Bikefest Calgary

Linzi - 'you mean that thingamajig'.

Bikefest was a great success, an all day gathering in downtown Calgary with bike workshops eg first aid on your bike and keeping it working well; live music; bike gear ...  We got wheel stickers that say 'One Less Car' which we display on our bikes with pride.

Mark - thinking 'this guy's talking a load of ****', says - 'yes your knee length riding shorts do look better on you than me''

Mark (Simmons) by the Simmons mattress historic building, East Village. Bikes aplenty, felt right at home

Happy Mark with happy bike and happy steam punk hat, downtown Calgary

Stampede Yehaw!

This year (2012) Calgary in July celebrated it's 100th Stampede and the whole city was whooping up a party. It's a 2 week period where de-rigour is wearing your cow boy/girl hat and boots at any time, anywhere. There are often free breakfasts served all over town and parties/social events happening all over the place. We bought tickets for the Stampede event itself (famous for it's Rodeo). We cycled downtown to the stampede showground on a very hot day, though at any time it could rain and it did too that day but only for a short while. 

We really enjoyed the day, some highlights here if Mark's not already added his pics too.

• got our steampunk hats
• Mark calmed agitated horse using Tellington Touch
• Mark got close to a military robot
• excellent Tails rodeo story show
• listening/watching through open doorway live county music outside the venue while watching the 5 hour queue waiting to get in (I'm no sucker!)
• bypassing the queueing cars as we cycled right to the entrance

Linzi dressed up for the day

Skies darken in a threatening way ready for thunder storm. Just like a Harry Potter film Dementors hovering overhead.

The Blacksmiths international competition. Even had competitor from the UK. They had to make a horse shoe from a block of metal after only looking at the hoof for a few seconds, no touching or measuring, They had 25mins to make the shoe. Quite exciting, all buzzin and clanking. This was the World Championship!

'Tails' was a live show based around 3 horses and how the stampede came about. As you see here the 3 horse friends.

Rounding up cattle, rodeo style