Day 9 – To Canmore

Day 9 – To Canmore

N51° 04.978’ W115° 20.496’

2008/06 - The West Coast Trail
15 June 2008 in British Columbia, Wolfgang

Sadly, today began the re-entry into reality. After eight days on the road, I had to go to work. This evening and tomorrow, I would be facilitating a strategic planning session for a customer in Canmore. Dianne and Mom would be getting an opportunity to spend some time together, while I spent some time earning my keep. In the grand scheme of things, mind you, the commute was pretty reasonable. A motorcycle ride from Kelowna to Canmore, over the Rockies, on a beautiful summer day. Theory says it doesn’t get much better than this.

There would be lots of scenery like this today, and not a lot of time to stop and take pictures of it.

There would be lots of scenery like this today, and not a lot of time to stop and take pictures of it.

To add insult to injury, we lurched from following one slowpoke to another for the entire trip up 97A. While this is normally an absolutely beautiful drive, with exceptional scenery and sweeping curves for pretty much the entire stretch of road from Vernon to Sicamous, introduce a few RVs, trailers and generally ignorant car drivers and you have a recipe for frustration and angst. By the time we pulled onto highway 1, both Dianne and I were hoping the car and bike manufacturers would perfect the front-mounted laser cannon. A final bout of frustration found me willing the pickup truck and trailer in front of me to stop in Tim Horton’s for a coffee. Amazingly enough, my incantation worked. Should have tried that 50 kms ago!

The rest of the journey through the mountains alternated between open road and Sunday driver. This combination resulted in progressively later ETAs on the GPS, and a progressively crankier pilot as my arrival time started to converge with the time I needed to actually be in Canmore. The sad result was that a day that saw the most beautiful weather and the most spectacular scenery also saw the fewest stops to enjoy said experiences. We pretty much had to press through the full way to Canmore.

We're not exclusively elitest snobs when it comes to eating.

We’re not exclusively elitest snobs when it comes to eating.

By the time we hit Golden, Wolfie needed fuel and so did we. Pulling into the service road, we took stock of our options. Chevron provided Wolfgang with the gourmet, high octane experience he was becoming used to. The options in terms of feeding ourselves were decidedly more limited. The net result was our first meal at a chain restaurant for the whole trip – with the restaurant in question being none other than McDonald’s. From dinner the night before in an Okanagan winery to breakfast this morning in a lovely boutique hotel, we now saw lunch transform into meal orders that prompted the inevitable question, “Would you like fries with that?” If nothing else, we have range.

A final push saw us ride from Golden to Canmore in one stretch. At 4:35pm, we pulled into the parking lot of the Falcon Crest Lodge. By 4:40pm, we had our rooms and at 4:45pm all of the bags were out of the Escape and into the elevator. At 4:58 pm, I stepped off the elevator once again, out of my riding clothes and attired in jacket, shirt and pants. Say what you like, but I clean up just fine.

For the next 36 hours, I would be on the clock. The final journey will take place on Tuesday. The plan is for our final stretch to be an infinitely more relaxed stretch than the penultimate one was. Stay tuned.

If you have to go to work, you might as well do it in an environment like this.

If you have to go to work, you might as well do it in an environment like this.

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