Day 13 - Stoney Nakoda Resort to Just east of Calgary

Hey Everyone,

Today we got up fairly early and had all our stuff packed and ready to load on the bike by 7. We went to the continental breakfast then headed out. The ground was still a little wet from all of the rain and it was still overcast. It cleared up pretty quickly and was sunny before we knew it.

We are now pretty much out of the mountains and this was one of the last pictures we got of them. It was a bitter sweet goodbye - we're going to miss the scenery but certainly not the hills.Also, the clouds today were really neat - they were getting trapped by the hills and were really low.

One of our last mountain sightings.

With the mountains at our back we kept biking. We climbed Scott Lake Hill a later on and it is the highest point in elevation on the Trans Canada highway. This confused us a little bit since we assumed Rogers Pass or Kicking Horse Pass would be the highest point.

A little later on we were going down a hill and the steering became really wobbly and the whole bike was handling really strange. We stopped right away and sure enough the front tire was going flat. Our first flat! Luckily it was the front tire so it was real easy to pop it off. We though the metal burr below was the problem but it was just stuck in the tire and didn't puncture the tube. We found a small hole near the valve - if it was any closer we probably wouldn't have been to patch it.

Suspected flat culprit.

Bike propped up on our water jug.

We got it all patched up and made it to Calgary. We knew were getting close since we could see all of the sprawling suburbs. We decided to take the highway straight through Calgary since it was the fastest route. We somewhat regreted this decision since the traffic through the city was quite heavy which doesn't make for fun biking. It was the worst traffic we have biked in so far. We stopped at 7-11 for a bathroom break and a slurpee. Before we knew it we were thorough the city.

Just after we were through Calgary we noticed a really wierd wobble in the bike. We pulled over and inspected the bike - eventually we found the problem. The rear tire had a few 3 or 4 inch bulges in it right near the rim. They looked pretty bad so we decided to walk the bike to the nearest bike store which was about 9km away. After about thirty minutes of walking and getting eaten alive by mosquitos we decided to take our chances and ride the bike to the store. The tire held up and we bought two new tires and 2 sets of brake pads. We then walked across the street to Sobeys and picked up dinner.

Now that we had a spare tire we were much more confident riding the bike with the messed up tire. We made it to the campsite we were staying at for the night and ate a delicious dinner: salad, cabbage rolls, and sweet and sour pork...and a few bud light limes. After dinner we replaced the rear tire. We discovered that because of the rear fender we never noticed how much the rear tire had worn down. A guy who worked at the campground chatted us up quite a bit and even looked up some maps and the weather for us.

New tire, old tire, and front tire.

We did our tire repairs and changed the front set of brake pads. Thats about all that happened today.

-Chris and Patricia