7:00am breakfast followed by a quick portage of the bags down to the loading zone for the guides to load into the van. I'm not sure how they did this everyday whilst not completely losing their sanity? Mind you, some may argue that they were completely insane to do it in the first place, but as usual they were there, prepared and cheerful.
Today we were to head towards Waterton Lakes and the Prince of Wales Hotel via the Chief Mountain International Highway. Hmmm - 'Mountain International'? Yes - we climb more mountains and we cross the border into Canada. Passport at the ready, and having memorised the simple route guide for the day, I proceeded to set forth - getting as far as my bike propped up against a wall of the hotel and being blocked in by a gazillion others! 5 years later, I finally manage to liberate the beast, check tyre pressure (no more tyre issues since the multiple blow out day in Tour 1), fill my bidons and hit the road just when everyone else was getting into the Prince of Wales 82km away!
Not that dramatic really, but it was the reason I missed the excitement on the road just out from the hotel - Bears!
Apparently a few of the riders had seen both a brown bear and a black bear on the side of a peak quite close to the road - wow! Upon arriving on the scene, a few tour members were still checking out the creatures. Not sure why - by this time the beasts had shuffled up the mountain: I couldn't see the brown bear at all (although ppl kept pointing at it and saying "there it is!"), and the black bear was a mere fly-speck on the distant horizon as he crossed the Rockies whilst giving us the finger. Pfftttt - big deal!
Jabe was one of these members, so after he finished pretending to see the things, he and I pedalled off for a nice two man paceline toward the Canadian border. The roads of yesterday (the first part of the journey was retraced) were far nicer than before: a slight tailwind and downhill meant we were humming along. To our own close bear encounter!
It was over in seconds but I still carry the mental impression to this day: Jabe in front, me close behind, both of us going fast on a slightly curving slightly downhill section of road. From left to right straight across the road runs a black bear, body pointed toward the bushes he's heading to but head oriented 90 degrees straight toward us. He looks panicked - I think my eyeballs popped out. Not really sure how close he was, but I can distinctly recall his two ears, like some teddy bears, popped up off his head, a short stubby tail, and the body of a teenage sized bear. I'm pretty sure if we had arrived 10 seconds earlier at that piece of road we might have had a VERY close encounter of the collision kind!
I kept pedalling sort of, but I was a bit stunned and drifted off Jabe's tail into the center of the road before coming to, riding back up to him and offered up a poetic insight into my amazement - I think I said "Wow"! Lame, but "wow" said it all.
Moving on, Jabe and I ate up the miles to the base of a steepish but short hill on Chief Mountain International Highway. Well, it looked short - doesn't it end just round that bend? I took off like a scalded cat, determined to beat Jabe up one stinking hill! I did beat him up that one - unfortunately the same one continued at the top of the bend and as per usual, Jabe floated past me whilst I ground up at my glacial rate (it appears to indicate on the guide notes that the hill is 8km on the map but it wasn't that anything like that as I recall - 4km maybe?). At the top, the van had stopped - this was a collection point for some refreshments before a downhill and the run into the US/Canada border. I decided to go down the hill partway again - about half, and then edged up it once more. It's funny - climbing the hills wasn't a high, but finishing them was, and as I got acclimated I looked forward to them more: well maybe not so much them, but their completion and the satisfaction thereof.
Setting off from the stop point, we rode on towards our destiny. As we were approaching the US/Canada border, myself and other riders arrived and collected at a spot just shy of the border itself so we could all get our stories straight about why we were hauling huge quantities of dr... eerrmm, A. why we wanted to leave such a wonderful place like the US to go to such a forsaken hell-hole like Canada (this is the story for the US side) and B. Why the hell Canadian officials should let a bunch of smelly cyclists, possibly carting vast quantities of dr... from the Wild West which is Montana into their lovely country (the Canadian side cover).
Amassing behind the two vans, we approached the US border with trepidation: what horrors awaited us inside that anonymous building with the huge empty cardboard cartons, formerly containing latex gloves, stacked outside? (Pics of building-of-horrors and the US side of the border below. I'm not sure if it's even legal to show the pic of the building but what can they do now - oh, hang on there's the doorbell...):
Well, no horrors: a guy walked out of the place, had a brief chat with guide Brandon of which I only managed to catch the last words (something about "good riddance...") and then we tottered along behind the vans as we entered the no man's land between the two countries.
As we slowly cycled the 200 odd meters to the Canadian side, someone remarked that they'd heard that technically because this was no man's land there were no laws, and suggested we could do pretty much anything we liked - very quickly their suggestion was NOT taken up. I've been on the former East/West German border at a forest setting similar to this - it felt the same here: eerily menacing!
Lining up to go thru' in threes (don't ask me?), a funny thing happened. After the accidents of days 1 and 2, most of us had been hinting at the meme about such things happening in threes, and hoping that the third one was a real non-event. And so it was...one of the sons of Ken (sorry I can't recall whether it was Kevin or Scott), the chap who'd had the unfortunate faceplant, trundled up to the back of the line, forgot to unclip his pedals and gracefully executed the slow-motion sideways plummet-to-earth that all of us who ride clipless have experienced at least once. My admiration was great - talk about 'taking one' for the team! Turns out that was the last incident of the tour!
By now, my confidence was sky-high: surely, being the only member of the great Commonwealth of which Australia and Canada were the two powerhouses (the UK doesn't qualify as a powerhouse, well not athletically speaking which is what counts!), I'd get to ride thru' here unquestioned and welcomed, whilst my fellow tour members (all citizens of the large land mass below Canada) would be ruthlessly interrogated about their nefarious intentions in this great and sweeping land?
Not so - whilst I got a free pass, so did everyone: in threes we scooted up to the border window where a gorgeous young lady asked us for passports, shot a few questions about trip purpose, drugs carriage, etc of us and then waved us on our way with a beaming, beauty-contest-winning smile. Man, I was sort of wishing I'd get frisked! The process was so innocuous that Stuart rode thru', after presenting and receiving his passport, without answering the questions and we had to call him back!
Now that I was in the place, I was happy to stay, and after cheerfully getting my pic taken at the much nicer Canadian Border sign (see below - my bike is holding me up), we headed off for the short jaunt to our lunch spot at Belly River.
After lunch (I took some of THE most uninspired pics ever here, and in fact didn't even get a pic of the river! - it's one of those lovely, many streams, trout-fishing style ones), we again set off for the 27km ride to the Prince of Wales Hotel overlooking Waterton Lakes. More undulating roads, but not too serious and I was tootling along by myself. Having taken off early after lunch, I was trailblazing, and soon arrived at the entrance to Waterton Lakes National Park. The ranger, another lovely lady (good strategy Canada!) let me straight thru' after she heard my charming Australian accent, and I scooted into the hotel soon after, having seen its dominating presence on the rise for some distance before.
Here I met the van, Alisa and Jacob (not riding again - you shall suffer for this son!) - from my sly "Hello" to Alisa and her surprised "Oh hello" back, I could tell I had impressed her with my light-speed and grand arrival. Smiling (like an assassin) she suggested that as I was early I should take the optional ride out to Lake Cameron and back, a mere 32km. Seemed like a good idea at the time. I later learned that the optional ride is an 'Expert' optional ride, mainly because it was pretty much uphill all the way out, and started with a hill of 3.2km which most vehicles got towed up! My callous acts of the first day, where I taunted her by asking an oft-repeated question once more in order to assess her mental strength, had come back to haunt me.
I recall a bit about the ride: the first 3.2km of it standing out of the saddle, mashing the pedals at some ridiculously slow rate just to haul myself over it, the never ending rolling hills to the lake, Jabe (bloody Jabe - the guy is a mountain goat) rolling up behind me with a short while to go, breezily saying "Hi", and then (nicely) encouraging me to slog on with him, which I mostly managed to do. Of the lake I know nothing - it was a freakin' lake! I do recall the ride back - generally downhill, much easier, faster, and fanging down that bugger of a short hill I'd earlier climbed passing a truck around some switchbacks: kick arse! If it hadn't been for this last bit of joy, the terrible revenge I had been brewing in my mind for Alisa would have come to fruition.
Back at the hotel, I grabbed a beer from Alisa (she coyly acted as if no terrible event had even taken place!) and wandered over to where Steve had his tandem up on the front carry bar of the van, torturing it in the name of repairing something or other. Figuring I knew as little as he, we both started reeking havoc on the poor beast - son Jacob got bored of critiquing us and wandered off after a while. Several hours later we proclaimed ourselves to be of the genius category having fixed something (the bike shop next day charged with re-fixing it were grateful I'm sure).
Here's some pics of the Prince of Wales Hotel to break the boredom of my ranting:
A nice shower later, a quick cruise around the interior and exterior of the hotel (when I took pics including those above), and some browsing of employees and various things stuck on walls led me to the opinion that the Prince of Wales was a magnificently situated, sturdily constructed, typically styled Lodge type accommodation with nice rooms, huge foyer, big dining areas, and lots of stuff relating to a Prince of Wales (pics, busts, staff wearing kilts etc etc). I never did quite understand whether or not any of the royal buggers had actually been, stayed or even had a remote flicker of a thought about the place. Meh - an historian I'm not!
The evening meal was had at a nice place called (errmm - I don't remember: great travel write-up hey!) in Waterton itself, on the edge of Waterton Lakes. Food was very nice and company was again excellent. Danette, a lovely bubbly lady on tour with her partner James, was keeping a whole table at attention with her conversation. James, a quieter, strong chap and another of the power riders on tour seemed her perfect foil, and to me looked like a young Christopher Walken: I mentioned this later and he didn't seem overly impressed? Hmmm, James clearly is happy with himself - I'd kill to resemble Walken!
Back at the hotel, I again razzed my room mate Jacob about his non-riding slackness - maybe he was the smart one, as I was the one rubbing the gel bought in Tour 1 on my muscles and sitting slightly gingerly on my sore arse! He is actually very smart - he was having issues about which college to attend the next year and I'm thinking, wow, he gets to choose? A great kid, and excellent company as long as you can bear up under the strain of him frequently pointing out how wrong you are (and being correct!). I didn't have this issue - I simply did the expedient thing and threatened to beat him up if he pointed out my faults, which worked well! (To his mum Amy, this is simply an invention for dramatic sake and in no way a reflection of how I deal with teenagers - I normally drown them in the bath!)
So, off to sleep with the prospect of an upcoming morning van ride (to skip a bunch of glorious road), an afternoon ride in company with the charming Julie, a short little kicker hill to Deer Lodge, and a post-evening Polar Bear Club plunge into icy Lake Louise with the (yes Doug it must be said) less-than-enthusiastic so called champion of the frigid dip! Day 4 next.
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