Welcome back to the wonderful world of Cyclocross. This is a bit frustrating for me; I wrote up a couple of days of events, to post onto this website, in Jasper, but the file was lost, so now I have to start over. Oh well.

The fortieth day began at the very late time of 11:23am. Only Geoff and I were around at that point. I made myself some very tasty bacon and eggs. Geoff, being very studious, had arisen before me, and already having eaten breakfast, went for a run. What a crazy guy. I also had a chance to try out a fixed-gear bike in the drive way. A fixed-gear bike means that the rear sprocket is rigidly fixed to the rear wheel, so that pedaling backwards makes the bike go backwards. I had enough trouble not falling over while trying to stop the bike, let alone going backwards. Very fun. Soon Tessa came home from work, with her boyfriend Pete. Ashley also arrived. We piled in a car and headed to the world's second largest shopping mall: The West Edmonton Mall. I'm not huge on shopping, or malls, or all the weirdo people who enjoy hanging out in malls, but we had a good time. I had been there once before, and it was good for Geoff to see it. As the existentialists like to say, it is the quantity of experiences that counts, not the quality. I'm exaggerating, we really did have a good time. We saw the very large and scary dragon who lives near the ceiling of the massive movie theater atrium-area. Every once and a while the lights dim, and the magically eerie music starts up, and the dragon starts looking around, and then he spews smoke and shoot some very large flames from his mouth. Very impressive. We picked up some Booster Juice, checked out Chapters, and watched some young figure skaters practicing on the rink. Yes, there is an indoor rink in one wing. There is also a hotel, a very large theme park, a water park complete with a huge wave pool, and about sixty thousand shops and restaurants. Geoff remarked that it is incredible that human-kind has enough spare time to do things like build West-Edmonton Mall.

We piled in the car again and headed to White Avenue through rush hour traffic. Tessa and Pete had a previously arranged engagement to attend, so they dropped us off and we headed out with Ashley. White Ave. is a fun little street with shops and restaurants and large amounts of pedestrians. We headed over to a used book store for a while. My favorite part was their collection of antique bee-keeping books, some of which were over $600. Down the street, we met Kathy at Dadeos restaurant, where we were treated to Cajun food. I had a shrimp sandwich with sweet potato fries. We then all headed over to Marc's condo where we had a beer and looked at some of his photography, including the pictures from the previous night's fishing trip. He has a nice place with a great couch. In the evening we headed back to the house and played a game of Ticket to Ride before heading to bed.

The next day, being the forty-first day, was spent, dear reader, in service to you. That's right, we headed over to the public library, along a nice bike path, and spent more time then I'm willing to admit writing about our travels from Winnipeg to Edmonton. For the first time in a long time we were caught up. Other activities involved making some phone calls home, including one to my poor sister who's computer is giving her grief. On her blog, she awards points to readers for acts of good readership. In honor of that, I award Emily Hincks 400 of my own points. We arrived back at the house to a great meal of lasagna. The evening was finished with a rousing game of Settlers, which I won by means of skill, and then a movie in the basement. We watched Harry Potter IV, which neither Geoff nor I had ever seen. It actually took me a while to decide whether I had seen it or not because I have such vivid memories from reading those books.

The next morning, day forty-two, we woke up early and all headed over to a Chinese restaurant for breakfast. It is not Chinese food that they serve at breakfast, just the usual pancakes and eggs etc., but they are well known for having the cheapest breakfast in town, at four dollars for a large plate of food.

We messed up on the directions out of town that Marc had made up for us. I think we took a left instead of a right somewhere. It took almost 10km to realize this, so we chose to take the yellowhead highway instead of back-tracking to our scenic route. The yellowhead was a more direct route then Marc's anyway. We then missed the turn-off onto the yellowhead, I don't know how, so we took the 16A, which meant that we spent a good 30km riding past box malls, and it also added 10km to our trip. But we survived. The ride after that was pleasant. Sunny, a bit of head wind, similar scenery to that before Edmonton. We saw a solo touring-cyclist headed the opposite way as us, and we waved at him. We stopped for the night at Pembina Provincial Park. It was incomparably nicer then Vermilion Provincial Park.

This past school year, Geoff spent his days as a don at Renison College at the University of Waterloo. One of his donning friends, Paula, lives in Drayton Valley, Alberta. They had arranged to meet at Pembina, so when we got to the campground, it had already been registered and everything. The lady in the park office said that we had the best site in the park. We rode down, and it was nice. On the way in we passed another camp site with some other touring cyclists, Mark and Nicole. We stayed to talk for a while. They were just starting out on their trip, and so they weren't in prime shape quite yet. It would have been nice riding with them for a day or two, but we were eager to get to Jasper quickly. We chuckled at their complaints of a head-wind that day: it was nothing compared to some of our prairie winds.

Our site was right across from the Pembina River, where we took our first swim of the summer in its swift current. Before this, the only purpose of our bathing suits was to allow us to exercise modesty while the rest of our clothes were in the laundry. Paula soon arrived bringing many exciting things for a touring cyclist, including food and lawn chairs. We cooked some scrambled eggs over a camp fire, and played Bananagrams. It was very fun spite the fact that Paula was very good at it, and neither Geoff nor I came close to winning. Soon one of Paula's friends arrived, Melissa, and we all had a good time chatting into the night around the camp fire.

We had an early start on day forty-three. We headed to the hardware store for some camping fuel. About 15km down the road we caught up to Mark and Nicole and rode with them for a while, before they turned into the town of Wildwood to hit up a farmer's market. We pulled another Doug on this day, having breakfast after having ridden for 47km. I guess we were feeling pretty good. We also had a pretty long day planned, all the way to Obed. Mark and Nicole had intimidated us by telling us that Obed is the highest point anywhere on the yellowhead highway. We rode on.

Indeed, we were feeling really good, we broke another record. After our brief stop outside of Wildwood to take a picture, we rode over 60km without touching a shoe to the ground once, averaging about 27km/h. It was a pretty ride through forests, with not too much traffic. The highway was divided, and we couldn't even see the oncoming traffic lane, there were too many trees in between. We stopped in Edson for a Subway sandwich, where we met two more touring cyclists. They were a bit shy, so we didn't talk to them much. The next stint of the day's journey was perhaps my favorite of the summer: it was in this stint that we caught our first view of the Rocky Mountains, 116km into the day. It was breath-taking, I will never forget it. Only their bold outline was visible in the far distance among the clouds. It was because I had ridden through sun and wind, rain and cold, clear across the country, that made it so spectacular. To feel the land rising and falling underneath one's legs is incomparable to any traveling by car or bus. There is an irreparable disconnection when an engine is doing the work for you. I am strongly convinced of this. I will quote from my written journal, which was recorded later that day: "Their majestic beauty rose and sweltered from the land. A little later on I put on Beethoven's fifth. As much as I have known anything to be true, the music was not in my ears, but emanated from the land. The hills were alive. The sounds were not external or foreign, they have been eternally embedded in the trees and clouds and mountains. The first movement was belted by the triumphant trees, which loudly swayed while collapsing into the road. The second, by the impending storm, roaring to the North. And then the mountains came into view again."

We finished at 158km in Obed Provincial Park. We didn't feel that we had climbed very many hills, but we must have at some point. We found some camp spots with no vehicle access, and decided they were a prime choice. It was very beautiful next to the lake. It was very calm, and the lake perfectly reflected the far shore and sky. We went swimming again. It was kind of gross. There was about three feet of mud at the bottom, and a man told us (after we had jumped in) that it was home to foot-long leaches. We got out quickly. Geoff found a one-inch long one on his ankle. The Anti-Red Sauce Coalition Front will be sad to hear that we had spaghetti and red-sauce for dinner.

The next day, the forty-fourth day, started with a large helping of oatmeal. There were many hills on the way to Hinton. We made a mistake going down a large hill into Hinton to get groceries. There turned out to be another grocery store just down the road that was not at the bottom of a huge and steep hill. On the way out of Hinton, a Swiss man pulled us over. He was extremely happy to see us. He said that he pulls over every touring cyclist he sees. He really wanted to drive back to Hinton, get some beer, and come back to us with it. We declined, thinking that we already had too much weight. He said a lot of great things, our favorite being "Cycling is the only way to travel! Everything else is shit! Shit!", in a german-french-swiss accent. He drove off, up the Scenic Route to Alaska. He had done touring in Europe ("touring" means on a bicycle from now on), and his son was on a tour from Vancouver to South America and back.

It was another incredible ride. We came to be amidst the mountains. It was spectacular. I won't be able to describe them well enough to do them justice, you need to ride out there for yourself. We entered Jasper National Park. At the entrance, there was a group of long-horned sheep, just chilling out and getting in the way of traffic. We eventually made it to Jasper Park Lodge, where we had arranged to surf a couch. It turned out to be the swankiest, and most expensive, place to stay in Jasper, with a five-star rating. We spent an awkward first few hours there. The guy we were to be staying with, Garth, was not in his room, and nobody knew his number. There are 500 workers at the lodge, so it was hard even finding people that knew him. Eventually Geoff found out that he was on shift, and wouldn't be back for a long time. Happily, another worker in Garth's cabin let us store our gear in his room while we went to an overpriced restaurant for dinner. We went for a walk around the grounds before heading back to wait for Garth. At this point I wasn't even convinced that we were at the right resort. But Geoff was. Eventually Garth came roaring by with a truck. He shook our hands, said "hi", gave us the keys to his room, and took off again. He may still have been on shift. We made it to his room, and one of his neighbours, Cory, introduced himself as a friend of Garth. He and his girlfriend, Gabby, invited us down to the cabin's common kitchen for some very good sushi.

Garth was born and raised South Africa, and has the distinct Afrikaans accent. He has a degree in Philosophy and is full of interesting things to say. He is one of those people who is a captivating conversationalist. He fell in love with cycle touring a few years ago while traveling in North America. He lived in San Fransisco for a while, which he raves about at every chance he gets, and also in Vancouver. He has been working at the lodge for 18 months now. He complains that far too few of the Jasper Lodge employees share his interests. There is a fair bit of partying that goes on, and not enough enjoyment of the surrounding natural beauty. He sees himself as a sort of bicycle evangelist. He plans little pic-nics, where a group of people ride out to a park, maybe 20-30km away, and have a barbecue (which he would prefer to call a braai). We all stayed up for a while talking, far past the bed time of Geoff and myself. We were also introduced to Garth's very tasty yerba mate habit, which is a kind of south american loose-leaf tea.

The forty-fifth day came, and we slept in past eleven with Garth. His room is the size of any one-person college dorm, so it was nice and cosy on the floor. It was surreal to step outside and be surrounded by mountains. We headed over to The Bean, which is the staff cafeteria, where we should have gone the previous night. It was a ridiculously good deal. For $2.50, you could pile on as much food as a plate could hold, as well as take a drink and fruit. We couldn't figure out how that place was even breaking even sometimes. They sure weren't with the amount of food Geoff and I took.After lunch we decided to climb Whistlers mountain. Geoff and I had been hoping that we would get a chance to hike a mountain somewhere in the Rockies, so we were very happy to have Garth offer to take us up on his day off. He had climbed it several times before. He phoned up his friend Jason to come along. Soon enough we had packed a backpacking-backpack with food and rain gear, and were on our bikes towards the base of the mountain. Geoff was carrying the pack, and he looked pretty ridiculous, you couldn't see him from behind, just the enormous bag. I can't believe James cycled from Edmonton to Winnipeg with one of those things. The last stint to the base was perhaps the longest stretch of steep uphill I had ever done on a bike. It wasn't hard, it had only been five kilometres or so to the bottom of the hill, and so my legs were very fresh. Likewise for Garth and Geoff, although Geoff didn't have so much fun with the pack on his back. Jason, however, was struggling a bit. I rode with him for a while, but there is such a thing as going up a hill too slowly, which was starting to tire me out. So I left him behind and caught up to the others. We three got to the top, and after a couple of minutes, Garth sent me down to keep encouraging Jason up. I went all the way to the bottom. He was no where to be seen. So, I climbed it again. A great way to start a three hour hike. Garth figured that Jason had given up and gone home, and that turned out to be the case.

The climb was incredible. Along-side the switch-back laden path were all kinds of wild-flowers in and amongst the pine and birch trees. Occasionally there would be a break in the trees and we would get a peak out and over the town of Jasper, and the surrounding mountains. Garth was more knowledgeable about the vegetation and pointed out a couple of edible plants. We talked about philosophy, math, and the future. We stopped for a snack break just above the tree line, where the mountain suddenly turned to arid rock debris. From here the climb became quite steep with switch-backs everywhere. We took turns carrying the bag. It was hard work, and the lack of oxygen was quite noticeable. The view from the very top was unforgettable. I took a few pictures and then gave up. There was no way I would be able to take a picture that would do it justice. Simply spectacular. It was misty with light rain. "Wrapping the fog about its breast, the ruin molders into rest". It being late, we opted to take the cable-car down to the base, instead of another hike. We headed to the town of Jasper for a pint of beer and the biggest hamburger I have ever eaten.

Garth was still not caught up on sleep, so he went to bed while Geoff and I stayed up and read outside. Geoff went out first and was on a hillside reading while I snuck up behind him and pointed out an Elk, about 20 feet away from him, which had also snuck up on him. Geoff was quite taken a-back, because the Elk had been there for quite some time. And soon to bed.