Day 8, The Ride

Mike and I planned to ride the 30km or so from his place to downtown along the Bow River Pathway. Sal and Mel would drive in and pick us up. It was cool and sunny at 7:30 when we left, we were both wearing long sleeves. The paved trail is well marked, clean and smooth. Calgary has a division of parks and rec totally devoted to the trails and it shows. We quickly made our way along the path dropping into the valley. About 30 minutes in we came to a section that was closed for construction of a new housing development. A singletrack through the grass paralleled the river so we decided to take it rather than turn back. It was fun rolling through the narrow path and in about 20 minutes the trail picked up and we were zipping along again. As we got into the downtown area we came to more construction. There was no easy way around without hitting the streets so we turned back to a branch that was labelled Zoo. It felt like the wrong direction. We came across 4 police officers on bikes and asked them. After a smart comment about 'when you see bears and elephants you're at the zoo' they told us how to get around the construction. 15 minutes later we made Prince's Island Park in just over 2 hours.

View Track 4 in a larger map
Mike called Mel and reported that we had made it and said we were going to spend some time riding around the park and we'd call again when we were ready for rescue. I commented that I was considering riding home and Mike surprised me when he said he was up for it. No numb hands or worse and his butt wasn't really that sore. We called back and committed.

On the way in Mike had noticed another trail marked the Elbow River Pathway. When we came to the intersection we took it. We headed west along the Elbow River through the Stampede grounds, passing the Saddle Dome an a small town of cowboys in rv's. Suddenly we came out at a major intersection with no markings. We tried getting a gps fix on the phone with no success but the trails don't show up on the maps anyway. We asked a few people and finally found a biker with a paper map. The trail continued on the far side of the roadway. This was just the beginning of the confusion.