Day 19. Sat May 12, 2001. 123 km. Total 1491 km. Between Beiseker and Drumheller.
The wind, the wind, always the wind.

It was windy today, just for a change. I'm starting to feel like that Douglas Adams character, the Rain God. Don't let anyone tell you there are no mountains in the prairies. They're here, it's just that they're horizontal instead of vertical. Heading east out of Calgary (I was quite glad to shake the dust of that place off my shoes, let me tell you), the wind was coming from the southeast, so it was blowing against me, on my left side. As soon as I turned north on Hwy 9, it was pushing me along, and boy, that's when you can start travelling. Hwy 9 staircases its way north, then east, then north, and whenever I was going east, it was like going up the mountain, and north was down the mountain. I was dreading the town of Beiseker, where 9 turns east for good, 65 km to Drumheller.

I can't describe what this wind is like. It was almost as bad today as Kamloops, and it was ALL DAY. In a way, it was worse, because I didn't have a friendly port waiting for me at the end. Flowing is a better word than blowing for what the wind does here; it just flows on and on, an ocean of air. At one point I saw a small eagle-like bird flying against it, and he was flying backwards. I feel for ya, pal.

Is it ever going to stop? Of course not, the wind's been against me most of this trip, why would it stop now? You can't do anything about it; if the wind is going to blow, it's going to blow (flow). All you can do is put the gears low enough to maintain a pace and try to develop ways of ignoring it and not worrying about the snail's pace you're making. Thinking that the roaring of wind in my ears was having a psychological effect, I tried putting in my earplugs. It actually helped a bit, although it meant I couldn't listen to my Walkman. It also made my breathing sound like I was wearing scuba gear. At Beiseker I thought I'd wait a bit and see if it would die down. Nope. At 4:30, I headed towards Drumheller, hoping I could made the 65 km. 37 km later, at 7:30, I decided I wasn't going to make it and I knocked on the door of Bonnie Miller and her two kids Desree and Tyrell. They seemed like a very nice family but except for a brief chat, I didn't socialize much. They did show me their new kittens though, and they also had a new calf that had to be hand fed. I went to bed early.

Once again, the theme of starting this trip too early asserts itself. I'm sure that in a month or two, the fields will be exploding with green and gold, but right now the land is a dead-looking straw color. Even the weather is drab; the sky is so hazy that you hesitate to call it sunny. It doesn't make for pretty scenery; there hasn't been much point in taking many pictures.

I got one of the worst shocks of my life today. Just yesterday I mentioned Douglas Adams, one of my favorite authors, and today I was in the Drumheller 7-11 paging through the Calgary Herald and I read that he died yesterday. He was only 49.

Adams work captured a lot of my own worldview. It's often said that truth is stranger than fiction, and there's a very good reason for that: fiction is planned. One of the biggest philosophical mistakes I think people make is to think that everything that happens was meant to happen. "Things happen for a reason," they say, and think it's deep. Adams' fiction revolved around the idea that things often happen for ridiculous inconsequential reasons, or for no particular reason at all.

If Adams still exists in any form, I imagine his only regret is that he couldn't have died the day before. It would have appealed to his sense of humor to have died on a Thursday ("I never could get the hang of Thursdays."). As it is, his death still seems like something out of one of his books. Random, unpredictable and senseless. Farewell, hoopy frood. You knew where your towel was.

I'm not really in much of a mood to write about the rest of the day, but here's how it went. I needed to start earlier to avoid the wind, so I was on the road by 7. It didn't take long to get to Drumheller, which has a great descent down into the badlands valley. Drumheller might as well be called 'The Town That Dinosaurs Built.' It has dinosaur sculptures on almost every corner; there are even maps available for those who don't want to miss any of them (I guess). The first thing you see when you come into town is a Lizard World. I didn't think those places actually existed. I climbed the World's Tallest Dinosaur, and then visited the tiny church (seats six) before going to the Royal Tyrell Museum where I spent the next four hours or so. Fabulous place. Strange to find it out in the middle of nowhere like that.

I didn't do the entire valley drive, but turned south to see the hoodoos. They were a bit of a disappointment; just a small formation that you can walk around in about 30 seconds. Pulling up from the highway, they look about as consequential as a roadside McDonalds. They're very photogenic from up close though. They reminded me a lot of the sandstone cliffs of Vancouver's Point Grey. The stone has the same consistency, very crumbly and soft. Signs were posted telling people not to climb on them, which everybody cheerfully ignored. What a bunch of idiots. People had even carved grafitti on the sides of some of them.

In East Coulee, I stopped in the local bar for a cold drink, and stayed for an hour just because the people were so friendly and interesting. The bartender, Gaye, kept refillling my pop and refusing to charge me. A guy named Brooksie looked like any typical rancher, but he's spent a lot of his life recently in Mongolia teaching the people there how to farm and be self-sufficient. Another man whose name I've forgotten (except that it was Dutch) told me how he'd visited every province except Newfoundland on an RV trip he took as a young hippy with a group of friends. Why not Newfoundland? Ran out of money.

There was a guy sitting in the corner, drunk as a lord, insisting that "there ain't no damn Buddha, there ain't no Allah, therez just the Son of the One True God and I know, cuz I'm him." The only name he'd admit to was Zebadee, but that may have just been a Biblical joke.

Finally, Mary works as a reporter for the local paper (which she gave me a copy of). She kept saying that East Coulee was one of the most interesting and unique places in Alberta, and she had dozens of stories. Here's one: When coal was mined in this area, it was particularly good coal, and burned very well. The sellers spattered it with red paint and gave it the name 'Wildfire.' One time they forgot to spatter one of the shipments, and some woman way out in Winnepeg complained that she got the wrong coal, and it just didn't burn as well as the Wildfire stuff. So, they took it back, gave it the spatters, and sent the same coal right back to her again. No complaints.

So, I was in there for a while, listening and answering questions about my trip. And they kept pushing food on me! Chips, pop, beef jerky.

It's funny how I'm starting to hoard food. I've got food I bought in Banff that I just haven't gotten around to eating. In fact, I've still got some of those peanut butter servings I took from the Rogers Pass motel. I just don't have much interest in eating once I've camped, and on the road I'll usually eat at a cafe somewhere. Speaking of which, I weighed myself at the Tyrell museum and I don't seem any lighter, but I think I look a little lighter. Time will tell.

I went on past the town of Dorothy, and then I had to climb out of what was so fun to fly down into. Up on the plains again, the wind immediately became a problem. It was blowing south today, sweepin 'cross the plain on the way to Oklahoma I guess. I was headed due east on Rt 570. I was originally hoping to make it to Hanna, but soon decided I'd never make the northward leg against that wind. So I thought I'd be satisfied just making it to the junction. Even that didn't seem doable so I knocked instead, about 10 km out of Dorothy.

It was another good choice. The Roes family took me in with open arms. I talked a long time with Andy and Sheena, and they told me a lot about the area. I mentioned how dry all the fields look, and apparently it's not the season. I'm in an area called the Palliser Triangle, roughly from Drumheller to Medicine Hat to Saskatoon. It gets very little rain, has little opportunity for irrigation and isn't good for much but cattle farming. You know the stereotype of the Prairie winter? Well, they had no snow at all this year.

Andy's nephew sings in a band called Nickelback which is apparently fairly successful in Vancouver. I'll have to check it out when I get back. We went over my roadmaps together, and he suggested that I didn't have to go all the way north to Hanna to get on Hwy 9, but could just continue east on 570. It gets a lot closer to Hwy 9 over by the town of Oyen. I think I'll do that.

Andy and Sheena have five kids, three of which still live at home. They were off visiting their grandmother in Calgary. Danny, the youngest, is a dinosaur nut, and the other two were named Jenny and Sharlie. Plus the two other sisters. Poor kid, I have three sisters myself -g-

I spent the evening watching TV (X-Files night), and doing a little magic for the kids. Andy has four satellite dishes (!)

It was Mother's Day today by the way. In Drumheller, I called Mom to say hello. She and my sisters had been down to the library to check out my site, and she was full of encouragement, which was nice. It occurred to me that I may have been overdoing the moroseness (morosity?) factor a bit; I'm feeling a lot better about my trip now that I'm over the mountains. I just wish the wind would lay off. Getting an early start is the only way to survive it, even if my idea of an early start isn't quite the same as Andy's!

"Do you realize there's nothing between us and the pole to break the wind but the occasional stray reindeer?" --David Eddings

So help me, if David Eddings drops dead tomorrow, I'll be seriously freaked out.

Not much to do today but travel. After packing up and showering, I headed east on 570 as Andy suggested. It must have been freshly paved; black and totally smooth. That didn't last all the way though -- it got much more ragged after crossing 884. I made good time, polishing off 100 km shortly after noon.

There are so many nice people around here. It seems a lot easier to find friendly families to spend the night with. Almost every driver passing by would raise a hand from the wheel in greeting, and when I stopped for a drink, one guy stopped to see if I needed any help, which has NEVER happened before.

Andy told me this road was isolated, and it was. There were a few towns, but they were all 2 km up a road, or 5 km down, and I couldn't be bothered to go out of my way. In that fashion I bypassed Sunnynook and Big Stone. After 100 km I ran out of water, and suddenly farmhouses were nowhere to be found. The town of Oyen was 35 km away, which is no big deal first thing in the morning, but after 100 km it's a major trip for a guy getting thirsty. I did finally manage to find a farmhouse though.

The wind was kicking up again -- today from the south, but angling slightly to the east too, or I would never have gotten as far as I did. The town of Oyen was an oasis, but gusts of wind were blowing dust everywhere. Clouds of it would go down the street like buses as I sat in a cafe. It's not a pleasant way to explore a town.

Everybody I talk to says that this wind is so unusual, and that this year has been really strange. Even the guidebooks say that it usually blows east. Just my luck, I guess.

About that cafe. I found it because it was right next to a place with a big sign reading "Library." I went in, and found that it wasn't a library, it was a bar. Apparently, the owner thought that since that's where all the kids said they were anyway, he might as well call it that. Pretty funny, but at the time I was vaguely annoyed at being misled.

The restaurant was called C & E's Cafe, and if you want a lot of food for a low price, order a large serving of fries. You'll get a mountain for $2.50. Really good fries too.

Oyen did have a real library, but it was only open long enough for me to check my mail. The letter that my family tried to send me apparently didn't go through, but I got another from my sister, and also one from John Henderson, the guy from the CBC I met outside Lytton.

I went on despite the wind because it seemed to be angling more eastward, and made it all the way to Sibbald. I had my doubts, because it was a grungy looking little town, but I found the largest house and tried there. I have mixed feelings about the people there. On the one hand, this was the first time I was ever offered a bed, but on the other hand, these people seemed slightly strange. It was just a man and a woman, empty nesters (which explained the huge house -- they had eight kids!) and one of the man's employees. It was all as grungy as the town, and while they were friendly enough, there was just a sense of being a bit too 'clingy' too. I'm not the first cyclist they've had come through here. I guess maybe they're just lonely.

And wouldn't you know it? My arms have finally stopped peeling from the burn I got in BC, and I get burned again. Not much, just a patch on my upper right arm above the tan line because the wind kept blowing my sleeve up.

So, I'm now just a stone's throw from the Saskatchewan border, so barring catastrophe this is my last night in Alberta. An interesting thing about the roads here that I haven't mentioned yet (and that you should be prepared for if you ever bike here). They call them 'rumble strips,' and I noticed them right away coming out of the mountains. Running just outside the white line on the highway was a line of pits, like a tank tread. I thought at first that it might have just been sloppy construction, but it was so regular and persistant that I decided it was intentional, and assumed that it was meant to 'wake up' drivers if they should stray outside the lane. Turned out I was right; smaller roads had the same thing, only along the center line, and when a long straight stretch of highway came to an intersection with a stop sign, cuts would be made across the lane to warn drivers. Not a bad idea, in my opinion, even if it can be a little hard on bikes.

Part 1

Sask