Bikely map

It was raining when I woke up, so I took my time packing up to allow the rain a chance to lighten before getting ony my way (which I eventually did at around 10:20). Through the foothills, I seemed to taking about 3/4 of the time to cover a given distance as I’d been averaging in the mountains, and by the time they were gone (and it was just still-frequently-rolling prairie, with coulees and ravines and the like), I was making close to one and a half times my mountain pace.

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Bikely map

Figuring that I wanted to catch another shower (the daytimes were starting to get pretty warm and, still having bits of mountain to climb, sweaty) before leaving Fernie, I again took my merry time waking up and breaking camp, and got myself to the public pool at around 11:00am. It was due to open at 2pm, so I wandered around town a bit looking for a place where I could get a pocket Alberta road atlas, and for an internet terminal to use (guessing–correctly–that there ought to be one, even on a holiday weekend, since Fernie is something of a resort town).

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Bikely map

Not yet having seen that the Cranbrook Library was closed for the entire weekend, I figured on getting a slightly later start to the day, in order to cut back on the need to otherwise amuse myself in town. Consequently, by the time I’d fed myself breakfast, broken camp, and checked out of the campgrounds, it was pretty much dead on 11am (the check-out time). Having done 3 riding days since Nelson, it was time to reprovision, so I swung by the grocery store and did so. Then I swung by the library, actually checked the hours rather than the mere open/closedness of it (like I had the previous evening), and discovered that it was closed for the entire long weekend.

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Bikely map

I woke up at around 4:30am, figuring that I mist be in Mountain time already, and it must therefore be 5:30am already. It was cold enough, and I was trying to reach Lethbridge late enough on Monday (or any time on Tuesday) that I decided to catch a little extra sleep (my paper record keeps saying that I have a short enough day ahead, but then I keep overshooting my distance estimate and making it wrong, so I’ve changed the wording here).

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Bikely map

When I was waking up and going through the motions of breaking camp (most of which, like repacking the sleeping bag, rolling the thermarest back up, etc. are done without cracking open the tent fly) a family defied my expectations and came to the playground with their children at around 7am. I could hear the children playing, and the parents telling them that they could go and play on one of the other objects as soon as both of them were ready to play on it, and things like that.

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Bikely map

Woke up and headed out to reprovision at the Kootenay Co-op at around 8am. Grabbed a raspberry croissant for breakfast at a nearby cafe, and hit the road by 9am. I had some slight mechanical problems with my rear rack again (having raised it a little, it was now high enough to really clear the dropouts and swing over to rub against the spokes; I loosened the clamps and lowered it about 1/8-1/4″ so that the dropouts could pin it away from the wheel). Caught a nice mountain morning pic

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Bikely map

I woke up at around 5am, and decided that since I was going to be a chilly up near this summit, regardless of whether or not I was sleeping, and that since I had over 90km to ride to Nelson, I should just make an early start. I was a little sluggish, but having been a little more lax on bear management (no self respecting bear would wander so far into such a cold area), was still able to hit the road by around 7am.

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Bikely map

Having gotten in late (though without the need to make myself dinner) the night before, and because it was raining hard for much of the morning, I slept in until around 9am, and was slow enough getting going that I didn’t reach the grocery store in Grand Forks to top up a few provisions until a little after 11am. It being Mothers’ Day, and having a pair of mother-folk who needed calling, I called my cell company just after the provision run to see what sort of coverage I could expect for the rest of the day. Getting the response that I was pretty close to the last of it, I called to send my best wishes for the day, but it kind of depressed me.

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Bikely map

It was a rainy morning, so I slept in until 8am, and was subsequently able to get up and dressed, break camp and have breakfast quickly enough to be back on the road by 9:40. After a very short bit of descent, the climb continued, and I got another nice picture of the view

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Bikely map

I woke up and it was cold enough (and the tent was damp enough both from the cold and from having been pitched in the rain the night before) that I was quite slow getting myself out of my sleeping bag to actually begin the day. This lag pushed my start time back to 8:45am from the usual 8:00am.

In spite of the conditions in/around the tent, it was actually a rather nice day, and I didn’t get terribly far before the turn off towards DRAO (note that DRAO was a point of interest for me largely because my friend Tim did a work term there) near this little vista:

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