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kevin_standleeI worked a half-day today, but spoke with my director and explained that because we can't go as fast as we originally planned, I'm going to have to skip the other half-days planned this week and next Monday. We got away from Brandon about 11 AM.
Here was today's route. Google Maps said it should take four hours. It took us more than six hours, including restroom breaks and a refueling stop.
We passed a lot of grain elevators, some of which are rail served, and some of which had their own switch engines or car movers.
Plenty of wind turbines dot the landscape. There were also oil wells, but I did not get any pictures of them.
For all that we paralleled railroads much of today, we saw only a few trains. It looked like a lot of maintenance was going on. But when we made our refueling stop at Balgonie SK, I heard and then saw in the distance this CP (now CPKC due to the merger of Canadian Pacific with Kansas City Southern) freight train.
I'm glad there was a Flying J east of Regina, as it saved us detouring. After I did the conversions, I worked out that we got about 18 miles per gallon today, which is not as good as we usually should expect to get, but if the oxygen sensor has failed (one of the reasons for the Service Engine Soon light), lower fuel economy is something I would expect.
Just before 5 PM MDT (we started the day in the Central zone, so we gained an hour), we pulled in to the Holiday Inn Express in South Regina.
We were upgraded to a King mini-suite, which was nice, especially given that the way we changed the reservation yesterday technically could have caused IHG to have me lose the reservation with a 100% penalty.
One of the pleasant surprises of the room is that the wired internet connection worked. While the wireless connection was a respectable 23 mbps down and 13 up, the wired connection was 437 down and 459 up! It made me wish we had video to upload. Lisa took the opportunity to download old television shows in which she was interested, as her computer has only a wired connection.
The air conditioning on the van mostly works, but the blower fan keeps failing. It fades out and then comes back on if we turn the AC back to vent for a while. And the engine continues to rattle in annoying ways. To keep the rattling down, we cannot exceed 100 kph.
Although we got to the hotel relatively early, we had a lot of things that ate up time. I ran out to get some small groceries before ordering a pizza, while Lisa got a bath. I also did a couple of loads of laundry, as we were running out of clean clothes. We did get fed and I got the laundry done, although some of it is still hanging up around the room as I write this because there were other people impatiently waiting to do their laundry as well.
One thing I had wanted to do was to soak in the hotel hot tub. I have had a pinched nerve causing pain down my left leg since the end of Pemmi-Con, and my muscles ache in a bunch of places. However, when I went to the pool area, it was badly crowded. Maybe if I'd gone to the hot tub instead of getting dinner, I would have had a chance to soak. And as the pool doesn't open until 9 AM tomorrow, I won't have a chance to do so tomorrow morning. Maybe in Lethbridge.
Yes, the goal tomorrow is Lethbridge, Alberta, which means tomorrow's trip is over 600 km, one of the longest legs of the entire trip. We must get away early tomorrow to have any hope of making it, and that means we must get sleep tonight.
Here was today's route. Google Maps said it should take four hours. It took us more than six hours, including restroom breaks and a refueling stop.
We passed a lot of grain elevators, some of which are rail served, and some of which had their own switch engines or car movers.
Plenty of wind turbines dot the landscape. There were also oil wells, but I did not get any pictures of them.
For all that we paralleled railroads much of today, we saw only a few trains. It looked like a lot of maintenance was going on. But when we made our refueling stop at Balgonie SK, I heard and then saw in the distance this CP (now CPKC due to the merger of Canadian Pacific with Kansas City Southern) freight train.
I'm glad there was a Flying J east of Regina, as it saved us detouring. After I did the conversions, I worked out that we got about 18 miles per gallon today, which is not as good as we usually should expect to get, but if the oxygen sensor has failed (one of the reasons for the Service Engine Soon light), lower fuel economy is something I would expect.
Just before 5 PM MDT (we started the day in the Central zone, so we gained an hour), we pulled in to the Holiday Inn Express in South Regina.
We were upgraded to a King mini-suite, which was nice, especially given that the way we changed the reservation yesterday technically could have caused IHG to have me lose the reservation with a 100% penalty.
One of the pleasant surprises of the room is that the wired internet connection worked. While the wireless connection was a respectable 23 mbps down and 13 up, the wired connection was 437 down and 459 up! It made me wish we had video to upload. Lisa took the opportunity to download old television shows in which she was interested, as her computer has only a wired connection.
The air conditioning on the van mostly works, but the blower fan keeps failing. It fades out and then comes back on if we turn the AC back to vent for a while. And the engine continues to rattle in annoying ways. To keep the rattling down, we cannot exceed 100 kph.
Although we got to the hotel relatively early, we had a lot of things that ate up time. I ran out to get some small groceries before ordering a pizza, while Lisa got a bath. I also did a couple of loads of laundry, as we were running out of clean clothes. We did get fed and I got the laundry done, although some of it is still hanging up around the room as I write this because there were other people impatiently waiting to do their laundry as well.
One thing I had wanted to do was to soak in the hotel hot tub. I have had a pinched nerve causing pain down my left leg since the end of Pemmi-Con, and my muscles ache in a bunch of places. However, when I went to the pool area, it was badly crowded. Maybe if I'd gone to the hot tub instead of getting dinner, I would have had a chance to soak. And as the pool doesn't open until 9 AM tomorrow, I won't have a chance to do so tomorrow morning. Maybe in Lethbridge.
Yes, the goal tomorrow is Lethbridge, Alberta, which means tomorrow's trip is over 600 km, one of the longest legs of the entire trip. We must get away early tomorrow to have any hope of making it, and that means we must get sleep tonight.
no subject
Date: 2023-08-03 01:11 pm (UTC)I actually went to Google Maps to figure this out. How did it save you detouring if it was west of Regina? That's when I realized you meant "east of Regina."
no subject
Date: 2023-08-03 01:31 pm (UTC)