SLEET, SNOW AND A BLACK SUV
The loud bang and the crunching sound of breaking plastic when we were hit still stands out in the memory. The bike seemed to bounce off the side of the black SUV, skidding sideways on the wet road, yet somehow I managed not to drop it. I thought our trip was over. I could see the left mirror and indicator were gone and I thought the left pannier and fairing were probably busted too. And what about the frame? Was it damaged? We were in the northern US state of Montana, 13,000km from home, and still had more than 2000km to ride back to Phoenix, Arizona. This could ruin a holiday.
We had just spent two weeks in the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia after riding there from Phoenix. The Canadian Rockies were very scenic and we rode to picturesque Moraine Lake and Lake Louise before heading north up the Icefields Parkway past glaciers to chilly Jasper. On the way, we punched through some sleet and then it snowed in Jasper on one of our nights there. It was then back into sunshine as we looped south and rode good bike roads in Alberta, where we visited the Head-Smashed-In-Buffalo-Jump site, historic Fort McCleod and the Bomber Command Museum of Canada, home to one of the last operating Lancaster bombers.
The morning we
