I went through was straight, you could see the exit immediately upon entering, and while it didn't have any interior lights I could just make out the 2 yellow lines marking the sides of the lanes. I prolly shoulda taken off my sunglasses though, it was very dark inside.

The next tunnel was much longer, I couldn't see the exit, and there were no yellow lines, it was a total blackout. Worse yet the tunnel had a gentle curve to the right. I raised my visor and tried to pull down my shades, but couldn't do it in my haste. Instead I slowed down, and literally used The Force to keep it between the walls. It was pretty scary there for few moments! The next tunnels were all lit and marked. That particular tunnel must have come from the Dollar store!

Got into Revelstoke around 2000hrs but enjoyed the benefit of the 1 hour PST change from passing into BC. Found the Trifecta right inside town limits; Frontier Mo'tel, Frontier Restaurant and Frontier Chevron station. I did drive to the other side of town to see if I could so better, but it seemed to be the best deal so I turned around and headed back.

The room cost $60 bucks and was maybe 300 sq/ft. You'd hafta go outside to change your mind, but it provided what was needed, a roof over a place to lay my head. Even the wifi was OK! The Restaurant was OK, the Meatloaf spectacular! Curiously the BGM (background music) was a talk/music show from Kamloops where 2 stoners were discussing the merits of a goth band's recent release, not what I expected, but pretty entertaining.

There were diners at one other table, 2 parents, 3 kids all under the ages of 10 and the Grandparents. They were squirming pretty hard at some points of that talk show! They asked the waiter if he could change the station but he said it was controlled by the cook. Later a guy came out from the back to bus the tables and I noticed he had black fingernail polish, I figured he was the Chef/DJ/busboy.

Once, many years ago I was doing the live video portion of a fashion show, which I won't name, but I still do, and the engineer of the audio company that had been hired was using a GWAR song for his sound check. In case you don't know, or can't figure out what genre GWAR is, I have included a picture of them on stage, below.



The song he had selected for soundcheck featured the C-word frequently in its chorus. Sadly the engineer was tuning the PA from his laptop out in the middle of the room, and I was standing at the front of house position. There were about a dozen elderly chair cover installers working and one by one they came to FOH to point their fingers at me and condemn me for my musical selection. I think we ended up having to write a letter of apology, even though it wasn't our fault!

Moral of the story? Don't play Goth Metal in public!

But I digress, which is something I do quite often!

With dinner I had a local craft beer, I think it was called Beamish, it was a 650 ml. He made a big show of opening it at the table, but it gushed everywhere. I asked him if he shook it, he said all of the Beamishes did that. (so why did you do it at the table?) He left to get a cloth, and a bowl for the bottle to leak into, and a cold glass. I poured about 6 ounces of fluid into the glass, the other 17 were converted to foam, tehn frozen solid.

That was the problem, the beer was stored in a cooler that was TOO COLD. Not a description usually associated with beer, but true in this case. I explained the phenomenon of super-cold liquids held under pressure then freezing when the pressure is released, but his 1000 yard stare made me think there was not much comprehension.

Luckily he did get the fact that I only netted about 6 drinkable ounces out of the 23 oz bottle so he did bring a new beer for free! I let it sit at the table for 10 minutes before I opened it and magically there was no gusher.

Now that we figured out the trick I had 2 more beers for dessert, and was back in my room and in bed watching TV by 2200hrs. I have to start working on going to bed earlier, so I can get up at The Crack of Bill! I shower at the end of the riding day, but not the next morning. My hair is so thick that it takes all day to dry inside the helmet and that makes my head itch. The plus side of this is I can get up at 0840hrs and be packed and ready to go for our mutually agreed upon 0900 departure time.

Edmonton to Revelstoke
688 kms
8 hours in the saddle