Dec 23 - another leg up

... and the last leg for a while, thank goodness. I've decided that driving a car is harder on the butt than riding a bike mostly because I cannot stand up while driving.

We left Russell just after 7 local time and arrived at David's at 5:45 local time. Since we traveled from Central Time to Mountain Time, that's just under 12 hours again. However, yesterday's drive was broken up a bit since we spent an hour in Saskatoon having lunch with Terry Shuya who is working in Jacksonville FL right now. I rode a couple of brevets with him last winter. His wife also came to lunch -- Juanita -- we were meeting her for the first time. She had spent some time in Florida last winter but has not been back since the Spring, having been busy with a variety of things including their middle child -- daughter -- getting married. Their kids are all out of the house now.

It was a relatively good drive, some slick roads around Saskatoon that slowed us down a little and persistent slick patches where your tires would be riding if you rode in the center of the right hand lane. From before Saskatoon all the way to Edmonton, the road was four lane with speed limits of 110kph. Only the right hand lane had that slick patch syndrome so the trick was to ride close to the center line, close to the shoulder, in the passing lane ... whatever. The Garmin-predicted time of 10 hours was pretty accurate but we added an hour and a half to that with our stops and a couple of slow stretches.

I like 110kph speed limits. With the X5 that pretty well means that we're traveling as fast as reasonable. It can go faster, there's no stability problem, but somehow cruising along around 120kph "feels" right with that car, especially with a headwind ! The 70mph zones on some of the Interstate highways is equivalent. The M5, however, is an entirely different kettle of fish. I had it over 100mph (yes, mph) on highway 522 by the cottage and the car feels good but the road is not designed for it. I don't drive that fast anymore. I'm older and wiser now :).

Sandy was saying that it would be nice to buy our next X5 (should we do that) in Germany so that we could drive the autobahns. I had two comments -- a) having no speed limit would be a waste on the autobahn with the X5 and b) I wouldn't want to drive in Europe with a car that big. There's no danger of this happening, however, that "buy in Germany" doesn't apply to used cars and I expect that most if not all of our car purchases will be slightly used from this point forward.

Traffic was awful coming into Edmonton ... well guess what, it was December 23rd, rush hour, many going home for a long Christmas weekend and slippery roads to boot. They don't use salt here so the roads are like, as David put it, what I was used to driving as a kid in North Bay, Yup.

When we set out from Russell there was some blowing snow for a while -- not much coming down but a dusting on the roads meant that it was hard to pass people because of the cloud that they left behind. There's something to be said for straight and flat roads however, no difficulty with sight lines for passing. We had a second police "encounter" but it was brief. We'd been following a large SUV and I pulled out to pass because he hadn't passed the truck in front of him ... and then the SUV put on his police flashers (he was unmarked) ... so I guess he didn't want us to pass him. I dropped back and then next thing I knew it was the truck in front of us, not the SUV -- I guess that he was just biding his time to pass. I "got the message" when all those lights came on !

Kim was home from work by the time we got here and made Reuban sandwiches and baked French Fries. I think that it was the first time that she'd tried Reuban's but they were excellent. Megan had baked cookies for us. We ate well. In fact, we've eaten reasonably well since leaving Loring -- at Philip's, then the restaurant in Russell then here. Well, my meal in Russell was better than Sandy's -- I had baked onion soup and a large chicken Greek salad. She had the chicken oscar, which had that fake crab in it ... I guess that Russell Manitoba isn't a hot spot for seafood !

Somewhere before Russell we'd gone by a sign that announced that we were at the "longitudinal center of Canada". Since most of the population of Canada is close to the U.S. border we run no risk of seeing the "latitudinal center of Canada" which is probably about 2,000 miles north of us.

We didn't see any wildlife of note yesterday. We did enjoy the scenery though, which is flat but rolling.

The price of gas kept dropping. It was 10 cents cheaper in Manitoba & Sasketchewan than Ontario (per litre) and 10 cents cheaper again in Alberta than Saskatchewan. Of course we'd filled up since we were running on fumes, just short of the Alberta border, but them's the breaks. In Lloydminster Sasketchewan the price of gas was already 10 cents cheaper since that city straddles the provincial border and who would pay 10 cents more rather than drive a few blocks ? On the Alberta side were all the big box stores -- Staples, Walmart, Home Depot, Canadian Tire ... on and on and on ... guess why ? because Alberta has no sales tax. It reminded me of driving down 202 from PA to Delaware and just across the state line you encounter the same thing.

The temperature when we got here was about -3F/-19C but it had been colder at points during the day, down to -13F in places according to the car thermometer. It's -23C right now going up to -5C today and -8C overnight ... definitely a warming trend.

That's it ... travels over for a few days and in fact, our drives to Jasper then Banff then Revelstoke are all in the 4 hour range, so we don't have any long drives for quite some time. After that ... well, we then repeat what we've been through over the past week or so.

Onward ... it's Christmas Eve ... Merry Christmas to all !