Calgary

Anyway, after a long, gorgeous drive, we make it to Calgary and check in. Hotel is GORGEOUS! There is a boat in the ceiling of the lobby, and everything is this gorgeous dark wood and really nice everything. Rooms are typical, but that's what you get for staying at a chain! Typical rooms certainly aren't anything to complain about anyway!

We head up the street to this place called Paul's Pizza and Steak House. Went for dinner, got a free show. What's better than that? Calgarians (is that what you call it?) are hilarious, and this was our first exposure. I have never been in a city full of so many welcoming and friendly people! I love to talk to people, so this was pretty awesome. At this place, there were these two guys sitting at the bar cracking jokes at everything- each other, people outside, the waitress, etc. The pizza was really good. We ordered a medium and each ate the perfect amount and it was gone. Perfect!

Walked back a meandering way to the hotel to get a feel for the city. We finished dinner about 10, but it was just starting to get dark. Gotta love the north for that! Now that I think about it, I don't think I saw it being dark outside much, if at all. The city has a strange feel to it. We kept trying to place it, but it was difficult. It is spread out. There are tall building here and there, but then there will be a block of two or three story buildings, which is kind of rare. Comparatively, we are packed in like sardines in Seattle! Even Louisville didn't have this kind of open feel. I think a lot of it had to do with being able to see the sky, and so much of it.

Day two started off way too early.  We didn't have a lot of time up there, so we tried to cram in as much as possible. It didn't end up working out the way we wanted it to, but we still got a lot in!

In 1988, the Olympics were held in Calgary. As they were Winter Olympics, they built all kinds of ski jumps and bobsled courses and such. All that stuff is still there, and they've turned it into a park! They turned the tallest ski jump into a zipline. How could we resist? It was a little more than I wanted to spend ($60), but it is supposed to be the fastest in North America. We made reservations and headed out.

The park was easy enough to get to, and we checked in and got our helmets (what good will this do if you fall off a zipline, really?) and harnesses and waddle uncomfortably off to the practice zipline. While learning, a ferocious wind comes out of nowhere! I wasn't prepared for it, and I had to grab onto Sam to not fall over! They talked to some people at the top of the big line, and decided it was way too windy for us to go up. They apologized and told us we could have our money back or reschedule. Fortunately, in our effort to cram in as much as possible, we'd left room for error, so we rescheduled for the next day.

Hunger struck, and with the aid of our trusty GPS, we set off into the cruel Calgarian winds to find a bit of sustenance. Ha, right. Really, we found a place down the road called Pazzer's Saskatchewan Pub. Who could pass up a name like that? Also- Saskatchewanese food? (Saskatchewanites? Saskatchwanies? No one in Calgary knows what the name for people from Saskatchewan is!) We didn't even know there was such a thing as this food!

I still have my Kentucky plates on the car (they loved that at the border) and you should have heard the exclamations of the woman out smoking. First it was, "Great parking job!" (Sam backed in.) Then, "Kentucky! You're from Kentucky?" Then she told the whole bar- which, to be fair, seemed to be made up mostly of people she knew. And so the kindness of Calgarians continued. These people were so interested in us that I almost felt like a little bit of a celebrity. Ha! They asked all about our travel plans and gave us really awesome suggestions on places to go.

After lunch we decided to try to zipline again. We made it back right at 3 to be told it was full, but we could go at 4. Deal! So we played putt putt for an hour. Yay! Sam won, but we were really equally terrible.

Then we got to do the zipline! It almost got windy enough that they would have to cancel again, but they  didn't! Yay! SO we did the practice one again, and then headed up to the big one. To get there, they piled us all up in this SUV and went up the world's steepest road. There was one point where we just drove over this pile of gravel and I was pretty sure the SUV's tires weren't actually touching the ground. My only thought was, "They really brought the Olympic performers up this road?" I'm sure it was better 23 years ago! At least, I hope so!

The tallest ski jump is really really tall. It is set on the side of a huge hill. I don't remember how tall the instructor said it was, but believe me, it is tall! From the point where we launched for the zipline, the building is the same height as the bottom of the building down the hill. Hopefully that makes sense! The bottom of the tower is in the middle of the bottom of the hill to the point from which we launch. Either way, it is huge! When I was first being strapped into my harness, there was a metal bit below my feet and I was nervous but fine. Then  she pulled back the metal bit, and I was just dangling over the ground, attached only by this harness to a line! Then- whoosh!- away we went. Apparently you can go up to 140 km/h, which is about 87 miles an hour, according to Google. Holy crap! I don't think I went that fast. The wind was really strong, and I was definitely flying at an angle down the zipline! It took everything I had to not think of me flying off into the middle of nowhere. But it was so awesome! After the big one, there is another one, but it is more to get everyone the rest of the way down the hill than anything else. It was fun too, but after the big one, not that great. I'd love to do it again! It would be great to get comfortable with it and be able to do flips and such while flying down a 100 km drop!