travels: The new era

Move over Elora Adamson and Sam Anthony, there's a new blog master in town. As I sit in my quaint high altitude chateau with fair trade coffee brewing and maple baked salmon in the oven, I have a chance to reflect on the past two days of our grand quest for westerns glory. Yesterday's travel day was relatively quiet, with the exception of Levi Nadlersmith attempting to fit two horizontal ski bags through the airport door, and coach Andrew finding an exceptional parking spot at the airport rental car lot (That also happened to block off the only entrance to the lot). We arrived in Calgary around 3:45, and we loaded the rental vans and were off to the local Costco. We stocked up on giant cans of tuna, UFC endorsed protein powder (exactly as Pauline had instructed) and hunted for the best samples, because we all know that's the only reason why we go to Costco. We loaded up the vans with groceries and we were off to Canmore! As Andrew, Cam, Simon and I drove down the freeway, Andrew made a startling discovery. We had lost the Betsy. Somehow, everybody had failed to mention to the beloved Kenora coach that we were leaving, and more importantly where we were going. Eventually we found her, and the rest of the drive to Canmore went smoothly. We arrived at the Alpine Club of Canada, after the grueling fight with altitude sickness as we drove up the base of the mountain. We had to stop several times along the way to let everybody acclimatize, and then we had the near impossible task of finding our cabins. Conor McGovern made a slight reading error, which resulted in us wondering around for what felt like hours in the majestic backcountry of Canmore, dodging cougars left and right. It turns out the first cabin we had approached and that Conor had dismissed as "Definitely not our cabin", was in fact our cabin. We settled into our accommodations and enjoyed some lasagna for dinner. After dinner, we ventured into Canmore on foot for a short half hour jog, and then we returned for snack and bed. In the morning, Maya Boivin and Katie Lockhart were off to lake Louise for their junior women's race. Fun fact, lake Louise is the highest inhabited place in Canada (in context of altitude), so it was a very impressive show since they have limited altitude training. The rest of the team went on to the Canmore Nordic centre to pre ski and check out the facility. Some of us flatlanders (me) had some trouble with the tight downhill corners, but no injuries or broken skis occurred. We were all feeling well prepared and ready to race after the session. We then returned to our lodge for some active rest, which for Cam Roe and Lucas Smith meant hiking halfway up a small mountain, while the rest of us either napped or played pool in the common area of the hostel. Later in the day, a small group headed into Canmore to check out Switching Gear, a local used consignment gear shop. As we were leaving the store, the store clerk stopped us and asked, "Do you have a Conor Mc on your team?" and held up Conor's jacket that he had left in the store when he'd last visited Canmore, almost two months ago... We then returned said jacket to Conor, who accepted it with mixed emotions. "Yeah! I found my jacket!' and "Oh crap mom is going to kill me...". It was at this point that I began writing the first post on this blog, and now I must leave you. The thought of the maple baked salmon and quinoa salad is much more enticing than the thought of continuing to find ways to get Conor in trouble. He also just mentioned that I will "Rue this day." That's all for now from Canmore folks, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed my first ever blog post.

-Liam Allan