We’re spending a sunny morning in Penticton, recuperating from a drive-from-hell. The wedding is at three, so that gives us a few more hours to enjoy the beach before the social obligations begin, and another few hours for Karin to catch up with her Harry Potter after having picked up her copy on Main Street this morning.

By the way, I flipped through our (purchased, paper) copy and confirmed that the (bootlegged) copy I downloaded last Wednesday from Usenet (and subsequently spent that and the next night reading) is in fact legitimate. No spoilers for you though.

The drive, you ask? We left Calgary (after dropping Karin’s car there) around 11 AM or so, and made for Canmore for a light lunch. Sitting in a trendy cafe, Ryan (thirty minutes ahead of us) calls to inform that Highway #1 is closed (for some reason as yet unknown to us) and they are detouring everyone through Radium. (Add 1.5 hours onto a 6.5 hour trip). Not only that, but the highway to get onto the highway to Radium is backed up for two kilometers. (Add thirty minutes onto a now 8 hour trip.) We dutifully drive to Radium (behind a logging truck for fifteen kilometers no less) make a few phone calls now that there is cell service, and turn (obviously) North towards Golden. Stop. There are two accidents on THAT highway, effectively blocking it to anyone who is not willing to wait five hours to get through. Mind, it took us thirty minutes to discover that. (Add another thirty minutes to a now 8.5 hour trip.) Instead, we turned South and decided to backtrack through Cranbrook, Castlegar, and Osoyoos. (Add yet another two and a half hours onto what was a 9 hour trip.)

Now, keep in mind we were supposed to be in Penticton for supper. We were not going to make it and needed to stop in Cranbrook (still five plus hours from our destination) to eat — not to mention a few rest stops for the pregnant passenger, and an additional gasoline break. (Add yet another requisite hour and a half to what had been an eleven and a half hour trip.)

If you’ve been following along with the math (and taken into account the change in timezone) you’ll already have figured that we didn’t arrive at out destination until midnight. Midnight. MIDNIGHT. (And I didn’t even account for the fact that we drove ninety minutes from Red Deer that morning!) Needless to say we’re slightly exhausted.

And too bad Karin can’t drive a standard stick shift. Oh! What’s that? Didn’t I mention we COULDN’T EVEN SWITCH drivers. She felt guilty and I was just about to rage on some of the people on the road. Two close calls with deer, one “needed-to-pull-to-the-shoulder to avoid a head-on with some idiot passing the opposite direction”, heat, rain, a moron who pulled out in front of me in the middle of a dark highway, and not being able to contact Ryan after Radium to see where he was and ensure he wasn’t the cause of either of the accidents blocking our path.

It’s been — and gonna continue to be — a long few days.