Banff

I have nowhere to stay tonight. I'm currently in Banff, at the Banff Center, anxiously awaiting on whether or not I can find some lodging for the night because, due to certain complications, my first night's accommodation has fallen through.

Complications

It all started when I woke up late for the bus (as I had mentioned in my post this morning) and had to end up hitching down to town. After about 10 minutes of waiting by the side of the road watching a very small number of cars pass by as I stuck my finger out, a nice man from Calgary (with a rather nice BMW) stopped and told me to hop in. We had a chat, as you do when you get a ride from somebody, and before I knew it, we were at the Petro-Canada gas (a.k.a. petrol) station where the Greyhound buses stopped. I hung around the general area for an hour before going back to the station to wait for the bus, which was, naturally, about 10-15 minutes late.

I caught a bit of sleep on the bus, and when I woke up we were getting close to Banff. Last night, Justin told me that Mike could no longer give me some accommodation for Banff for tonight. I was originally going to stay at Zach's place, but he was going to Edmonton tonight, so I decided I'd try Mike. Alas, that fell through, so now I sit here at the lobby of Mike's accommodation, using the Internet, as I wait for him to find me some slightly less free accommodation at the Banff Center (where he works and lives). Fortunately, I hear it's quite a nice place since they have lots of important international guests visiting here on a regular basis, so maybe it'll be a bit of money to buy a bit of the experience. Anyway, I have to wait for Mike to go on his lunch break before he can try giving the reservations desk another call (as he got put on hold for about 10 minutes just before he had to start work).

To go on a bit of a tangent, but still sticking to the general theme of things not being as simple as they could be, I decided to buy a board bag today. I figured that I'd be needing one for the end of the season when I set off on my adventure and have to haul off my two boards, bindings, and boots, among other things. All the ones that I had seen so far at other places had been too large for my board, so I decided that Banff would be an ideal place to get some more variety in terms of size. I ended up buying an LTD board bag... just a cheap padded carry-on bag (i.e. no wheels). However, it wasn't my first choice. There was this really cool looking Drop bag that I bought, but once I got my board in there, it turned out that the handle was a bit off-center, making it a bit of a pain to carry around. The good thing was that the LTD bag was the same size and the same price, so I went for a straight swap for it. Should teach me to look more closely next time.

Action plan

I'm not sure if I'll get much done today. It's already 4:45, and I'm still waiting on that accommodation to be sorted out. Assuming it does get sorted out, I'll probably just take a leisurely stroll around downtown Banff and maybe buy a couple of items I've been meaning to buy for a while, mainly gloves since mine are breaking apart. There's always tomorrow to do some more shopping (which was one of the main purposes of this trip). I'll probably also get some nice food to eat for dinner, as I am quite famished. I only had a sausage and egg (and hash brown) sandwich for breakfast, and a few snacks for lunch, and the greater variety of food establishments that Banff has compared to Panorama is calling out to me. Mike finishes at midnight tonight, so we'll probably end up going out late. Not quite sure where the night will take us, but it'll be short (bars close at 2) and hopefully pretty damn sweet. The big night will be tomorrow night, when Aurora serves 25c beers, kinda like Cowboys in Calgary but with bigger glasses. Time to get drunk on a dollar again.

The plan for Monday is to go to Sunshine Village for some backcountry snowboarding. Since Mike's a local, he knows all the sweet spots that not a lot of people go to. Jacky, Andy, Tyler, and possibly a few others might be coming to Sunshine on Monday too. I'm not entirely sure that I'll go again on Tuesday. I've only got a reciprocal letter of introduction (for free lift tickets) for Monday, so getting some tickets on Tuesday might be a bit of a hassle. Another hassle is going to be getting home on Tuesday night. The Greyhound gets to Invermere at about 9:30, and the last bus back to Panorama leaves at 9:05. I'm hoping that I can get a ride back from one of the people coming back from bowling.

Oh yeah, speaking of which, there's now a regular bowling get-together every Tuesday. I obviously won't make it this Tuesday, but I went last Tuesday and it was great fun. It's not your regular 10-pin bowling though. This was a Canadian variation on the well-loved sport... 5-pin bowling. It's pretty crazy. You get 5 pins positioned in a V-shape (each pin worth a different amount depending on position), 3 shots at knocking them all down (like regular bowling, you get a strike if you get them all on the first, and a spare if you get them all on the second), and have to aim at these targets with a ball that is about half the size of a regular bowling ball, and has no holes. It certainly takes more precision aiming to get a good score in this variation of the game. It's just about as fun as 10-pin though.

I guess I should get going soon. I gotta wait for Mike for any updates, and I've been hogging this computer for about an hour now. Ciao.