So What About That Traffic!!

A few words about riding a motorcycle on the roads of Canada to date. We mentioned earlier that riding in British Columbia was great. While the roads in the mountain were often under construction and, like mountain roads everywhere, were pretty windy (as in full of bends, not full of wind), the speeds were generally quite low. Besides, the scenery was usually nothing less than stunning. Riding in Alberta has been a bit different. For a start, the major highways have a 110 kph speed limit which means if you are traveling at that speed, you are holding up traffic. Riding into Edmonton, we were overtaken by a Mountie (in a car, not on a horse) who must have been trying to make the donut shop before closing because he could not have been doing less than 130! And no, he wasn’t chasing anyone nor did he have lights flashing.

There is something uncomfortable about riding a Wing, two up, at 110 kph and being passed by a semi about a metre and a half from your left elbow. It is even more uncomfortable being the Goldwing filling for a two-truck sandwich. Perhaps we will get used to it, but we doubt it.

We bought and fitted a Navman GPS unit before we left NZ – complete with USA and Canada maps and we are glad we did. Today, we programmed the unit to stay off the major highways and it guided us through some really excellent secondary roads to Lethbridge, Alberta (south of Calgary). We programmed it for multiple destinations to retain some control over where we went and we learned that we had to follow the instructions of Nagging Nellie (as some have dubbed the Navman) exactly. We thought we knew better once and rather than go to the centre of the town we had programmed as one of the stops, we stayed on the main road and kept going. For the next 50km, Nagging Nellie constantly told us to make a U-turn where possible, until we stopped and told her to skip that destination.

While the road from Edmonton to Lethbridge was more interesting than the Jasper – Edmonton Road, it was still about 500km of not much. There is something mesmerizing about having a road that is dead straight for 50-75 km. This is grain and oil country and we saw lots of grain harvesting and quite a few oil well heads. One of the finds was the Reynolds Alberta Museum in Wetaskiwin. This is not on the main drag but is a big, modern museum dedicated to cars and planes and it houses Canada’s Aviation Hall of Fame. It is great, as you’ll see from the selection of photos.