On further refinements of this year's bike holiday

After a certain amount of thought and fiddling around with Google Maps which is an extremely useful tool when planning bike trips, I have decided that the basic shape of my trip will be to take the train to Jasper, then bike to Saskatoon, via the Icefields Parkway and Drumheller. Not the most ambitious trip I have ever contemplated but one that I want to do. The Icefields Parkway came into the mix via the blog of a Frenchwoman who warm showered at Margo's a few year back while I happened to be there. Her account of the Icefield Parkway, combined with my recent journey by train from Jasper to Edmonton, persuaded me that it would be more fun to have some more time in the Canadian Rockies than to leave them early on via the Athabasca River. I may live to regret this decision as the season will be high in the Rockies. ;-)

And "high in the Rockies" is another reason for my decision as in the last two weeks I have fallen for John Denver's "Rocky Mountain High". While I had been aware of the song, mostly through Doonesbury, I had never actually heard it! It makes a good case for mountains.

The Royal Tyrrell Museum and the related dinosaurs, etc. should explain why of Drumheller.

On the start of the biking season

Well, it has begun. Yesterday, I rode to a protest rally against Bill 21. Today, I rode to work and back. There were the usual early biking season posterior complaints, but I bribed myself with supper from Chalet Bar-B-Q, as consumed by five generations of my family.

On a slooooow start to the biking season

My Mother is on a trip to Norway and Venice as I write. (Technically, she is in Venice right now.) This trip has meant that I have had the use of a car for about two weeks which I have enjoyed but it has delayed the start of my biking season. Not that I mind too much. Yesterday, there was freezing rain. I passed some cyclists in the car and thought they looked really, really miserable. Today, there was 10 cm of snow! It would okay, except that my boss (who is a cyclist of only modest tenacity) biked into work last Thursday and I hadn't. When I told her that she had embarassed me, she said she would take that as a compliment!

In other biking news (or at least so I hope), I booked a cheapish ticket on the Canadian to Jasper in August. The rough plan is to bike Eastwards until about Saskatoon and fly back. On the other hand, I might bike to Prince Rupert, take the ferry to Vancouver Island, bike to Nanaimo and take a ferry to Vancouver. The possibilities are endless.