Today is Day #21 of The Road To Valour

On today’s ride I was on my own

Today was a very impactful day for me. It started out with an early morning meeting of the Rotary Club of Canmore. This club is quite large, given the size of the community, and very active. The primary presenter today was a group of adults and younger adults from Homes for Hope.

This Rotary sponsored initiative has young adults travel to San Diego, then to Tijuana, Mexico, to build a house for an underprivileged family. It gave these young adults an opportunity to truly understand the privileges and blessings that we enjoy and take for granted here in Canada.

I got an opportunity to talk about The Road To Valour after the Homes for Hope. Although it was a shorter presentation than I would have liked, it did deliver the message that needed to be shared -if you see someone who may be suffering, ask how you can help. And don’t accept that they are FINE. FINE is an acronym, meaning Feelings Inside Not Expressed.

Then it was back to Sue and Gord’s home (my hosts for the night) to pack up my gear and hit the road, but not before a farewell photo.

Then they lead me to the edge of town and I was on my way. Leaving Canmore also meant that it was time to say good bye to the mountains. To copy from Shakespeare, “Parting is such sweet sorrow“. On the one hand, I will miss the beauty and majesty of the mountains, but I am happy to be leaving the long, steep mountain passes behind me.

I decided to take the Trans Canada Highway (Hwy 1) to Mînî Thnî to minimize the amount of travel along Hwy 1a which has long sections of road without shoulders and with deep ditches. While Hwy 1 was much busier and, so, much noisier, I felt safer with the very wide shoulders. That and the very heavy winds out of the west pushed me along very quickly.

However, at Mînî Thnî, the rain hit hard and with it the winds shifted radically. One moment they were in my face, then they shifted to my left. And it always felt like they were in my face whenever I was climbing a hill. Hmm! At least on the mountain passes, the winds were consistent.

Riding The Road To Valour