Cycle Canada, Day 8, May 12/06

May 12/06, Friday Day 8                                     798 Kms

Field, B.C.                      ~ 60 Kms                       ~4:00 Hrs

Climbed the first hill out of Golden and found traffic blocked. Some sort of trouble, a slide, at the construction site 10 Km up the road. It will take an hour to clear. We chatted with the flag-lady a bit & persuaded her that it was okay to ride forward & get a jump on traffic, as long as we stayed away from the danger zone and machines. We managed the same thing with 2 more flaggers @ 2 more places they had traffic stopped. Each stop consumed time. We got to the 4th flagger and I was disappointed to find the slide consisted of a few dozen rocks on a path 20 feet wide. The contractors weren't going to clean the road or let anyone by until the slope was stabilized. An excavator at the top was pushing stuff over. Most of what was being pushed down the slope wasn't reaching the road. We kept being told, "An hour. An hour." It was all lies. They didn't have a clue. About 14:30 Doug & I started talking about making it to Field by dark (Lake Louise was now out) or if we would have to sleep on the side of the highway. About 15:00 we made a break. We pushed our bikes through the slide. Two "white hats" turned and walked the other way, pretending they didn't see us coming. One "white hat" tried to stop us but Doug kissed him off and we didn't break stride as we passed by. On the other side of the slide & out of sight of it was a line-up of cars at least 5 miles long. Some had been sitting since before 9:30 being told "An hour. An hour." We rode passed yelling things like, "They're lying." "Abandon hope." "I hope you have food & water." "You'll be here all night." We probably got 50 or 60 cars to turn around.

Field is a nice little place but without much in the way of services. We went to The Truffle Pig and ate overpriced (though tasty) food and drank good beer. Met about a dozen people who had turned around & were hoping to get through the next day. The folks who had resigned to being stuck were all in a pretty good mood.

Slept behind the convenience store and woke up to a heavy frost.

At the top of the hill, on the way out of Golden I saw a guy hitch hiking and made the silly quip that I wasn't taking any riders. This wasn't the last time we'd see this guy.

Working our way through all of the flag stops on the way to the rock slide was really frustrating. It made for a day without too much work, which was a nice change from the day before, but with stops every half hour that lasted an hour or more each we made very little progress. The plan had been to make Lake Louise that day. We had hoped to meet Rob & Kate somewhere on the road between Lake Louise and Banff so they wouldn't have to drive so far.

In the line up of vehicles on the east side of the slide we saw people taking the wait just about every way people could take a wait. Folks were walking, talking, speculating on the nature of the problem, playing Frisbee, playing with the dog, playing the radio. I saw one guy pouring gas into his pick up because he'd idled out of fuel while waiting.

The road between the slide and Field was a bit surreal. The road east had almost no traffic. Only those people who had turned around form the closure and they came in bunches when they came. There was almost no traffic heading west. Word had probably gotten out by then that the road was closed indefinitely. So mostly it was Doug & I, riding by ourselves on a ribbon of pavement through a high mountain pass. The silence was amazing. I started to feel the big loneliness that is most of Canada.

By the time we got to Field the town was full up. It was really cold and I would have been easy to talk into taking a motel room for the night if there had been one available. We stopped at the gas station/convenience store on the highway and there was a line up at the till of folks who had escaped the traffic jam. Three employees were gabbing behind the counter, to all appearances ignoring the line up. I went to get a cup of coffee and there was none. I made 2 pots because I figured the demand would be there when enough folks came back up the highway. One of the employees told me that the place would be closing in 10 minutes. With a line up at the till and a steady stream of folks coming in, Doug commented that none of the ladies at the till was an owner.

The folks we met at The Truffle Pig had a 'snowed in' kind of attitude. There wasn't any anger or even an air of resignation about them, it was more like the first day on a cruise. They were treating the delay as a surprise opportunity to relax. The atmosphere was almost festive. I think that says something about the society we've created for ourselves.

We stayed at the Pig until it was time to sleep then went back to the gas station and camped by the river. There was a frozen waterfall a few hundred yards up on the other side. It was cold out; the coldest night of our trip. In the morning Doug and I took turns sitting over the propane stove.