Disclaimer. This is an adventure I took when I was about 11 years old, over 40 years ago. There will be things I misremember, and there will probably be lies and exaggerations. The pictures are stolen from modern websites, but the scenery hasn’t changed. Glibs needs content, so I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel of my memory to deliver. I aim to please. I also shoot to kill, so don’t get any ideas. With that out of the way, allez, allez, allez.
Before I became the Middle Age Man in Lycra, I was a young boy in sweatpants and a down jacket. My parents’ bike club took a tour of the Canadian Rockies from Jasper to Banff on the Icefields Parkway, about 180 miles over six days. There were about 18 of us in 3 RVs/campers, 9 of which were in our RV made to sleep six. It was a tight fit.
The first leg of our journey we drove up I-5 to Vancouver. Us two kids in our RV rode in the space above the cab watching the dragonflies splat on the windshield as we drove through the rice fields of the Sacramento Valley. Good fun. No seatbelts. This was the 70s, man. After a layover in Bend to sleep, and a stop near Seattle to weld the frame on the rusted trailer that carried our bikes, we finally pulled into the trailer park outside of Vancouver. I thought Canada was supposed to be nice, but they have trailer parks just like the rest of us. The rec room even had a video game, Death Race, where the goal was to run over pedestrians with a car, which made me believe Canadians have a dark side. This is probably where Canada’s slippery slope to euthanasia began.
Death Race
We spent a day in Vancouver riding around Stanley Park taking advantage of what was to be the only sunny day of our trip. For dinner I remember having a Hawaiian hot dog, which is a hot dog wrapped in bacon and topped with pineapple. It’s a cousin of the pineapple pizza, which was also invented in Canada. Like I said, Canadians have a dark side. It ain’t all Tim Horton’s and poutine.
The next day we drove up the Fraser River Canyon, past Kamloops, which I remember because of its funny name, and on to Jasper, where we checked into a hotel. Though the trip had barely begun, the RV was beginning to feel a little cramped. Maybe not so much for the kids, but certainly for the adults. My father, an old tin can sailor, used to say that a boat gets about a foot shorter every day you are on it. The same applies to RVs. I still remember one of the women stepping into the RV and saying, “Jesus Christ! Someone light a cigarette and freshen this place up!”
It wasn’t this crowded, but it felt like it.
In Jasper we met up with the other two groups. The first was a family with 4 kids plus one cousin in their own RV, and the second an older couple traveling by themselves with a trailer. The riding started with a 30 mile ride from Jasper to Honeymoon Lake. I was on a borrowed white Peugeot 10-speed that was way too big for me and had toe clips which I had never used before, but it was better suited for the ride than the BMX bike that I rode to school. I had never ridden a bike with multiple gears before, my toes barely reached the pedals, and down jackets aren’t very aerodynamic, so I was soon outpaced by nearly everyone on their fancy custom aluminum bikes with silk tires. The shoulder was wide and there was no risk of getting lost, but the thought of an 11 year old riding on the highway alone in a foreign country drinking water from streams at the side of the road would probably be unheard of these days. My wife thinks my parents were trying to kill me. She may be right, but I look at it as a character building exercise.
On the road.
The campsites along the way had covered shelters that allowed people to stay out of the rain while cooking. Sleeping was prohibited there, but the grownups kicked the kids out to give them more room in the RVs leaving us to sleep in the shelters anyway. There I learned how to play truth or dare and spin the bottle, but what happens on the Icefield Parkway, stays on the Icefield Parkway.
Honeymoon Lake
Day 2 we rode down to the Columbia Icefields. Our campsite was across the way from the glaciers. We could hear the sounds of the glacier, alternating between what sounded like cannon fire and thunder. It was pretty awesome. The next day we took a snow cat tour of the glacier and got a late start to the next campground. While waiting to begin our ride, a mama bear and two cubs strolled through our campsite and we took shelter inside the RVs until they moved along.
Canadian Bus
Subsequent campsites had more signs of bear activity. We were kept up one night by campers yelling at a bear to keep it away. Another campsite had a massive bear trap which was basically a large pipe with a trap door that would slide down if a bear or a child went to the far end of it. At that point the kids moved back into the RVs to sleep, though in hindsight, maybe we should have slept in the bear trap with the door closed.
As we got close to Lake Louise the weather turned rainy which made people less enthused about riding. Traffic was also getting heavier and the road less safe. Up to this point most of the traffic had consisted of tour buses full of Japanese tourists probably looking for real estate to buy as this was when Japan was about to take over the world economically. Or so we thought. I think there’s a separated bike trail now between Banff and Lake Louise. Anyway, due to the rain and the traffic, we drove the rest of the way to Banff where we checked into another hotel allowing us to wash up and have some private space.
Bow Lake
After a day at Lake Louise and a rafting trip down the Bow River, it was time to head home. First stop was Coeur d’Alene, Idaho where we failed to see any white supremacist compounds, but the news assures me they are there. After that we made a beeline for home. The grownups were getting cranky.
Obviously it was a memorable trip if I’m writing about it more than 40 years later. One of these days I’d like to do it again, but there’s no way I’d go in an RV with that many people.
Ah, so you weren’t dodging murder MAiDs,
Sounds like fun! I mean without all the bike riding…
” My wife thinks my parents were trying to kill me. She may be right, but I look at it as a character building exercise.”
Its not that we want you to die, so much as there is no point in continuing on if you can’t do something as basic as follow the road.
“There I learned how to play truth or dare and spin the bottle, but what happens on the Icefield Parkway, stays on the Icefield Parkway.”
Bowchickawowow
“Day 2 we rode down to the Columbia Icefields. Our campsite was across the way from the glaciers. We could hear the sounds of the glacier, alternating between what sounded like cannon fire and thunder. It was pretty awesome. The next day we took a snow cat tour of the glacier and got a late start to the next campground. ”
Someone grew up rich. Did you also drink Chateau de chasselas?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DT1mGoLDRbc
No Chateau de chasselas, but we did have Grey Poupon.
Would have been an awesome trip for an 11 year old, looks amazing.
That part sounds rough.
I thought Canada was supposed to be nice, but they have trailer parks just like the rest of us.
You must watch this documentary called “The Trailer Park Boys”
And I bet crossing the US/Canada border was easy-peasy.
There’s a part of me that misses the nearly annual trips up to Toronto just because. Especially when we were all 19.
The full extent of my international travel to date is a few hours in southern Ontario after my oldest sister checked out Michigan State – from Sarnia (across from Port Huron, MI) down to where you board the Pelee Island ferry. (Closest I’ve come to Put in Bay.)
I camped over on Pelee Island one year as a Boy Scout. Most of our Toronto weekend trips were spur of the moment things. As the drinking age up there was 19, compared to 21 here, it gave us an incentive to go across the border for a day or two. We generally went Toronto to avoid the higher prices and tourist traps of Niagra, and it only added about 90 minutes to the trip one way.
There was a time when I knew the streets of Toronto well enough to give directions to people with street names.
I’m pretty sure I slept through the border crossings on that trip. After college I drove back to California from the East Coast by way of Canada, and the Canadian border guards questioned me for a long time, but with all the crap in my car it looked like I was moving there, so I guess they had reason. A couple summers ago I got pulled aside for extra questioning again by Canadian border guards in Victoria. They caught me with an undeclared apple.
It still is. You just tell the guard that borders are racist, give them the middle finger and keep driving. If they arrest you then you say the word asylum and they let you go.
Yep, I remember crossing the US/Canadian border in the ’70s, just don’t carry pot or a gun (hint: my dad did).
Same with Mexico except add “cash in the sock for the Federales or local smokies”
Nice writeup eh?
And just in case someone was unaware, Death Race 2000. It really would fit quite well for a Thursday night movie.
“It was the French!”
–Future American President
I am so sleazy I would have to show the sequel instead.
Which one? I think I’ve got a digital copy of the Jason Statham remake sitting around somewhere for the girlfriend.
What’s not to love about the original though? David Carradine slowly beating up Sylvester Stallone, a literal “hand grenade”, gratuitous nudity, bearded people pretending to be mothers, babies made of C4, film being looped backwards to show an attack plane…
I love the original. But I am such a KMart shopper. I will absolutely show Death Race 2000 sometime. My fear is that everyone has seen it already and there is little I can add.
There was a sequel for it in the 1980s, not a remake. It was a motorcycle apocalypse movie known as the unofficial sequel. The name eludes me at the moment.
Death Race 2000 was a movie that got passed around in my high school days for the level of schlock. It didn’t seem to have much traction among the more normal people though. Outside of B-movie fans and the like, it seems to be one that most people had never even heard of.
I have a great story about watching that movie stoned out of my head in 1982. I will share it on Zoom someday.
Sequel? I’m only finding A remake and a remake
I would guess Death Race 2.
But that’s the sequel to the first remake.
You are having difficulty finding it because it was not a Corman film and did not involve Paul Bartel, and it was not part of Death Race canon. Corman was apparently pissed that this film was linked to Death Race 2000, and said so at the time.
I am having one of those days where I can tell you all about a film, just not the title. I have to jump to my next meeting now so I am leaving you all hanging.
the rice fields of the Sacramento Valley
*grinds teeth*
Brought back fond memories of several business trips to Banff. Stayed, however, in the posh Banff Springs Hotel.
I’m in the wrong line of business.
Death Race is such a cool game. It was entirely done via circuitry instead of programmed on a chip. As a result the emulated version had to be constructed from scratch, as opposed to just scanning the program on the board. Legend has it that only a handful of those cabinets remain. I got to play one at the Texas Pinball show a few years back. Still awesome.
I did a trip “out west” with my grandparents and my brother and sister. We stopped in Banff and Lake Louise. It was incredible.
*this could be why I hate doing touristy stop-every-fifty-miles-to-look-at-something trips. Point A to Point B. No slackjawed dawdling.
You would hate my mother. We did a cross country tip in ’78 or so, and she made us stop at every giant ball of twine, Historical landmark, and anything else that was near. It took six weeks there and back again, and we did it in a ’66 Mustang pulling a tent trailer.
I love that stuff. I stop for it whenever I can.
My family used to do trips to a fishing camp my great uncle owned up in Ontario. Barely any plumbing or amenities in the cabins. Greatest vacations ever as a kid. My mother hated it.
I remember crossing the Canadian border in the back of an overloaded station wagon.
Dead thread reply:
“This is the average cost of attendance, which includes tuition, fees, books and supplies, and living expenses, minus aid received from all sources.”
Berkeley is why I believe in parking being a fucking requirement at all times.
I have never even been in the state of California, so I have no idea what that means.
I’m putting money on “parking” being an autocorrect replacement.
Berkeley is a small city that is funded by having a major university, one with a lot of students. The town has 125K+ people in it, 45K+ of which are students, most of whom drive cars, being as they, for the most part, are wealthy and/or come from wealthy areas. The city, on the other hand, hates cars with a passion. And this means that traffic is messed up, due in large part to the city doing everything it can to be one of those “smart” cities; traffic “calming” by way of blocking street access, not putting in turn lanes on the busiest intersections, and forcing businesses to not be allowed to put in the parking needed to sustain the amount of people who want to peruse said establishment. This forces all of those students, workers from outside the city, etc., to fight for every parking spot within a walking distance, illegally parting, and double or even triple parking, which blocks streets even more, making it a vicious circle of cramming more students into the space, while limiting the means of transport.
It gets away with this by being a major university town, thus a captive market. But it uses all those idiotic methods to try and discourage the natural needs of people and businesses to be accessed by the most convenient method: the car.
Great pictures!
The rec room even had a video game, Death Race, where the goal was to run over pedestrians with a car, which made me believe Canadians have a dark side. This is probably where Canada’s slippery slope to euthanasia began.
🙂
From the dedthred:
“Did you try a pinch collar? Or do they have the wrong temperment?”
Between the massive neck, the indifference to pain, and the love of pulling, they didn’t seem to do as well as the gentle leaders for us. The gentle leader turns their head, which seems to be the trick for pits.
My trips to Canada include a couple to Vancouver, one to Toronto, and one to Banff (which doesn’t really count, as it was a business trip with little time for touristing). I flew every time, so no border guard experiences.
My appetite for travel, never large in the first place, has been diminishing over time. One of those de gustibus things, I guess.
Drove once into Canada to Montreal – no problem even for two van full of punk teenagers and piles of hockey equipment. Second time flying in, no issues bringing our skates and gloves on as carry-on. Theory was, we can replace everything else and still play, but not having your skates or your gloves will put you at a disadvantage. Ah the times before….
Well, this explains why Google’s AI is so racist against whites. Look who’s in charge:
https://twitter.com/LeftismForU/status/1760519126781469170
I wonder of this is the same AI Google is using to suppress “disinformation”.
My question: Google gives garbage results, has for years, and it’s bound to get worse. Why do so many people use it? Force of habit?
Probably force of habit. I converted Mrs. OBE over to DDG after she was noticing a trend that certain companies would not come up in searches and she goes by “they didn’t pay their Google Tax” to be included in the top 100 searches.
I wish DDG would stop using Apple Maps. Every time I try to open a DDG-linked map on my laptop, the screen goes black momentarily, then comes back on to reveal…a blank map.
It also hates
JewsIsraelishttps://twitter.com/MarinaMedvin/status/1760660277924704579
At least you can look up Jewish scientists on it. Not so for whites.
Google is all about the brand. They have major name recognition, to the point that most people will say “Google it” instead of “Do a web search”. They are the Coca-Cola of tech.
Go to the Xerox machine, there is a box of Kleenex on it next to the Clorox
Why are you storing your facial tissues on the photocopier? Moreover, why is the bleach there?!
You store the tissues on the copier so you can copy more when the box runs low, Dumas.
Have the store fax over some paper if the copier runs out.
And tell them not to omit the glitter this time.
Nexcare makes the best bandaids, and anyone who can successfully blow their nose into a Kleenex didnt really need to blow their nose. (paper towel at minimum, old tshirts work, microfiber cloths (plug: Z Wipes) FTW)
https://www.vanityfairnapkins.com/
Inertia is a big thing in the tech world. You can go back through the history of it and find all sorts of examples where the better tech didn’t win over a more widely spread tech. And other than Bing and DDG, what other new search engines have come out?
Holy shit. How can someone that far gone function?
Function? Those are the people rising to the top these days.
How do hoarders get buried in decades of old newspapers?
“There I learned how to play truth or dare and spin the bottle, but what happens on the Icefield Parkway, stays on the Icefield Parkway.”
I would have said ” A Gentleman does not kiss and tell…and neither do I.”
Ok, that is a lie. With the right prompting from the right person I might let a bit slip. Not long ago a friend of mine and I were swapping stories and half-way through my turn she blushed and said “Oh my!”
Me: “Now c’mon we are just talking here. Don’t tell me the bottoms of your feet are getting hot.” (The ladies here will understand)
Her jaw dropped, she blushed twice as hard and exclaimed “How do you know tha……..?!”
Me: ” Everyone thinks I am a Boy Scout, and maybe I am, but I know stuff. A lot more stuff than you think I do.”
Truth or Dare?
Pish. Strip or Dare FTW.
Of course — I think calling the current language models and overblown pattern matching “AI” is an insult to the field of AI — but no one asked me about that either.)
As somebody else who’s response to all the AI hubbub of late has been, “Thats not AI”, I was mulling it over recently and i think maybe we’re dealing with a legit evolution of terms. The traditional interpretation of artificial intelligence, as I understood it, was a synthetic consciousness. Our brain has distinct collections of pathways that perform specific functions, visual tracking/pattern matching/metabolic regulation/etc. These pathways are analogous to the information processing algorithms in “AI”, or really, any piece of software. So I would argue these routines do constitute “intelligence”, and we just need to redefine the goal of the field as “Artificial Consciousness”. A goal that’s probably still as far off as commercial fusion power and flying cars.
Sorry, still making my way though the morning lynx…
Just move your business down to Alabama, claim that the AI program you are creating is akin to an embryo and bam! Get your patents!
Jizzing on the keyboard now vital to software development, no longer just at break time. (if you know of a better way to fertilize code, I’d like to hear it.)
https://twitter.com/billybinion/status/1760698798626545741
Billy Binion, associate editor of Reason magazine.
Scott’s been completely black pilled since he watched that Mike Benz interview.
People like Scott who genuinely believe the US is on par with China should take their keyboard warrior asses there & see what happens.
“Yeah, China woulda executed The J6 Insurrectionists on the spot, SO NYAH. *extra smug mic drop*”
Well, no reasonable jury would have found Jimmy Lai innocent, so it’s the same thing, right?
IANAL
They literally used the same logic to convict Lai that they are trying to use to convict Trump.
a difference of degree not kind
People like Scott who genuinely believe the US is on par with China should take their keyboard warrior asses there & see what happens. Completely unhinged.
Billy Binion, associate editor of Reason magazine.
Has this person by any chance been jizzing all over Navalny’s corpse?
Kinky.
cavalier973
on February 22, 2024 at 8:34 am
Whale songs can be heard from space.
This is a no-sound-in-vacuum joke, right? RIGHT?!
It’s a ST IV:TVH joke
I’d assume a 22nd-century starship could manage something like a laser mic with its advanced sensor capabilities, making listening from orbit possible.
More concerning, was that beacon blasting an RF transmission of whale song at the whales? How are they supposed to pick that up? Most importantly, did it give the whales cancer last time it visited.