And now Canmore

So I left Hope, drove and drove and drove until late that night, and got to Salmon Arm. (Yes, they have interesting names of towns around here.) I stayed a night in a carpark of a 'beach' on a lake and then set off early the next morning in the pouring rain for Canmore. My friend - and QUT lecturer - Debra moved to Canmore on Monday, so I've been here crashing at the hotel suite she's rented for the first few months here until she finds a permanent place. It's very swish. At least by my standards, and staying in a comfy bed with heating is rather nice given that the temps outside are getting a little negative at night. And it's snowing up in the mountains. I can sit here in the living room and watch it!
In the first town outside Salmon Arm, I picked up a couple of Quebecois hitchhikers - and their small kitten, whose name was, strangely enough, Hope. I quickly discovered that I'm going to have some major problems in Quebec understanding the local lingo. I really thought I spoke french, but these guys were rather hard to understand, and we switched to english, when they spoke, which wasn't that often, as they both pretty much fell asleep.
We'd been going an hour or two when we got to Revelstoke, where I had planned to stop and get gas, until I saw the prices - 20 cents more than the last place - but my van was rather insistent. In fact, 1 minute up the road past Revelstoke and my music started cutting out again. And then m indicators didn't work when I went to turn around. I though (again) 'Uh-Oh' and droke back to find the nearest repair shop. Turns out the cable to my battery from the alternator was broken. The part was delivered from the shop up the road in 10 minutes or so, but it turned out to be the wrong part, so we waited about an hour until the right one was delivered, installed and we could get back on the road. At least it gave me time to make breakfast. And it only cost $20, which was a little better than the$150 I spent on alternator and belts the previous day!

The rest of the day was uneventful. I dropped the hitchhikers and their kitten off in Banff, and finally got to Canmore, only a day and a half after I said I would.
Canmore has been lovely - it's surrounded by mountains (rocky ones, surprisingly enough) and the town has walking paths and tracks all through it, which I explored yesterday on my bike. Yes, I actually went mountain biking! Well, sort of. It was mostly dirt and gravel tracks, but it was definitely off road. I had joked that bits would probably fall off my bike if I took it offroad, so I tightened the loose bolts before I went. But a bit still did fall off, just as I was back in town after all my offroading. The back wheel. It didn't completely fall off, but it fell out of place and became unrideable. Turns out I need a new axle. It's sort of patched up for the moment, but I have to be careful with it - no offroading! and I'll look for a new axle or wheel in Calgary and Winnipeg - the didn't have the right one in either of the shops here.

Tomorrow I'm off to Calgary for the day, then I'll continue along the Trans-Can: Following the Only Road!