Yesterday afternoon I drove to Calgary to deliver a presentation at the University of Calgary. I spoke to around 60 students about “living the digital lifestyle”, otherwise known as the gadget talk. As it was a Microsoft event, all of the gadgets were MS-related, like my Zen Touch, XBOX, etc. I think the event went really well, and the initial feedback was quite positive!
I left Calgary around 8:00 PM and headed towards Lacombe, where I had plans to meet with Violet for coffee. The roads were clear until I got to Red Deer, where it was very lightly snowing. Not too much farther and I reached Lacombe, where it was snowing pretty good. Violet and I went for Tim Horton’s and chatted for a bit, and I left at 10:30 PM.
Almost immediately after leaving Lacombe, the roads were ugly. Lots of snow, windy, and lots of snow still falling. Visibility was just about zero, and I simply followed the guy in front of me who followed the big truck in front of him. Going only about 50 km/h it was slow going. Eventually the truck decided to pull over, and the guy in front of me and I went around. We must have passed about 20 big semi’s before we had to stop. It looked like there was an accident, both lanes of the highway at a dead stop. We sat there for about 30 minutes before we finally got going again.
As I had done a presentation on gadgets, I brought my video camera to demo. I didn’t realize I had it with me until right when we started moving again, but I managed to get it out and record a quick little video. It’s kind of Blair-Witch like, and doesn’t show the snow as well as I’d have liked, but if you’re bored, check it out here. You’ll need Windows Media Player to watch the video.
Anyway, it was an interesting drive – took way longer than it should have. I’d never seen Highway 2 at a dead stop before, so it seemed kind of surreal. In any case, I had enough gas, and as soon as we got going again it wasn’t too bad. Fortunately I don’t have to go to Calgary again for a while 🙂
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