tmacphail.ca

I was woken by a thunderstorm at about 5:20 and quickly packed everything to move into the covered shelter. This included my tent which I carried while fully setup so that I would be able to put it away in a dry place. While having breakfast undercover, the rain stopped but I decided to wear my raingear for the ride anyways since the sky hadn’t cleared yet and the roads were still wet.

I was riding by about 7:30 and noticed pretty quickly that the land is getting flatter. I could see hills the road went over on the horizon about 10km away. When I stopped for my first break I got a flat tire from a tiny, pointed rock being forced through my tired. I bet if I hadn’t stopped in that exact location with my weight on top of it, it wouldn’t have managed to poke it’s way through. It didn’t actually let much air out but I discovered it when I heard the water on the road bubbling.

From the road I called the hostel in Edmonton to book 2 nights (tomorrow is going to be a rest day). At about the half way point (it’s hard to tell because the distance signs to Edmonton weren’t always consistent with each other) I stopped to take off my rain gear because I seem to have left most of the clouds behind and it was getting warmer.

I stopped at the Wabamun Lake Provincial Park for lunch. At this point I started to notice my allergies starting to bother me again. It’s probably the cottonwood trees. After lunch there continued to be nowhere good to stop for a break so I rode the final 80km to Edmonton and the hostel with only 2 breaks. The first break was at the Spruce Grove visitors center (the last town before Edmonton) and the second was in Edmonton when I got my second flat tire of the day only 6km from the hostel. This was a pinch flat caused by the bumpy, cracked, and uneven roads of Edmonton. Combined perhaps with not having pumped enough air into the tire after the earlier flat (I never know exactly how much air to put in it). I replaced the tube and put more air in than before and was on my way to check in at the hostel.

This hostel wasn’t as nice as the one in Golden and was also much more crowded. Only slightly cheaper too ($52 for 2 nights). I was in a dorm of 8 beds, all of which were full. After settling in I walked up and down Whyte Street looking for somewhere to eat. I was in the mood for a pizza and eventually settled on Boston Pizza after failing to find anything more local that had what I was looking for.

In the evening I did some laundry and sat down in the common area to read. A large group of international students just arriving in Edmonton to attend the University of Alberta checked in and probably took up almost all the remaining beds in the place. They had their orientation in the common area so I went to go to bed.