because i have reached ultimate slackerhood regarding journal entries...here are a few alternatives

i am sure by now you are all reading laura nolls entries. i know because my mother is a fan, and pretty much everyone else i know tells me that hers are the best.

here is another reference

these are poignent entries by another of our cyclists which are posted on her own web site.

she includes pictures too so you can have another look at the insanity of our ride.

now for my bit o information. we are in canada. i have ridden my bike to canada. wow!! here is the sad thing. we have gone over 2500 miles in the past 40 days and people are still informing us of how much farther we have to go. i just need one person to tell me that its close.

today we rested up in calgary, a pretty sweet town. we are actually staying in a homeless shelter. its sort of a story as to how we got here. origionally we rode into calgary without a place to stay. one of the riders secured lodging at a camp site out of town and just before we entered we got a rough lay out of our route.

not to scare anyone but our ride on the calgary interstate was like an urban assult race. basically go as fast as possible, avoid the pot holes and raised shoulders and try to merge into traffic with out getting hit. i feel i could take on I-35 easily now. my group of 7 made it in one piece and went to what we thought was the correct intersection. well no one else was there, so to celebrate our life we went to mc donalds and got ice cream and brain stormed how to become un lost in a city of 1 million durring thier stamped weekend (which means there are now 3 mill people milling around here). we finally figured out where the camp site was but it turned out to be on the other side of town. AAAA! we called the one cell phone that still had consistent coverage and were informed that we were closer than we thought and got new directions to the center of town. due to the fact that our adreline was still pumping from an almost video game like scinerio, we opted to take the train to the center of town. wise move (mass transit rocks) unfortunatly we went during rush hour, and im sure people were not pleased to have to move around 7 road bikes in the entries of all the cars.

turns out one of our riders had a friend in calgary who had managed to secure the office level of a downtown homeless shelter for our stay. the people have been awsome and the man in charge actually used to be the canadian national champ in cycling (mountain biking and some road). we spent the rest of the afternoon waiting for our fleet to return from all parts of calgary. everyone made the ride safely and without incident.

today has consisted of getting woken up at 7am by the canadian voice yelling "hey texas cyclists, get up" we shuffled down to breakfast, ate and then shuffled back up and fell asleep. around lunch a group of us went down to the kitchen and helped prepare lunch for the shelter while another group rested up and got ready to serve. we ate, and headed out on the town to see some sites and look for some needed items (me - toothbrush and a diet coke).

tess's dad is actually here on business so he spent the afternoon shuttling us around and eventually took a small group out to dinner. thai food. it was amazing. i love spaghetti and oatmeal, dont get me wrong but its nice to shake things up a bit

tonight we are getting ready for bed and to head to banff tommorow. we are volunteering at the stampede marathon in the morning before heading out...this means 4:30am wake up call. AAAAAAAA!!!!! i am never going to be able to sleep in again. 8am classes from here on out are going to feel like a luxury. (dont quote me on that, im sure ill complain about them in the future too)

hopefully ill get some internet in about 9 days...prince george here i come