... notable events : I'm... spinning around... move out of my way...

Thrice I've driven to Calgary from Vancouver, thrice the same stretch of highway almost took my life, with each time worse than the last.  I dare not go the same route a fourth time.

Eastbound on the Transcanada Highway 1.

It was the stretch that emerged from the Rockies from Banff to Calgary and all three times in late Summer/early Autumn.

Driving down from the Canadian Rockies from the ski resort town of Banff, one goes from steep ravines and mountain walls to suddenly emerge in the flat rolling terrain of the Canadian Prairies.  Featureless for miles upon miles, golden fields of wheat in summer, white sea of snow in winter.  The Transcanada Highway 1 would run almost straight due east spearing towards the city of Calgary.  As you drove further and further east, the awe inspiring visage of the Canada Rockies would grow, spreading out behind you in a massive wall of snow capped rock like a giant wall running north-south as far as the eye can see in both directions.  The contrast between flat prairie and sudden vertical mountain could not have been more stark and spectacular.

Calgary was a very different city from Vancouver, a smaller sleepier city in the middle of no-where, sticking up like a sore thumb out of the flat featureless prairies.  A city built with oil money, it was a strangely quaint city, a hive of humanity, an oasis of modernity in the barren expanse of nothing-ness, but it was the home of my good friend Steve from UBC, and a city I liked so much that together with my sister, we ended up eventually buying 1/2 acre of land out at Northridge Estates by the airport, land we still hold to this day.

My first trip into Calgary was a leisurely trip of exploration with my then girlfriend in second year of University.  We rented a car in Vancouver with my Malaysian driver's license, promising them not to drive it out of Vancouver city limits, and promptly driving it 3000 km round trip to Calgary and back.  It was an eye opening trip, seeing the wonder of the Canadian Rockies up close and personal.  More spectacular than the American Rockies south of the border, the Canadian Rockies rose higher and craggier as it thrust north towards the Arctic.

On the approach to Calgary, with the Transcanada 1 running straight eastward, with nothing but miles upon miles of open prairie around you, the Rockies an aberration, like a sudden backstop behind you, it suddenly snowed and hailed on us.  Cresting a small hill, the road in front of us was suddenly white with snow, the sky closed in, grey and foreboding.  Worried, we slowed down and drove through the rapidly melting slush, ever conscious of the summer tires on our Vancouver rented car and the many stories of slippery unseen black ice.  After no more than 10-15 minutes, the sky opened up blue and clear with sunshine, the road dry and the previous few harrowing kilometers seemingly nothing but a figment of our imaginations.  Smiling, we sped up back to the speed limit and motored on, breaching the city limits to enter Calgary proper.

We stayed at the Elbow River Inn, taking the subways and free tram to explore downtown, taking in the one street that was Calgary Chinatown, walked the Plus 15, shopping and exploring.  Steve met us in his parent's van at Calgary Chinatown and took us up to Saddle Ridge by the Saddle Dome for us to see the cityscape, its urban sprawl but a lighted blur surrounded on all sides by a sea of dark night-time prairie and the black outline of a wall of mountain in the west barely contrasted with the marginally lighter sky above.

It was a fun casual trip that took us up north after Calgary, to Edmonton with the usual tourist sights like West Edmonton Mall and Fort Edmonton, then due west back through Jasper and southwest to close the driving loop at Kamloops for the drive west back to Vancouver.

On our second trip to Calgary, I was in my third year of University and the trip was prompted by the visit of a good friend of mine from secondary school.  She had gone to the UK for her university and was already working in London when she flew over to pay me a visit.  "Let's drive to Calgary I said to my skeptical girlfriend."  We ended up not only driving to Calgary but also driving the other direction to take the ferry over to Vancouver Island to visit the city of Victoria, a complete round trip of some 3000 + 1000 km.

On this second trip to Calgary, after visiting a few glaciers like the Crow's Feet glacier in the Rockies and doing some irresponsible 180 kph in the wildly vibrating rented Hyundai down a straight mountain road high in the Rockies, we again found ourselves driving out from Banff on the Transcanada 1.  Again, during our approach into Calgary, the road suddenly filled with snow and hail.  Cresting a hill, we hit a white expanse of snow and slush.  Frantically slowing down the car, I found the brakes wouldn't eat and like all novice drivers from warmer climates, I turned the steering the wrong side.  The car spun around 180 degrees, spinning off the road onto the middle grass divide but thankfully to a stop.  The great thing about large countries is the large generous expanse of middle divide between opposing lanes on their highways.  If there had been a central divide, I would have hit it, but thankfully Canadian highways in the prairies were wide affairs with nothing but a broad strip of grass between the two sides.  "Cool!" my London-based friend said from the backseat as the car spun to a stop, our headlights facing the other direction.  My girlfriend never forgot that one word and won my London-based friend her undying enmity.  "Cool??!! We could have died!" she whispered harshly to me out of her earshot.  Yeah, it was close but thank goodness we came out alright, people, car and all.  A very slow and careful next couple of kilometers and the roads and sky were clear again like waking up from a bad dream, the nightmare nothing but puffs of imaginary smoke.

In Calgary, this time we crashed Steve's house late at night while his parents slept, their next day's work papers artfully laid out all over the floor of the house while Steve's dog Jake leapt and rolled over for bits of cheese.  Steve offered us to stay the night in his basement with the heater and all but I didn't think it too convenient for me to be bringing girls to his house for sleep overs so... we ended up at the Elbow River Inn again, and other than an earlier minor hiccup of locking the car keys in the car and needing a tow truck come open the car door for us, we did pretty much the same things as the first time we were in Calgary.

After Calgary, our journey again took us north to Edmonton and an overnight drive back through the Rockies at Jasper, stopping once for me to gaze at the incredible star-filled night sky unpolluted by silly things like street and citylights.  From there we went back through Kamloops to Vancouver and onto the BC Ferries for the Orca-spotting trip to Vancouver Island.  On Vancouver Island we stayed overnight in Victoria, then up north to the town of Nanaimo which was directly across the Georgia Straits from Vancouver, and back home to Vancouver.  Another nice and pleasant journey only slightly marred by the near accident and the dagger eyes between the two girls the whole trip.

My third trip to Calgary was in my fourth year of university, at graduation.  My parents had come for the ceremony and what better way to keep them occupied but to take them on a road trip.  Yeah.  Calgary.  Again.

Ever mindful of the past two roadtrips, I chatted with my father in the passenger side seat of the rented Dodge Neon, telling him that this Transcanada 1 highway was wierd and you never know when you might hit snow.  Barely were the words out of my mouth when again, cresting a small hill, we hit snow.  I was much more careful this time, one year older, and at least I'd like to think so, one year wiser.  I drove slowly and the slushy road wasn't a problem this time.  We drove on, watching as a few cars ahead of us swung side to side, hydropanning on the icy road when suddenly, I saw in my rear view mirror the frenetic flashing of headlights. 

Oh... Shit...

Pumping the brakes, and trying desperately to not let the car spin, I remember telling my father that we better pull off to the side of the road.  My mother sleeping in the backseat never knew what happened and I doubt my father knew more than what I was telling him but with the rear view mirror and side mirrors I could see exactly what was happening.  I had to get the car out of the way.  The massive truck behind me was barreling down the road at high speed, flashing his headlights probably because his brakes were not working in the snow.  This was after all, late-summer/early-autumn.  No one had snow tires or chains on their wheels yet.

I thought of speeding up to pull away but that risked putting the car in greater risk of spinning if I ever lost control and at high speeds... no... that would only end in disaster... the only way was to get the car off the road and out of the truck's way, and quickly.

The one thought that kept running at light speed through my mind at the time was... my parents... my parents are in this car!  Smiling calmly to my father, I explained to him that I was trying to get the car off the road as the car wheels were slipping.  He nodded to me, I'm not sure if he knew the exact danger looming from behind but I'm pretty sure he sensed something amiss...

... the brakes barely slowed the car as I tried to gradually steer the car off the road.  A couple of times, I felt the car slip and begin to spin before I corrected and brought the car back straight.  Unable to speed up, unable to slow down but most alarmingly, unable to turn the car without risking it going into a tail spin, and all the while this damn truck flashing his lights got rapidly closer and closer to me.  It was very obvious that the truck was not going to stop... he probably couldn't stop.

To be honest, I'm not too sure how but the car wheels gripped and at the very last moment, I spun the steering wheel and plunged the car off onto the side service lane just as the truck thundered by, its horn blaring.  My mother woke up at the loud sound, wide eyed to see the truck pass so close just outside her window.  "What happened?" she asked in Cantonese.  "Just stopping for awhile mom.  Go back to sleep." I remember replying calmly whilst my heart thundered in my chest.  I knew how close we got to being hit by that truck.  Ice and snow on the road was definitely NOT fun.

Things improved considerably after that.  The road traffic thinned out as I drove slowly forward on the service road, only moving back out onto the road after checking and rechecking that the lane was clear for miles.  Then again for the third time, exactly on cue the roads and sky reopened into bright blue sunshine and into Calgary we drove.

We visited a few more places this time, even driving 110 km northeast of Calgary to Drumheller on the Red Deer River in the Badlands of east-central Alberta to the famous Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology to see dinosaur bones, before heading back north to Edmonton where my dad got his spectacles snatched off his face by a young girl at the West Edmonton Mall and who would probably have had a lot more fun with him if I hadn't stepped in and asked for it back.

After Edmonton, the routine took us as usual, back through Jasper, Kamloops and Vancouver, then to graduation.  A total round trip of some 3000 km and I had done it three times, with each time all the more harrowing on that strange stretch of the Transcanada 1.  That was my last roadtrip to Calgary as a student at UBC.  It was the close of another journey, a journey of four years spent on the North American continent and it was a plane journey back to begin yet another new journey in my life, at a place where it never snows... ever.