Calgary, AB - 124km

We made it to Calgary! We officially left the mountains and started the introduction phase in the plains of Canada. 


It was a seriously long haul into the city today, clocking something around 5hrs and 45 minutes on our bikes. The change of scenery was really neat though. Immediately after leaving the mountainous regions that BC is known for, everything gets a bit "country". We saw fields of grass, RV sales lots, and a bale of hay with the word "hay" on it in the middle of a wide-open field (and of course took a photo of it ;)) 


We're now staying with our incredibly gracious hosts Aleks and Blair, who gave us a bed to sleep in, a warm shower, and a washing machine to bring life back to our tiny collection of clothes. I'd actually say we even smell good again! On that topic, I have to make mention to how clean and meticulous Jan is. In his work he's incredibly meticulous and detail oriented as well, but he applies that to everything around him. Where I just stuff things my bag and get going super fast, he plans it out every morning - delicately rolls and folds things into perfect sections and cleans every inch of himself before and after rides. The take-away there is that the phrase "oh we're camping, it doesn't matter!" only applies to very short camping trips. When you're on the road for 7-8 weeks you gotta start thinking long term! 


This city is huge! It's ten times larger than all the towns and cities we've seen since vancouver combined. With something around 1200km of biking time since we landed in Vancouver, we've got a number of things to stock up on and repair. My rear deraileur needs tuning, and even more important is that neither of us have been maintaining our chain grease! Can you tell that neither of us are super experienced cyclists? We imagine that getting proper chain cleaning and grease is going to make us a bit more efficient in the coming weeks.


We did a huge update on the photo map! Our camera marks our photos with GPS so we just upload it and you can see exactly where it was taken. It's a nice way to see the route we took as well! We even got the pictures of the baby mountain goat we found up there :)