Headed for Alberta

Photos - Three views from our hotel room at The Capri. It's very green this year, but the trees are a lot more mature too. Red Deer really does look great in the summer...

Marcus says:

We woke up reasonably late after having spent a hard day getting to Canada from Europe and got on the computer to book a car and try to sort out my email, which was right out of control again. I also blogged for a while and we had a swim in the hotel pool before taking the hotel shuttle to the airport - $10 for the pair of us. As my suitcase was required but could not be latched, two belts were holding it together and my pants were tending to head south. Pants? Not shorts? No, we were right out of clean clothes, so I was wearing pants and my fleecy top. All in all, not an ideal start.

It didn't get better either. Despite having confirmed our flights from London, they had Erith and I in separate parts of the plane. Between that and my suitcase, I was somewhat short with the Air Canada staff as they gently nudged me down the service line toward the plane. The guy at the service desk in the boarding area got quite upset when I advised him about how he was going to correct our arrangements, but they were quickly fixed before we got on the plane.

We got off the plane in Calgary exhausted again. I tried the damaged baggage counter again and as expected, was provided with no satisfaction but the names of three authorised repairers in Calgary. We went to pick up the car and was told that Enterprise don't do bookings to other provinces, but the portal that I had used hadn't indicated that. We took the car for a week anyway and set off for Red Deer, 140 km away. Erith was exhausted and slept a fair bit of the way up, then we pulled into A&W for a burger when we finally got there. Driving hadn't proved to be too much of a challenge yet, as I was nervous enough to concentrate very hard despite being tired.

We checked into the Capri and went up to our room. Ali and Tim Pasutto had given us a killer rate on a really beautiful room on the 11th floor, so things were finally looking up. We had nothing to wear, so tracked down a laundromat and headed down, despite the fact that it was 8:30 at night. I changed behind a dumpster so I could was everything except for a T-shirt and a pair of swimming shorts. Ali rang while we were there - he didn't even know that we were in the country yet, so the laundromat seemed an odd place to track us down. We finished our laundry and went back to the hotel, running into Tim Pasutto who took us down to where the band was practicing for the next night. Ali, Fitz and Dave Fitz were all there, so we did a quick catch up, but Erith was totalled, so we went to bed. Phew! What a day! Again!