Chinese Broccoli

May 25: REVELSTOKE TO BOWDEN

For breakfast I buy Allison a Nanaimo bar in honour of our friend Andrew who is from there. She enjoys it and decides once tour is over she will be moving to Nanaimo and taking over stewardship of a private island.

The highlight of the drive from Revelstoke to Calgary, is, for a brief while, pulling over for fifteen minutes for road crews working on a rockslide on the Trans-Canada Highway. We all get out and take pictures and contemplate having a word with the driver of the Toyota Corolla who kept slowing down to 20km/h in every tunnel so far. It's pretty awesome to just hang out and stand around in the middle of the biggest highway in one of the biggest countries in the world, and I am just about to start doing yoga stretches in the westbound lane when the road suddenly opens again. Oh well.

Noon: We are driving through Glacier National Park listening to CCR. This is pretty excellent.

2:30: We cross into Mountain Time. We're listening to the Zombies, one of the singles collections. The Zombies are a longtime favourite band of mine but if you listen to their singles all at once while driving through the mountains staring out the window, you realize most of their songs are about the exact same thing.

1. I want you back.
2. I'm not over her, come back later.
3. Maybe I'll take you back, you never know.
4. You're not ready to date yet, call me later.
5. So you're really never coming back, huh?

Closure issues much, Zombies?

2:32: We cross into Alberta.

2:43: We realize that welcome centre was fake, and we really cross into Alberta. I have collected a new province! There is a sign saying we're extremely likely to crash into a bear for the next 15km.

3:04 WE HAVE SEEN A BABY MOOSE! I TOTALLY WIN!

3:05-3:15: [debate about whether this was really a baby moose or an elk, caribou, etc.]

4:10: Terrifying Indian gas station featuring two toilets back to back in ladies' room, no stall doors. (Allison and I go separately rather than together.) Sign on the Trans-Canada Highway warns we are now in a Rural Crime Watch Area.

Finally we arrive in Calgary. The show is at the University of Calgary in the student centre, which is labyrinthine and confusing in exactly the Spinal Tap can't-find-the-gig way you're thinking. Derek has his friend Laura, an archaeologist, pick him up and take him into town, and I hitch a ride to the nearest C-Train light rail stop where I take the train to some weird psuedo-hipster-but-not-really part of town and within minutes have talked someone into giving me a free cupcake and met a siamese cat named Boom Boom. Unfortunately Calgary peaked there, as the rest of the neighbourhood was pretty much closed, and it started to rain on me (and my computer, etc.) while I wandered leisurely into downtown. The transit is free throughout the downtown core, but I'm not sure why that's even necessary since it's only about six blocks long. They have one of those tall towers all the Canadian cities have, too. You never know when you might need one I guess.

Calgary is very new money/small town/weird vibe, the downtown being a strange combination of business district, awful and expensive restaurants, and cowboy stores. We were told Calgary is such a rich town that even people at McDonald's make $15/hour, which explains why all the hotels were so expensive we had to get the hell outta town after the show. Davey drove us through sheets of fog in oil country until we landed at a roadside motel in Bowden, Alberta—it was the one that didn't have an exotic dancing club attached to it, but I can't remember its name. If you're ever in the area, though, it should be pretty easy to find.