Saturday December 18 - Grounded in Golden, BC

We were up early this morning and Ray was in touch with Ryan at Selkirk Service. He was all set to deal with the problem. Fortunately, the Audi started and Ray was able to drive it the kilometre to the garage. Ryan discovered that although the serpentine belt had become detached, it was actually the belt tensioner that had blown apart. Between the time of Ray's phone call and getting to the garage, Ryan sourced a replacement belt. But it looks like it won't be needed. Once discovering that it was the "tensioner" Ryan set about connecting with his contacts to see if he could source a replacement.  So....the part will be arriving by bus from Calgary this afternoon around 3:00 p.m. It shouldn't be a difficult job to replace it and we hope it will be fixed this afternoon. Then we will leave tomorrow morning for Vancouver.

Ryan has been extremely helpful. He took the initiative to book us into the Super 8 Hotel when he found out we were paying $116 at the Best Western....and now I think it is about $76 a night instead!! We thanked him profusely for taking the initiative and made the move!  The room, although not as large as at the Best Western, is quite comfortable, clean and warm. The couple who own it are very welcoming. In fact everyone in town is friendly and chatty. It's a nice place.

So, what can I say about Golden. It is situated in the south eastern part of BC at the junction of the Columbia River and the Kicking Horse River and lies between the Rocky Mountains and the Purcell Mountains; so that all you see are mountains all the way around you.  The current population seems to be about 4000 with another 3000+ in the surrounding area. I get the feeling it is one of these unique places somewhat like El Chalten in Argentina - a very natural hub for hiking and all kinds of sports activities. There are lots of young people around, the energy is high, and it is totally unpretentious. Very much our sort of town! It is about an hour from Banff, two and a half hours from Jasper, and one and a half hours from Revelstoke.

The town was founded around 1807 when the explorer David Thompson, an explorer and fur trader crossed the Rocky's. Then in 1885 when the Canadian Pacific Railway was completed, Golden became an important railway stop. It's economy is probably connected to the forest industry.

After we had sorted out the car, had breakfast, and moved, we took a walk into town. Probably close to a 3 or 4 km walk one way to get there. The weather is absolutely gorgeous with bright sun, blue skies, but freezing cold - I think it was around -15C when we started warming up to around -12C - but we wrapped up well and thoroughly enjoyed the walk. The town is not huge, and we didn't get to do too much investigation; stopped and had a coffee and then made our way back. You can see some of the pictures I took on the walk.



We have often been asked about how we pass our time in the car on our various journeys. It is easy really, and we never seem to get bored. I mentioned earlier that we discussed various issues. One of the issues we discussed to some degree along the way was the pros and cons of wind power. This was after passing a small wind farm in Manitoba. I was checking out a web site for my not-for-profit governance course and somehow or other ended up on a site discussing this very same issue. Interesting to note that the research that has been conducted on wind turbine syndrome is flawed and there is no argument strong enough to cause us to stop production. Even the argument that bird migrations are interrupted is being dealt with by the production of systems such as radar to counteract this.  In summary, wind power remains one of the most environmentally friendly methods of producing energy we have; it has been around for over 5000 years, and !no matter how much we use, it will never run out! Some of the other hot topics we have discussed include whether or not Julian Assange should have leaked the material on covert operations or not. It seems he has a lot of supporters. We realized we really didn't know exactly what he had leaked but were aware only that it jeopardized troops in Afghanistan and maybe Iraq.....and who knows whether he is a sex criminal or not. Anyway, he has certainly created some interesting discussions if nothing else......and I will not dare to give my opinion one way or other in a blog....I've already had some interesting comments over the years and don't wish to encourage any more!! 

I spent the rest of the day working on the material for my course. Ray read through the 166 emails he had, mainly regarding his position on the board of Mountain Springs. He has only been gone a week! We had a lovely dinner this evening and are now back in our hotel unit and set to get an early night.

Incidentally, the part didn't arrive at 3:30 but came in from Vernon BC on the 6:30 bus. Ryan is all set to work on it tomorrow morning around 10 a.m. He thinks it will take around half and hour. So, we are hopeful to be on our way around mid-day.We will aim for Kamloops, stay the night there and drive into Vancouver on Monday - arriving probably in the mid afternoon. Can't wait!!!