Wandering or Lost

Day 22: a wonderful Sabbath day of rest and also a chance to visit with my good friends Gord and Jen from Calgary.

Day 23: Canmore to Bragg Creek. 85 miles. 2500 feet elevation. Weather a little windy.

My view as I left Canmore this morning. These are called the Three Sisters, and they’re just some of the magnificent mountains surrounding canmore. Peddling away from the mountains was bittersweet. I am tired of massive elevation changes each day and am grateful for a little easier riding in the Prairies, assuming the wind doesn’t kill me or I get lost (story below).

If you look closely, you’ll see that this looks like a black SUV car sales lot. In fact, it’s a gas station. This was an entourage of SUVs and SWAT vehicles here in canonascus for the G7 summit. Apparently, one of the country leaders needed a Slurpee, and so everybody decided to get gas at the same time. I realized that looking like a bum on a bicycle makes you invisible. I was completely ignored and apparently considered no threat. In fact, you could be quite a threat on a bike with panniers. But as noted earlier by the RCMP, there was nothing nefarious with my behavior.

I tried to have lunch with Prime Minister Carney, but ended up eating by myself along side of beautiful river with even a picnic table. To this point, the trip was going well, and I was en route to having an easy day of about 60 miles. In fact, I had stopped for breakfast and sat down for lunch, thinking I might arrive too early to check in to my vrbo. I was sorely mistaken.

The distinction between wandering and being lost is not complicated. Wandering is when you go from point A to point B, but you really have no idea how you got from point A to point B. Being lost is when you go from point A, and you never get to point B. Technically, if you ever find point B, then you were just wandering. If you have to be rescued, then you are truly lost. Today I did a lot of wandering.

As you might recall, in BC, we learned that things are randomly called Vancouver. For example, the island, a city that’s not on the island, and even a city down in the United States. This is clearly confusing but not as confusing as road naming in Alberta.

In Alberta, they use the word “trail” to describe everything from a 6-in wide dirt path into a field up to and including a four lane highway. Google Maps apparently can’t discern between the highway type trail and the dirt trail.

Accordingly, Google maps routed me twice into the Woods on trails that were truly trails. The first time, the map led me down a dirt track that eventually became nothing more than piles of horse manure. I turned around and went back to the road. The second time, it took me far down a dirt road, labeled a trail, and then suddenly dumped me into the trees with no clear directions as to where the trail went or ended. Terrified that I would end up out in the woods again at the end of a dead-end trail, I turned back to find paved road.

For me, today, Point A, Canmore, and point B, Bragg Creek, were allegedly only 60 miles apart. If you drew a straight line between the two, that 60-mile estimate would be accurate. Unfortunately, my route from point A went at a 90° angle away from the line that went to point B. Eventually, that misdirection was corrected, and I got back onto the line between point A and point B. Unfortunately, I then went off perpendicular the other side of the line, wandering again for several miles and finally returning back to the line. My short day ended up with me arriving a little after 7:00 p.m. at point B having left point A at 7:30 this morning.

Hopefully tomorrow out on the Prairies the roads will be straighter and better marked 🙂