20) ROCKY MOUNTAIN RENDEZ-VOUS

The most desolate place on earth is the Saskatoon train station at night. With my train delayed for 2-4 hours (ultimately clocking in at 7 hours behind schedule), I bunkered down for the night with the other dozen or so passengers, on the sloping grey plastic benches.

During the night, my hunger overwhelmed me, and as there is no concession stand, no vending machine, only a water fountain, I called a taxi to take me to eat. Naturally, it was the same cabbie who had taken me to the station in the first place, and so Mansur and I became good friends, as we circled the unlit streches of road that separate the train yard from the bad neighbourhoods, and the bad neighbourhoods from the urban civilization of all-night strip malls.

After a sleepless night, I boarded the train ready to sleep; however, Steve (the oldest bicycle courrier in Toronto who just turned 69) had other ideas. A vegan since the 1960s, and avid cyclist who has biked across Canada twice, the director of a low-income housing complex established to helprecovering drug addicts, Steve was a non-stop chatter box, who slurped from his packets of miso soup that he ate from plastic origami bowls.

As the wheat fields faded into the distance and the scrub of Albertain cattle country overtook the landscape, I was rather saddened to leave the flat prairies behind.

Mat collected me from the station, and we spent a couple days seeing the sights of Edmonton - like that international landmark the West Edmonton Mall, with its array of garish lights, screaming children, flamingos encased in glass sanctuaries, indoor theme park, ice rink, movei theatre with mechanical fire-breathing dragon.

Eventually, we set off for Jasper and our camping trip down the Icefields highway.

Despite all my travels, I have never experienced anything quite like the Rocky Mountains. Snow-capped peaks, glacier water streams, endless forests carpeted with silky moss, four-legged animals that skulk about the brush. With my red bear bell and purple safety whislte, I was the most fashionable camper in the forest!

On the second day, I broke the tent. Well, I broke a pole, which Mat says occured most likely due to age and wear-and-tear, but as a non-camper on my first outdoor excursion, it was embarassing to be the one to break the tent.

There were so many beautiful vistas, I cannot even begin to describe them individually, and not until the end of the trip was I even able to distinguish the differences in the mountain ranges.

After a stop in Lake Louise during a storm with HAIL, and then Banff, we arrived in the little town of Canmore on the Bow River.