Day 21 - 86km Where the hell is Piapot?

Woke up to a wonderful tailwind and thought it would be a breeze riding into Gull lake with that blustering wind behind us. Just our luck though that as soon as we hit the highway that tailwind abruptly switched directions turning into a horrible head/cross wind from the Northeast, bringing with it some very dark looking storm clouds. Within a few kilometres it had started to rain and let me tell you when it rains it pours! There we were battling the wind and rain with the closest "town" still 25km away. Slowly but steadily we pedalled on, our so called rain jackets quickly soaked through and water dripping off our helmets and streaming down our faces. Two hours later, weather conditions still the same we reached the turn off for Piapot where we decided the best idea was to take refuge and try and wait out the storm.

We turned off of the highway and followed the grid road towards Piapot. Turning into town we quickly the discovered the only place open in town, the Piapot Saloon & Guesthouse. It looked like we had gone back in time to somewhere in the wild west, a real country saloon sat in disrepair in front of us and we were skeptical of what we would find inside. We walked into the bar and were greeted by the two friendly owners who quickly put on a pot of coffee when they saw our shivering bodies. It was when Malkolm asked for a hot chocolate instead that they took a second look at us and asked for our ID's. Thus they discovered that we were not all of age and we could not stay in the bar. They instead offered to set us up a table in the "dog's room". We gladly accepted happy to remain anywhere indoors. The dogs were friendly and the room was warm, we couldn't really ask for more.

Stayed there for lunch even though there were no vegetarian options on the menu. Grilled cheese and fries satisfied our hungry tummys and wasn't too difficult for the kitchen. We had a good chat with the owners and found out they had recently bought the place and moved out from Calgary. They told us the bar was quite popular and doing very well, they admitted the primary reason for this was that there are no police in Piapot. The rancher's can easily drink and drive back home with any worries of getting caught. Apparently drinking and driving is still common occurrence in these parts. Shocking as it was to us, the owners had to come to terms with it or they wouldn't have any business. Another difference between rural and urban lifestyles.

A few hours later we were back on the road under somewhat clearer skies. Full and warm with some Piapot souvenirs we were in good humour and ready to take on the remaining few sprinkles and the nasty wind pushing back at us. Slow progress but eventually we made it into Gull lake, a little damp but not really any worse for the wear. Rather grudgingly we were given a site for the night. The caretaker was quite reluctant to let us stay when she saw us pull up, presumably she thought that with us being young people we were probably hooligans out to party. I bet she was surprised when we were the first ones to bed!

Day 20: 101 Km-Goodbye Gas City

Had a great send off from Medicine Hat, the gas city, and are on our way to Maple Creek! A big thanks to Olwyn for all her amazing organizing in Medicine Hat, it was great to have you and all the others ride out with us for the morning, keep up the great work!

Another big thanks is in order; Joanie, Robyn and Daniel graciously put up with us pedallers in their house for 3 days! Thanks for the home away from home, your hospitality was above and beyond :)

During our rest days in Medicine Hat, I managed to get my first flat tire--actually it was two flat tires at the same time. Unfortunately this happened when we were already late for an interview which we ended up missing as I hobbled my bike to the event. One bonus of this mishap is that now, with the help of Malkolm's expertise, I can successfully fix a flat!

After dropping off a letter at Alberta Environment Minister, Rob Renner's office, we kept a brisk pace into Maple Creek. Again the mosquitoes force us to maintain a 20km/h speed at all times. There is nothing like a swarm of mosquitoes hot on your tail to get you hussling up the hills!


We have successfully crossed Alberta and are now in Saskatchewan--things are looking up!

Day 19 – 110km Mosquito armies and Tar monsters

Hightailed it out of Tillybrook campground this morning with swarms of mosquitoes on our tails! I promise never again to return there for fear of being eaten alive! More then 30 bites later (each) we were starting to get even with the mosquitoes but they seemed to have a never ending army so we waved the white flag and planned our retreat. It was quickly determined that 20km per hour or over was adequate speed to leave our pesky friends behind but any slower and the attacks began again. My legs were burning after some time, but afraid to look over my shoulder and see the swarms, I pushed on.

We cleared 60km before stopping for lunch. We paused only briefly in the morning to get a few shots of a plant burning off sour gas but paid the price with a few more itchy red bumps on our legs. At the 60km mark we reached Suffield and finally a break from all the mozzies. We lunched our standard of hummus wraps at a picnic sight before heading over to the gas station to refill our water. Suffield’s gas station looked like it hadn’t changed a bit from the 70’s or maybe even the 60’s complete with cracked vinyl chairs in the diner.

40km more of boring straight road lay ahead of us and I know for one I was not looking forward to it. The fields seem to stretch on forever, the end never in sight. The monotony is starting to get to me already and it’s only day 3. Who knows how crazy I will be by the time we reach Winnipeg. So I devised a game, amusing for a short time if not very efficient. In my head I called in tar monster (similar to lava monster), the object of the game being to stay on the new blacker patches of pavement with out falling off and succumbing to the tar monster. The only part lacking was that there was no monster as there is in lava monster since I was only playing by myself. That being said I used my vivid imagination and managed to occupy myself for about another 20km before my game reached a premature end due to a lack of new pavement not my lack of interest.

So you can see what kinds of things we have started to occupy ourselves with, children’s games for me, Malkolm has taken to counting anything and everything as well as mooing at any animals we pass and I’m not quite sure what Nadia does, but somehow she seems less bored then the two of us. So I ask you please if you have any amusing suggestions for ways to occupy our time while pedalling please leave them for us! At this point we will try anything! Or almost anything…

Day 18: 114 Km Just Another Day

Today is like any other day in the prairies, the sky is blue, the sun is hot, the roads are straight, and the fields stretch on for miles. Our blog entries may get a bit shorter as things just really don’t change too much. I am also taking far less photos as they all seem to look so similar.

There are a few things of interest that I would like to mention. Number one, this is clearly oil country; number two, people eat a lot of beef; and number three, I really hate mosquitoes.

To start with number one; the fields are dotted with oil drills, or "grasshoppers", here. I’ve noticed that most of them have run dry and are now just bits of infrastructure in the soil. The number of oil and gas transportation trucks going by has increased. In BC you see forest products zipping by; here you see fossil fuel products zipping by on their way to feed their offspring, the F-150. Another interesting thing I have noticed is that a lot of these fields are sponsored, or owned, by oil and gas companies such as EnCana. I’m not totally sure what stipulations this may have for agricultural uses on these fields. If anyone knows more about this, please enlighten me.

Moving on to number two; there are a lot of cows here. At one point in the day we had an oil drilling parts supplier on our left and a slaughterhouse on our right; an environmentalist’s nightmare. Here’s a little tidbit on why being vegetarian is one of the greatest ways to reduce your carbon footprint: Agriculture (and this is mostly meat production) accounts for 18% of global emissions. Now, that number may not mean anything to you on its own, but looked at comparatively with global road transportation emissions it really does mean something. All of the cars and trucks in the whole world account for 17% of global emissions--less than agriculture! Read more and go veg.

Oh ya, and another kind of truck that has been zipping by us are livestock transport trucks; the size of semi’s, with poop splattered out the holes in the sides, and a reaking stench that trails on for about 500m. We really dread the site of these barrelling up in our rearview mirrors which is happening all to often.

And lastly number three; the mosquitoes are vicious here. We arrived at our campsite in Brooks to be immediately swarmed. Jumping around we managed to get into our longs before we got completely massacred. They still managed to bite through our clothing, soaking ourselves in repellent was a necessary misfortune. The rest of the evening consisted of dashing to the shower, dashing back to camp, and diving into our tents; the only safe havens around. We had previously contemplated spending an extra day in Brooks as we are again ahead of schedule, that option has been axed—we are getting out of here ASAP!

In the Belly of the Beast

We are in the “Belly of the Beast” here, as we cycle through busy city streets we are surrounded by the towering buildings of big oil; Shell, Esso, Husky and Encana to name a few. Our messaging will remain strong here, especially when it comes to the tar sands; Canada’s fastest growing source of Greenhouse Gas Emissions. Learn more about the tar sands and the role they are playing in Canada’s contribution to the climate crisis as well as their role in causing Canada’s shameful track record in international climate negotiations. We won the “Colossal Fossil Award” in Poznan last year. Shame.

Met up with the Pedal for the Planet Prairies and Yukon crew! Malkolm who has cycled all the way from Whitehorse in the Yukon, Jeh and Lisa from Edmonton and Nikita who has come out to be our driver are all in the city and we are set to cause a ruckus at Jim Prentice, our environment minister and Calgary MP’s, constituency office.

We arrive at the office; three climate action super cyclists, one Grim Reaper (the bearer of death), one unemployed wind turbine, 20 cyclists and activists and three media teams. We are ready to rock this! We gather outside and give some shorts speeches before heading into the office to ensure that our letter gets right onto Jim’s desk so he doesn’t miss it when he gets back from his canoe trip in the North. In the office, Jeh delivers the letter and then we proceed to really make some noise. One of Jim’s staffers isn’t too fond of us “Please keep the noise down, there are people on the phone with other constituencies” Jeh replies, “We just want to sing a song in your honour” and then we all start screaming… “ooh its hot in here! There’s too much carbon in the atmosphere! Take action! Take action! And get some satisfaction!” and then “when I say “Jim”, you say “where are you ?!” Jim! Where are you?! Jim! Where are you?!

It was pretty awesome, too bad Jim missed all the excitement.

That evening we gave a presentation at a community centre. Ourselves and Malkolm shared some photos and stories of the trip so far and then Alex from the Youth Delegation to Copenhagen shared his experiences last year in Poznan and further shed light on Canada’s embarrassing and detrimental role in international climate negotiations.

Day 17 - 96km Miles of blue skies and canola fields

After a long "rest" in Calgary were back on the good ol' number one. Set off this morning with just 3 of us, Nadia, myself and Steve. Malkolm running a little behind due to a misbehaving lock falling and breaking some spokes and a few other things. We had some great bike trails leaving Calgary and didn't actually get onto the highway until we had put about 20km behind us.

We found it funny that as we rode Steve constantly was riding on the rumble strips, something that annoys us to no end but we realized he has duel suspension on his bike and probably wasn't even noticing the bumps! That duel suspension sure sucks your energy though and he was very tired by the end of the day! Malkolm caught up to us around 30km into the ride, speedy guy that he is. We continued on for about another hour before stopping for lunch in Strathmore. Nothing too exciting between Strathmore and Gleichen just lots and lots of Canola fields. When I asked what I can do to keep myself entertained in the prairies the only answer I received was to count the wheat fields...this could be a fairly boring next two weeks! We did luck out though and find some sprinklers which were a very welcome cool down from the hot sun. That was until I started feeling sticky and a little weird after and we realized it may not have been just water spraying out...feeling fine now though so no permanent damage done!

We arrived in Gleichen just after 4pm to find Nikita (our driver) at the welcome sign. Apparently that was to be our "campsite" for the night. No facilities aka washrooms were to be found so we set off to explore the town in hopes of finding a public washroom. Gleichen didn't appear to be the friendliest of towns we noted as we absorbed the bars on windows and solid metal doors of all the shops. We eventually found a gas station where we assumed we could use the toilet but when I entered I noticed a sign stating that washrooms were for staff only and under no circumstances was anyone else to use the bathroom. By this point we were getting a little desperate so I asked at the counter if there were washrooms anywhere in town. I guess we looked harmless enough and she took pity and allowed us use of the bathroom. While we were waiting we apparently witnessed a shoplifting and/or gas and run incident without even realizing it. I guess these things are common in Gleichen because the kid hanging outside of the store casually asked the owner "you guys get jacked again?" and the response "yah again...guess we better call the RCMP" Another indication of a not so safe and friendly little town. Needless to say we made sure to lock our bikes and store everything else in the car that night.
We went to sleep a little nervous about staying out in the open and that we might have some unwanted visitors in the night, but this morning when we woke up all was just how we had left it. Now were back on the road heading for the provincial park of Kinbrook Island.

Day 16: 142 Km-Out of the mountains and into the city!

Broke our record of longest day cycled today! Banff-->Calgary!

Through the mountains outside of Canmore we came across the Lafarge Plant. Lafarge is the world's biggest cement manufacturer. Cement is the most widely used building material in the world and contributes approximately 7-8% of global GHG emissions.

Again, we have had the pleasure of avoiding the Trans Canada for the most part by taking H. 1A which has no semi's on it! The Rockies are now behind us and we spent most of the day cruising on downhill and flat! I spoke too soon, there was a GIANT hill coming out of Cochrane, we have named it "Cochrane Pass" as it was equivolent if not worse than the passes through the Rockies!

A big shout out to the BC Pedal for the Planet Crew, especially Emma who is 12 years old and cycled all the way from Sicamous to Calgary with us, what an accomplishment! Thanks to everyone who has cycled with us and has helped to organize this great campaign. A special thanks to our tour leader, J.D, and our driver, Laurie---we will miss you all!
As we enter the city limits we are faced with views of sprawling suburbia and the annoyance of having to wait at stoplights and attempt to move in harmony with motor vehicles.