Eddie “The Eagle” Was Here

For the first time in a long time, my day started with cereal. This may not seem particularly newsworthy and maybe it isn’t. But I really like cereal. Of course, I don’t tend to travel with milk (or cereal) so a breakfast of cereal and milk is pretty rare. Throwing some blueberries on top? Well, that’s just plain old luxury!

The cereal was an added bright spot considering how gloomy of a day it was. To say that today wasn’t exactly the nicest of days would be a bit of an understatement. It may have even been the worst day so far. It was cold. Single digit cold. Note: It’s July! There was rain. Correction, there was a lot of rain. And there was wind. I know I’ve mentioned wind on more than one occasion but today’s wind put those other winds to shame. Today’s winds were 45 km/h with gusts up to 70 km/h. This would not have been a good day to be on the bike. Fortunately, I wasn’t.

With the weather being what it was, there was definitely the temptation to stay indoors. However, I only have a finite amount of time in Calgary and if I was going to see some of the sights then I would have to do so today. Rain or shine. And I think I made it pretty clear that there was no shine.

In keeping with the weather, I dressed in layers and headed out towards the nearby LRT station. The plan was to go to experience a bit of the 1988 Olympic by visiting Canada Olympic Park (or, as the locals call it, C-O-P). It was only a ten minute walk to the station and those 70 km/h gusts I’d heard about were definitely present. If it wasn’t for the cold and rain it would’ve been impressive. Actually, it was still impressive. Perhaps it would’ve been much less impressive on my bike.

My first Calgary Transit experience, which included the LRT and a bus, was completely uneventful but successful. The trip took about an hour and took me to the Canada Sports Hall of Fame on the grounds of Canada Olympic Park. Had I stayed on the bus for another stop it would’ve taken me directly to the Guest Services building but I didn’t know that at the time. Fortunately, the walk wasn’t very far and it gave me a chance see the scope out the area.

There are quite a few activities that can be done at COP including a zipline, a bobsleigh run, and a luge ride. I wanted to go up to the ski jumping area (also where the zipline launches) but they don’t do tower tours of the facility anymore and the zipline was closed due to the high winds. I was tempted to do the bobsleigh run but I ended up going with the luge run – which is more of a gravity propelled cart ride along a road than an actually luge run but it was good. I’ve found that the amount of thrill I get from such rides like this has diminished over the years – I mean, racing down a mountain on a fully loaded bike at 60 km/h is more than a little comparable – especially when you add in passing trucks! Maybe I should’ve done the bobsleigh after all. The interesting thing with the bobsleigh run is that the driver of your particular bobsleigh could end up being a future olympian as many of them train at the park.

From there I walked around a bit more, got a close up look at the bobsleigh track, and eventually ended up back at the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame. I’ve been to a few Halls of Fame but I found this one to be a bit different as it’s much more all-encompassing than others I’ve been seen. That’s not a bad thing, it’s just a fact. As it is a “Sports” hall of fame there are a lot of small displays covering (obviously) the full gamut of sports and athletic achievements. As such, there were obviously some areas that I found more interesting than others. Anyway, it’s an interesting place to visit but the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, NY is still my favourite.

As I was leaving the park and making my way over to Wendy’s – which was conveniently located across the highway – the sun finally started to break through some of the clouds. The wind remained but it was nice to see the sun again.

My return trip to John and Susan’s was as uneventful as the outbound trip – although, there was one intersection that DESPERATELY needs an advanced traffic signal for left-turning vehicles. I’m not exaggerating when I say we spent close to ten minutes waiting for traffic while we were trying to turn left – and there were only three cars ahead of the bus. Only one car was clearing the intersection per signal change.

We eventually managed to turn left and made it back to the house around 5:30 where I spent some quality time with Parker and Lex, the latter has become slightly less skittish around me but still very nervous. Poor puppy. John and Susan returned shortly thereafter and the rest of the evening was spent eating pizza, talking about adventures, and looking at a wide range of photos of trips gone by – including one photo of Susan taking a left turn in Albuquerque. Bugs Bunny would’ve been proud.

Not sure exactly what’s happening tomorrow. There are definitely things on the agenda but as we know, things don’t always go as expected. Stay tuned.