That Time It Took Us Four Hours To Get Home From Calgary

We had gone to Calgary to have dinner at a mall. (Please refrain from questioning me about my life choices at this point. As this story unfolds it will become more than evident that my life on this day followed a path that can only be described as ‘seedy’.)

After dinner with a most eclectic group of people, we set off on our journey home (‘we’ being me, Granger and Crayola). A journey that should have taken about an hour ended up taking more than four hours. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

Getting out of the city shouldn’t have been hard, but with two Australians and Cray, an Ontarian, in the car, there was always the potential we would get lost. I’d like to say we were intrepid explorers discovering the final frontier, but sadly, we were more like a teenage boy during his first sexual encounter. Trying really hard but not having a clue what we were doing. There’s no point trying to jazz it up by saying we were exploring the greater Calgary region to get the most out of our experience abroad. We just got really fucking lost.

After we had been driving for about an hour, we found ourselves in what could have been a scene from Desperate Housewives, if Desperate Housewives consisted of many Indian families cavorting on the side walks of suburbia enjoying a balmy summers eve. As we wound our way through the maze of sub-divisions trying to find an exit, it became clear we were out of our depth. What made the experience all the more frustrating was the fact we could see the Trans Canada Highway, our ticket to freedom and the path home, off in the distance. But how to get there? If only it were that simple.

With light, and spirits, fading fast, things weren't helped by me laughing in the back seat about how completely and utterly lost we were, despite being able to see where we needed to go. Funny, right? Wrong, according to our driver Granger who only wanted to get home and wasn't having a bar of it.

As darkness fell, we pulled into a service station to ask for directions. The freshly emigrated young man behind the counter was no help. Another lady in line was more than happy to help our plight, however, and soon we had found the Trans Canada and taken a right turn on the voyage back to Kananaskis.

It was shortly after getting onto the highway that I asked if we had turned in the right direction. I believe my exact words were, “Are you sure we are going the right way?”

This was the way the lady had said to turn, so still trusting a complete stranger we continued along the highway. Now, this went on for close to an hour, until we all realized we didn't recognise any of the signs that would usually be there on the way home. “Well, why didn’t you just look for directions on your smart phones?” I hear you asking. Well Cray, in a state of what can only be described as madness, had left her phone at home in Ontario as she thought no technology was allowed in Alberta. Granger hadn’t paid her bill and had been cut off and I was only using my phone with WiFi, which we weren’t anywhere near whilst driving around in circles.

We saw on some signage we were approaching a town named Strathmore, and I suggested pulling over somewhere to access some free WiFi to find a map and, once and for all, the way home. This proved to be a most fortunate decision, because had we not stopped in Strathmore, we wouldn’t have seen the thunder-thighed, cellulite-ridden hooker in her short denim cut-offs providing her services to a tired and lonely trucker on the side of the highway.

With that mental image in your heads (you’re welcome), you’ll be happy to know we then discovered we were now about two hours from home. We had turned right (which turned out to be wrong) instead of left onto the Trans Canada and had been driving away from our destination for hours. Granger was still not seeing the funny side of things, but then our old mate Gotye popped up on the iPod which managed to lighten the mood somewhat. Mainly because we changed the words to his understated and never-played-on-the-radio-ever-before hit Somebody That I Used To Know to suit our evening. The reprised version (not featuring Kimbra, although the three of us did quite a good job) featured witty lyrics such as “Calgary, Calgary, Calgary, now you’re just a city where I’ll never go”. Sing it with feeling and it will be as though you were in the car with us.

The best thing about this night, though, is now we can all say, “Remember that time we went to Calgary and it took us four hours to get home? Wasn’t that a laugh?”

Well, it was for me at least.