Day The Rest Of It: Calgary AB - Larrington Towers

By popular request¹, the last instalment of this year's Automatic Diary.

"I hope you realise this weather is not typical of Calgary in late September, eh!" said a fellow snoutcast on Friday night, as we stood shivering in a bus-shelter-stylee Designated Smoking Area.  It was twelve degrees and raining.  Meanwhile, my grate frends Al'n'Alice, en route to visit various of Al's family in Red Deer AB and following much the same route as I had a few hours earlier, had reported SNO.  Red Deer is about 150 km north of Calgary...

In the morning the view out of my window looked very much exactly like this:

Instead of being 12 degrees and raining, it was now 3 degrees and raining.  And although I had until 15:30 to return That Shitbox Dodge to Hertz, and the flight didn't leave until 18:25, Calgary is spread over such a vast area that the countryside, such as it is, starts so far away that I could almost have nipped up the road to gatecrash the Krauses' party and not see any.

The above is slightly more dramatic than the fare to be found closer to Calgary, as it's taken from the top of the cliff at Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump.  With nothing better to do I went to the airport.  Mr Hertz Man pounced on the chipped windscreen and totally failed to spot the damaged bumper until I, schooled in the traditions of honesty by the staff of Focus 12 (RIP), pointed it out to him.  Form filled in, nothing to pay because insewerants, Hertz Man cheerful.  Probably because he didn't have to mend it himself.

By now the weather in Red Deer was exactly like this:

so it appears that my decision to hole up in a nice warm airport for six hours was probably the right one.

I finally got into the Shiny Metal Bird and some time later got out again, in a Londonton where it was 12 degrees and raining.  Bus to Woking, taxi to Fort Larrington, drink battleship-floating quantities of coffee in an attempt to stay awake.  Sunday was much the same; Monday morning was spent picking apples, restarting the router, trying to mend my specs, filling in forms and suchlike before heading back to a Larrington Towers which was, to my relief, unburgled in spite of the outer front door being so warped by the summer that it won't close properly without being repeatedly kicked.  Which is difficult to achieve from the outside.

Notice that the blinkenlights on the router are, instead of spraying shiny green LED-sourced peace of mind across the Great Hall like miniature lighthouses, blank.  Some considerable faffage later shewed this to be because the landline was dead.  This may or may not be connected to my having arranged to switch to a different broadband package while I was away, but it wasn't until this morning that BT plugged stuff back in.  I have still not opened the backlog of post, started to unpack The Luggage or figure out what's been broken by SCS Software updating Euro Truck Simulator 2 and American Truck Simulator while I was away².  And I have two Formula 1 Grands Prix and two and a half British Touring Car Championship³ meetings to catch up on, so I may re-emerge in time for the BHPC AGM on October 21st.  Thank you for watching.

1: Miss von Brandenburg.
2: I finally got a fast enough network connection to download the ProMods v2.30 map mod for ETS2 v1.31 while in Heber City.  The day afterwards, v1.32 was released.
3: As commentated on by the husband of Professor Larrington's hairdresser, trivia fans..