Last night’s gig was at the Drake Pub & Inn in Canmore. The drive from Kelowna was pleasant and uneventful, a little too cloudy and drizzly to see the mountains much, but good brooding dramatic clouds. Marcus spotted a bear and we all saw a ram.

We set up at the Drake, which is your standard pub, nice big stage, and I noticed as I set my amp on top of the cabinet that something in it seemed to shift. I did a little mental “la la la I didn’t notice that", but sure enough, not a whole lot of sound was coming out of it, and it turned out that a transformer had come loose and was wobbling around. Not something that you want to mess with without knowing your electrical stuff really, really well, or you can get zapped. So I had to plug the bass in directly to the soundboard, which made me a bit sad (it’s just not the same without the floor humming) but got the job done.

One of Marcus’s amps went down as well, and he got a bit of a shock from his microphone. Seriously, what is in the air this week?

Anyway, we didn’t bother with a setlist for a change, and did a pretty casual, off-the-cuff hour & a half including one improvised jam. After the initial technical hiccups everything went smoothly enough.

We stayed in the band room underneath the pub, and slept heartily, emerging from the depths to the absolutely stunning mountains around Canmore. If you’re not familiar with the town, it’s towards the eastern edge of the Rockies, about an hour west of Calgary, before the mountains start to dwindle into foothills. I’m used to Vancouver’s mountains, which are very beautiful and photogenic but sit looking polite and green in the background. Canmore’s mountains loom dramatically overhead, not afraid to get in your face, craggy and imposing and filled with fascinating shadows and light, and I imagine you could stare at them for hours watching the light change on them. I’m sorry I didn’t take pictures, but I had a muffin in one hand and an apple in the other and I was quite hungry.

We headed on to Calgary mostly to run errands. Calgary’s road system is baffling to the typical visitor, and seems to consist of a few big highways sweeping across the city with exits right where you’re not sure if you need them or not. The first item on the agenda was to drop my amp off at the Greyhound station to send it on to Ontario for repairs, and it took us three passes along the various highways that pass it before we actually found the right one. Next we picked up a replacement rental amp and a few odds and ends, visited some of Todd’s family, and ran some errands. Now we’re on the highway to Medicine Hat, which is a very flat and nearly perfectly straight road, though not as much as it’ll be once we hit Saskatchewan tomorrow.