Edmonton, Wednesday, 19 February, 2014
Feb 23rd, 2014 by rallyadmin
Of course, it snowing when I head out to the car. Really snowing. No wimpy flurries or snow showers. A real, genuine snowstorm. Leave the hotel in the dark and head northwest to Edmonton.
I’m hoping that the weather clears soon but as dawn breaks, it just seems to be snowing harder. The winds is blowing and the snow is drifting. If course, I’m probably the only one who thinks that this is notable. I get in line an follow the traffic. As I drive along, the number of cars spun off the road starts to climb. There’s even some cars that have rolled. This might be as serious as it seems.
I stop at a small roadside gas station/snowmobile shop for fuel. A fuel service stop, I feel bad as the owner of the shop comes out to fill the truck. In the blowing snow, he says we should go inside and wait for the fuel to fill the truck tank. “No not a lot of snow this year. This is the first in a few weeks. Last month we had a than and all the snow disappeared.” H’s pleased. I’d sooner it stopped all together.
The fuel fill finishes and I pay for the fuel back in the truck. As I’m just leaving the yard, I nearly drive the truck into a ditch in the now horrible visibility. Luckily, I stop just as I’m driving through the snowbank. I try to back out. No luck. Put the truck in 4X4 Lo and rocked it a bit and the truck pops out. It’s too early in this trip for this crap.
A drive about another hour and the snow stops and another hour later the sun is out and the road is snow free. No traffic and a straight shot to Edmonton.
By now, I’m well and truly in oil country. Oil supply trucks. Huge transport equipment to move even larger oil drilling and excavation equipment. I pass a vehicle with probably 40 or more articulated wheels that’s used for moving huge pieces of equipment and another 10k up the road I pass still another identical device. On the south side of the road, there are railyards for loading the crude. Farther up, grain silos and grain processing plants which seem like they’re from a time gone by, albeit, gone by very recently.
Everything is over-shadowed by the new oil industry which has probably spent more money in the last 10 years than all the money spent here in the previous century. The grain silos stand quietly empty in the February cold. The oil will run out and the oil equipment and the engineers and roughnecks will leave. For now, they just convert soybeans to soy oil, quietly waiting for their next day as king.
I get to Edmonton about 3PM and check into a hotel near the airport. Colin’s flight has been delayed a bit and I go over to the airport around 4PM to collect him. Then back to the hotel.
We catch up in the hotel restaurant over beers and dinner. An early night and then a short day to Jasper tomorrow to me John and the rest of the group.
Obi-wan