Last Week

We left Kamloops and headed back east to Revelstoke, then down to Cranbrook, east again to Lethbridge and then up to Calgary. We passed through some of the largest mountains that I’ve seen this trip. Most of the time it has either been too cloudy, too dark, or smaller rounded mountains. But I could see some sharp peaks during this trip.

We arrived in Calgary Wednesday morning, and spent Wednesday and Thursday testing the yard there. Thursday evening we brought the train back to the Track Evaluation shop, where it finally stopped moving for the year. One of the guys there showed me around the shop and all the other equipment they had there, from tampers to track aligners to spike pullers. But the most impressive thing was a track cleaner, where they literally took a jet engine from a B-52 airplane, attached it on the back of a truck, and added a big re-director on the back part to blow the air down. The guy said that if they left it blowing on one spot long enough that all that would be left would be the rails, all the stone and ties and spikes would be all blown away. That would be impressive to see work.

I said goodbye to the train, which had been my home for the last four months, and headed off to my hotel. Friday I had off to explore Calgary. I was pretty tired (we had been working long days that week), so I kindof just wandered around the downtown area. It was warm the last couple days, so I didn’t think about wearing much besides my jacket. But it was -15 before wind chill, which was pretty cold. So I mostly stayed inside and wandered through shopping malls and bridges. Found a pretty large garden area on the fourth floor of one shopping mall. Also went up the Calgary tower, and had a pretty good view.

On the pic on the right you can see the train tracks going past. I had gone over those tracks 3 weeks ago testing them. That was a cool feeling, knowing that I had been on there.

My flight left at 6:30, so I went to the airport plenty early, as there would probably be ridiculous traffic and lines given that it was the friday before Christmas. They turned out to be not bad at all though, and I ended up waiting around for a while. Flew to Las Vegas to catch my connecting flight to Toronto (that was the shortest trip available when I was booking). It was cool seeing all the downtown area from the air as we flew in, all lit up at night. Found some slots in the airport, and lost $14 straight without winning even once. Darn slot machines.

Caught my connecting flight to Toronto, and got picked up by my parents. Finally arrived home for good, the end of an adventure of a lifetime!