Day 23

6/14/09: Bottom of Segment 18 and top of segment 19; Jasper, Alberta to Hinton, Alberta; 50 miles

Sometimes you just kind of luck into a great day. Well, without a gazillion people telling us how hard or easy this particular segment was, we went into it expecting the unexpected……..and it was good…….very good.

But to digress a bit. Last night we went to visit Ryan’s second set of angles, Michael  and Sarah, the people who had given him a lift when he pulled the rear changer into the spokes. Ryan took Michael a 12 of Molson Canadian. We rode over to their campsite, and I must say that they were a good 10 min ride from our campsite. I mean this Whistler campground in Jasper is a mega gonzo huge place. It stretches for miles. So we ride over there around 10pm, while it’s still light out.

Got there as Michael was cooking the family dinner, he his wife and their two children. We cracked a beer and just sat around and chewed the fat for a bit, talking schools in the US and schools in Ireland, our families, our histories, you name it. We had a really nice time chatting with folks whose backgrounds and lives are very different than what we’re accustomed to in the US. They travel quite extensively, and have been down under, in the US, Canada, and many other places, so they’re really well rounded and worldly.

Their children were very well mannered and quite engaging in our conversations. I’d say that says quite a bit about their upbringing and their parents. Well, we’re just chatting away as it’s getting darker and darker. We, Ryan and I, are offered chips and cheese puffs and bloody inhale them as fast as Sarah can hand us the bags. All of a sudden I look at my watch and it’s like 1am. So we bid them farewell, and ride off into total darkness. At 52, my eyes just are not what they used to be, so I kind of relied on young buck Ryan to be my eyes, as he rode in the middle of the road and I just tried to keep his black silhouette right in front of me.

         I swear, it was total chaos for me, not being able to see but a black figure in front of me, no road, no chuckholes, no nothing. And it was pretty damned cold to boot. So we’re riding along, both shivering, anxious to get to our cozy warm little sleeping bags to hibernate as we’re cruising through the blackness. Now we get back to near camp and Ryan turns in this little side trail, as we were camping in the walk-in section. And I was about 100 yrds behind him at this point, taking it slow into the walk-in area. And he turns and I don’t. And I swear for the life of me, after walking around this area for the whole day, at dark I was dead lost. So I’m chanting….Ryan…..Ryan….Ryan in a soft voice, so as to not wake up the sleeping tenters in our area. Nothing. Finally, he calls out to me, and I’m able to orient myself, and find the access trail back to our tents. Beline to the sleeping bag. Put on tights, fleece and socks, and dig deep into the sleeping bag, finally hitting the hay at 1:30am.

We had agreed that wake-up time would be later today, and that it was, as we crawled out of the tents at about 9am, way off of our usual 6:30-7am wake time. And it was already quite warm out. Both of us were in full tear-down mode, leaving the Whistler campground within an hour of waking. We headed straight down to a little bakery/coffee shop that Ryan had discovered yesterday – The Bear’s Paw Coffee Shop – in downtown Jasper. This Danish was outstanding, and I went back for seconds – and it could have been thirds and fourths. Slammed a coffee and off we went, down Rt. 16 east towards the city of Hinton.

Now this was odd, because we entered the Rt. 16 highway on a descent, and then continued to descend on 16, and we descended and descended. This is a nice single-lane highway with a great, wide berm. So we’re 30 min in and still descending, more of a very gradual descent. One hour in and still descending, and the landscape is changing, changing from the lush, high mountain environment to more of a drier, platuea/mountain environment. We were still along the mighty Athabasca River, as by this time it’s really big, and really flowing like a  high country river. And we’re still going on a gradual descent. An hour and a half in, and we’re still going net downhill, not that stair step stuff I was doing yesterday where I descent, climb, descend, climb.

I told Ryan, “finally we’re doing a REAL descent here.” And by 2 hrs in we were still descending and averaging over 15 mph. The mountains were getting smaller, the landscape continuing to get drier. Finally, about 2:20 in we hit a small bump, and I joke to Ryan that I was disappointed that I had to shift out of the big ring. Then we hit a big bump, about a 15 min climb in the middle ring – cake compared to what we had been doing for the past 3 weeks.

And back to the gradual descent again, for miles and miles. And then we notice…….no mountains on either side of us. We each smiled as we talked about it, about how strange it was not to see mountains on your side, having lived with that for the past 2 weeks. Ahead of us was foothills and gentle bumps of land off in the distance. We WERE out of the mountains….in one day.

Another 30 min of gradual descending and we were in Hinton. It’s a strip community, in that all of the services are on service roads that parallel Rt 16. It seems this is a gateway community for the Jasper National Park area. We treat ourselves to a motel, after knocking off 50 miles of riding in 3:25 hrs. Got a nice little place with wifi, refrigerator, cable and dble beds. Heck we were in heaven.

         Got a ton of work done, skyped friends and family, and then……off to eat before watching Ryan’s Lakers in the NBA Finals. We were dead set on a Subway, the sign of which we’d seen just outside of town. So we get there……and no 12-inch sub deal. Nope. Not here. The 12-inchers are double the 6-inch price. I was devastated. Ok, on to the IGA grocery store, where we bought 2 8-inch subs each, and a rotisserie chicken as an insurance policy against still feeling hungry.

We inhaled the subs and I dug into the rotisserie chicken like a Neanderthal, pulling off and devouring wings and drumsticks like a primeval hunter, sitting outside our motel room, in the sun, just feasting away.

Well, Lakers won. Now Ryan is going to do a “sweets” mission to IGA. We’re talking about a big chocolate cake or doughnuts. More on that tomorrow. Late……..Pete