Mel: We were joined by our driver, Tiffany (my sister), and the Gillingham brothers (John and Eric), both of whom had not ridden bicycles in a “very long time”. Luckily, they remembered how to pedal and kept up without any issues. We rode a nice 30km just beyond Chestermere, AB then took a snack break in Lois. We started off on our ride again when my cell phone rang. Tiff couldn’t get Lois
to start! We circled back, thinking Lois was just having one of her many mood swings, but quickly realized that the machine gun-like sound coming from her was not a good sign. We called trusty CAA (aka AMA in Alberta), and a tow truck promptly showed up in about 1.5 hrs (by the way, it was 30 degrees out). Lois started after a battery boost, and the tow truck driver left us all feeling happy and confident. We got our bike shoes back on, water bottles filled, ready to go, then Lois died again! We boosted her with Bryan’s Jeep with the help of John and Eric, only for her to die for the third time within about 10 minutes. Bryan diagnosed the problem over the phone (while at work) and determined that we needed a new alternator.
We drove into Chestermere in the Jeep, leaving Lois behind, to get coffee and wait for Bryan to show up after work with the necessary parts to rescue Lois.
Tiff and I waiting in Chestermere, with our companion Arwin (Tiff was dog sitting for a friend).
"Mr. Fix-It" aka Bryan.
Bryan was able to trouble shoot over the phone with his dad, while two local farmers stopped to “help” us out (mainly to chat)... at one point we had 3 guys tinkering under Lois’ hood. With a replaced alternator and regulator, a boost was all we needed and Lois was back in business! All of us, however, were starving so we went to Chestermere for food, then back to Calgary for the night.
What a day.
Day 19 - Chestermere, AB to Beiseker, AB
An early start in Calgary got us to Chestermere to pick Lois up at the Shopper’s parking lot where we had left her the night before. We took her to Lube X to give her some TLC, then tied up the Jeep on the dolly and we were off again! This time, we had gone about 3 km when Tiff noticed that one of the straps holding the Jeep tire had come undone! We stopped to check it out, and sure enough, the strap was ripped from having gotten caught (somehow).
Back into Calgary we went to buy a new strap at the nearest Princess Auto... then back to Chestermere again (this time we had left Lois in an Elementary School parking lot). Long story short, it ended with a bang and a scream and me thinking that Lisa had gotten run over by the Jeep that had fallen off the dolly un-announced. This was officially the “breaking point” where we decided to leave the car dolly behind us, for good.
We got to our starting point that we knew very well, having spent 9.5 hours there the day prior, got on our bikes and started riding against the wind North on HWY 9 toward Drumheller. About 30km in we had to call Lois back because there was a rain storm with small icy hail pellets that kept us from cycling. We waited out the storm and were off again, this time deciding to call it a day in a little town called Beiseker where the campground owner, Jack, was happy to sponsor us for a free night’s stay.
Things were starting to look up!
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