Life, Love, and Everything In Between

Banff

so today i woke up nice and early, borrowed the family Jeep (which saved my life, more bout that later) and akwardly drove into downtown Calgary. I say akwadly because i have never actually driven downtown by myself before, on that thought i have never actually been the driver downtown before. A thought just occured to me, which is good because thoughts in general are good (they let you know your still thinking), when driving north into the downtown core there is a very beautiful site, you climb steadly up the cemetary hill, graves on either side of you, symbollizing to me death all around, but when you crest the hill the sun bursts off the skyscapers and buildings of glass all around, as if to say we are alive. But again, as i seem to always do, i digress... i think i write much like the writers did at the end of the middle ages, they were becoming enlightened and when a thought occured to them, they just ran with it, for pages even.
So i get downtown to residence and meet up with some friends, unfortunatly a few of my cohorts are running behind, to the tune of a full hour behind. It does get frusterating! I had a car full of beautiful girls, which i most definately cannot complain about, a tank full of gas, satellite radio for when we got into the mountains, and all was right with the world.
Since i have never personally driven to Banff myself i didn't know the way... that's not entirely true, i can get to Banff from anywhere but Calgary, so i was at the mercy of the cars in front of me.
Now, im not exactly a crazy fast driver, i do like to drive fast, i mean i will regularily drive 130 on the highway, but no more. The people that i was following, although it felt more like catching up with, had a tendancy towards a led foot, for instance: A couple times i looked down to see my speedometer reading out a nice big 160. This troubled me, mostly because the roads were not in perfect condition, so i slowed to my usual 130, which was still 20 over the speed limit!
I was justified though, because as you enter Banff National Park you must stop and pay the nice lady in the box 17.00 for the "right" to park in her lovely National Park. But there is more than one nice lady, there are a few, i chose the line less travelled and got out to a nice lead, ahead of the other 2 cars that i had been chasing.
We arrived in Banff, which really seemed to be our only goal, as we actually had not specified WHERE we were going to meet, or stop, or even what we were going to do. After some confusion we met up and went to lunch at a "Very" eating establishment. I say this because it was Very tasty, Very nice, and Very expensive. Mind you EVERYTHING in Banff is expensive. I commented on how if you took the mountains away from the town, it would just be another expensive town, not too many towns of 20,000 get a Louis Vuttoin dealer.
After lunch we went to the mall, which is confusing to me, as there are malls in every city, but there are not waterfalls and mountains in every city. But im becoming cynical.
We had to go home a little earlier than usual because one of our friends had to sing at a concert in calgary.
They say hindsight is 20-20.
We should have either left earlier, or just stayed longer. This is because we ran into quite the storm. From Banff to Canmore was great, a little falling snow, but no biggie, but for some reason as soon as we exited the other side of Canmore (an area ironically titled "Deadman's Flats") we ran into (literally) a white out. The two vehicles directly in front of me disappeared into white cloud of snow. I didn't know what was going on so i started to slow down. Not fast enough i found out rather quickly, as approaching VERY fast was a line of cars all over the road. Now the people in the back have entrusted me with their lives, im not just gonna run into the back of the car in front of me, so i calmly swing the vehicle at the ditch, but before i get there i have to dodge a truck that is also headed for the ditch. The highway was FUBAR'd, if you don't know the term, google it. My backend slid out on me, but i reigned it in and crused down the shoulder of the road past the streams of car. If i had slammed on the breaks we would have been pulled into the ditch, and probably rolled. The drive there took just over an hour, the drive home took just over two hours.
It was a good trip though, im glad we went. Can't wait to "remenice" on tuesday when i see everyone at school

posted by That Canadian Guy @ 11:11 p.m.