Day 38: Calgary to 2/3 way to Banff

Woke up with the team when Murdoch came in and asked us to volunteer for breakfast. I had hoped to take off early, but I’m a big fan of helping where I can so no big deal for the delay. Plus it came with breakfast.

After eating and working, we headed back to our room where I started packing. I was trying to minimize my load when they put in the movie “Napoleon Dynamite”. I was trying to be very quite so as not to interrupt the movie, but in all my slow moving I ended up getting sucked into the movie myself.

By the time it was over, it was already lunch so I headed over to lunch and told myself I’d get going afterwards. A good lunch later, I finally got everything packed up and picked up the bag. It was a little bit heavier than I wanted it to be at about 30 pounds, but once I get an idea going I’m pretty stubborn so I set about moving on.

I set out with the bag on my back and a general idea of where I wanted to end up and left the team behind to hit the road alone. It took a long time to get out of the city, and there were some large hills getting out that I didn’t expect. I think the hills would have been challenging by themselves, but with the extra weight it took quite a bit more effort. I also quickly recognized that I needed to move the heaviest stuff as low as possible. Rookie mistake.

Making my way out of the city, I also found that the extra weight pushed me hard into my saddle and that quickly became uncomfortable. But through all the suffering, I was still glad to be out on the road. And on the hardest parts I would think about cancer patients I had met and pull harder. How many of them would gladly change my pain for theirs? I thought about this for mile after mile.

A long suffer-fest later, I came up on the foot of the mountains, about 50 miles from Calgary. The sun was starting to set so I set up camp in a campsite, paid my fee, and set about finding some food. The store was about 3 miles away so after making camp I got back on the bike and set off for the food. Biked back with the grub, ate the food, and talked briefly with my RV neighbors.

Went to bed, quite satisfied and feeling good about having a little more time to myself. I love the team and feel like they are close family, but sometimes it’s nice to be by yourself. I slept well also knowing that I was now on my own time schedule and I had no tent mates to worry about.