Dan Mangan | The Home Stretch -- By Jonathan Taggart
Visual Tour Diary - British Columbia & Alberta
We left Canmore in crystal-clear morning light after a relaxed breakfast at the Communitea and a stop at gas station for a much-needed window-washing. Windows clear, we could now actually see the Rockies as we left town, their skewed strata giving the appearance of fumbled layer cakes sitting at 45° angles to a kitchen floor. Soon the Rockies gave way to the foothills which in turn gave way to the prairies as the mountains dropped and the trees receded, and suddenly flat and frozen Alberta was stretching out all around us.
A while later we once again found ourselves in thick fog, only this time the translucent air blended with our snow-covered surroundings to create the snow-globe hamster ball in which we were barreling forward. Fence posts and outbuildings cruised in and out of recognition and only the occasional cow broke the coastal delusion that we were in fact traveling the far northern reaches of Canada.
We arrived in Lethbridge, home of the High Level Bridge, streets lined with Dr. Suess trees, and of The Slice, creators of the best pizza in Alberta. We tucked into ‘The Slice Special’, ‘Halfway to Hawaii’, ‘Jumbalaya’, and the delicious ‘Brood’, named after a kitchen session with the traveling Elliott Brood. Big Buck Hunter featured highly on the pre-soundcheck agenda, as did games of pool, with Dan and John Walsh emerging as champions in their respective fields.
Perhaps the highlight of the evening came as Dan addressed the chatty bar with a joke. “So there was this cowboy working on a ranch, and one day he got bucked from his horse and cut his arm clean off on a barbed wire fence. ‘That sucks’, he thinks, and he grabs some twine and a needle from the barn and, man that he is, sews his arm back on. Later in the day he runs into the ranch boss and explains the arm situation. ‘Holy smokes, that’s so hardcore, I’m making you the foreman!’, exclaims the boss.
"Alright!"
--
February 4th - Canmore to Lethbridge
We left Canmore in crystal-clear morning light after a relaxed breakfast at the Communitea and a stop at gas station for a much-needed window-washing. Windows clear, we could now actually see the Rockies as we left town, their skewed strata giving the appearance of fumbled layer cakes sitting at 45° angles to a kitchen floor. Soon the Rockies gave way to the foothills which in turn gave way to the prairies as the mountains dropped and the trees receded, and suddenly flat and frozen Alberta was stretching out all around us.
A while later we once again found ourselves in thick fog, only this time the translucent air blended with our snow-covered surroundings to create the snow-globe hamster ball in which we were barreling forward. Fence posts and outbuildings cruised in and out of recognition and only the occasional cow broke the coastal delusion that we were in fact traveling the far northern reaches of Canada.
We arrived in Lethbridge, home of the High Level Bridge, streets lined with Dr. Suess trees, and of The Slice, creators of the best pizza in Alberta. We tucked into ‘The Slice Special’, ‘Halfway to Hawaii’, ‘Jumbalaya’, and the delicious ‘Brood’, named after a kitchen session with the traveling Elliott Brood. Big Buck Hunter featured highly on the pre-soundcheck agenda, as did games of pool, with Dan and John Walsh emerging as champions in their respective fields.
Perhaps the highlight of the evening came as Dan addressed the chatty bar with a joke. “So there was this cowboy working on a ranch, and one day he got bucked from his horse and cut his arm clean off on a barbed wire fence. ‘That sucks’, he thinks, and he grabs some twine and a needle from the barn and, man that he is, sews his arm back on. Later in the day he runs into the ranch boss and explains the arm situation. ‘Holy smokes, that’s so hardcore, I’m making you the foreman!’, exclaims the boss.
The following photograph accompanies the punch line:
"Alright!"
--Jonathan Taggart is a documentary photographer and writer based in Vancouver.
posted by Terri at
11:53 AM
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