STAMPEDE YEAAAAAAAAAAAA HAAAAAAAAAAAAAW

Ok I left home Friday the 7th for the Calgary Stampede... an epic adventure.

This is how it happened

Friday I got off work at 4:30 and gathered my road trip things luggage, disposable cameras so on. Also I made two newish techno mp3s (6hrs each) after which I headed out. I got to Eric's house (collage buddy) but his car wasn't there. Just as I pulled into his driveway he phoned and said he would be another 30 min. Fortunately another friend (Fran6) near there let me chill at his house until Eric got home.
Eric called and I picked him and his girlfriend up and we all headed out. It was 6:30-7pm when we left so we new to get to Calgary in one trip we would be up all night. I took the first driving shift and drove until it was dark. We had started out with a full tank of gas and all was going good until we started relying on the "Kilometers left in your tank" display in my truck. The truck seemed to think we had 400km when I was at half a tank of gas lol. Since the display said 400km me and Eric went on talking and listening to music not even paying attention. We were just passed by a gas station when I looked at my gas gauge and "km" gauge respectively... and noticed that the "km" gauge was only at 399 when we had drove for a quarter of a tank... I pushed it to the back of my mind as I reminded myself there would be another gas station shortly. Little did I realize I had just entered a valley stretch with nothing but nice scenery. I got a little worried when the gas light started flickering... that's when Eric noticed as well. Luckily his girl friend was sleeping. He sort of leaned towards me and looked more closely at the gauge cluster "is that the gas light"?, "yup", "****", then we both looked th the "km" gauge which now read 403km then I had an obligatory "crummy technology" so as we rode the gentle hills of the valley floor our eyes rarely swayed from the gas meter. As the needle touched the empty line we discussed what to do if we ran out of gas all the while praying for a gas station. Fortunately we reached a town just in time to fill up. The rest of the trip was fairly uneventful. We got to Calgary around 4am (Calgary time one hour ahead of my time) once in Calgary we stayed at Eric’s moms house with Eric’s sister.


Saturday
We woke up before noon and went to the beach Sicomy Lake or something, which was not much more than a mud puddle. Unfortunately for us the smallish man made lake was the closest watersourse. It served it's purpose as we were all refreshed by it's refreshingness. We "swam" to the middle but it turned out to only be 7' deep. After the lake we went to Shanook Center (a large mall) and went hat shopping (because you need a cowboy hat at the Calgary stampede). We had lunch then went and got hats and then went for an ice cream.
After dropping my friends off where we were staying I went in search of my Calgarian best friend Tim. Unfortunately I am horrible with directions and got lost quickly. Fortunately I found my way to his house around 9:30. After catching up on old times I overheard someone mention car racing and I inquired. As it turned out Calgary has a huge street racing scene! At around 11 Tim and I pulled into a parking lot filled to the brim with cool cars, from fire flys to Celicas, mini bikes to Suvs. all there ready to race. We followed some people to an industrial area and discovered that a bunch of people had set up a "fast and the furious 1" stile street racing run. Except this was a two-lane road with parking lots on either side. I parked and Tim and I got out. we went to the roadside where the people were gathering and saw that people were talking about the next race, but low and behold we herd a whirring. It was the sound of a helicopter. Everyone looked up and suddenly the sky lit up with red and blue. A Calgarian police helicopter "Hawk 1" was crashing the party. Everyone jumped in their cars and booked. it was sooooooooo coooooooool. After that I took Tim back to his place and he showed me his little BMW after which I went back to where I was staying.

Sunday
We (Eric's sister, his gf, Eric and I) woke up early so we could go for a free stampede breakfast and admission to the stampede grounds. Unfortunately we couldn't find the free breakfast place but we did just BARLEY get into the stampede before they started charging for admission. We went about the different booths filled with belt buckles and all sorts of gadgets. And walked through the art section. Paintings, sculptures, knitting, carving you name it it was there. After that we went to Sicomy Lake again and left JUST before a hailstorm. The weather in Calgary can change really fast. We got lunch from little Cezers then went home.
After watching some TV Eric got a call from one of his university friends and we went to her house for dinner. There her parents made me feel a little put out. Both of them are engineers and I am a draftsperson, the trade that works directly below them so they ever so politely made rude comments about my field. Meh… I dislike a lot of engineers… After super the university friend joined us and we al went back to the stampede grounds. We walked around a bit and went to the club on the grounds. (loud country music and beer) after which we watched the fireworks and then headed home.

Monday
We slept in… a lot. At about noon we got up and went to the stampede for rides! At the first ride we went to it started to rain, they even shut it down after we had our ride because the track was wet. Since it was a little rainy we left (after getting our hand stamped to get back in). We went to Boston Pizza for lunch and it was good. When we were done lunch it was sunny again so we went back to the stampede. We went on many more rides and wasted lots of money on games and had a good time. We left around 1:00am and headed home.

Tuesday
We wanted to leave by 10am so everyone got up around 9 and got ready to go. We said our good-byes and started our long trip home. On our way out of town we stopped at the Calgary Olympic Park and walked around. After that we gassed up and headed out. We still had most of a camera worth of film left so we took a lot of scenery shots before arriving home tired but full of memories.

Good Times.

Msn me if you want pics there are about 200 :D