Day 36: Claresholm to Calgary

Woke up early since I was driving. We made potatoes and oatmeal for breakfast. It took a while to get everybody going, but a big city like Calgary provides good motivation to make it to the destination, so we didn’t hang around too long.

Driving day is almost always more work than biking days and today was no exception. Lunch stops and flat tires, and such. But the hardest part was trying to figure out how to get people into the heart of Calgary while avoiding traffic.

We had been told how great the bike paths were so Leah and I set up the riders to take them into town. Unfortunately, it had rained so much that many of the bike paths had been closed. But we couldn’t have known that so we sent them on their way thinking everything would work out.

But then we found that people were playing Commando crossing flooded creeks and jumping fences trying to make their way. And Christy broke her collarbone going down one of the trails.

So after dropping off the trailer I headed back down south to pick people up and get to the hospital. As a side note, Christy had made excellent progress recently as a rider. She was one of the slower riders, but since she had come back she had become increasingly stronger and the team easily noticed her continuing improvement. So it was a real shock and there was a real sense of loss when we found out she couldn’t ride for most of the rest of the trip.

I spent a while at the hospital and then later she and I went all over town looking for an open pharmacy.

Later, back at the Mustard Seed homeless ministry, our host Murdoch set us up with a great room and most of the team volunteered in the dining room. I came in late with Christy, but we still got some good food.

We watched some of Lance Armstrong’s world championship victory and people were firing questions left and right about bike racing. Most of us aren’t avid cyclists so there were a lot of questions about what it takes to be a pro.

A lot of the team went out to go drinking (especially with the lower minimum age), but I stayed in and went to bed, eager to get some good sleep in preparation for the day off.