Winnipeg Trip Recap Part 1

I took over 500 pictures during my trip to Winnipeg, and I haven't really had time to go through them all and get rid of the crap ones. Basically, I left Calgary on August 15th at 7:30 AM and had fully stocked my girlfriend before I left. She's on home oxygen and I had to use a good buddy at work to be my emergency contact while I was away. (Thx to Laszlo). Before I left I managed to fix my GPS unit and re-flash it. Somehow during my map update it bricked it, but I managed to get that working by editing a file and tricking the software into thinking the GPS needed updating.

The drive out was as long as I expected, one shot from Calgary to Winnipeg. I try my best to go the speed limit but clearly, after leaving Calgary I found it was impossible. When driving 110 km/hour I kept passing other cars. Going 120 km/hour was fine except that I was being passed by many vehicles. Only at 125-130km/hour did this change. Out in the prairies there are no police. You have to drive for the conditions of the road, and at one point when I reached Brandon, Manitoba, the rain got so hard I had to slow down to 60 km/hour. This got worse as I got near the city of Winnipeg due to the intense thunder and lightning storm. I didn't have to wash my car the rain was coming down so hard. It simply blasted all the bugs off my car with the power of the driving rain. I believe it took me 14 hours to reach Winnipeg, mainly because I had stopped in Moose Jaw and Regina to pick up some medications. After stopping there my drive was uneventful.

The Mazda is very loud on the road and I don't have cruise control. I believe I stopped for gas at Swift Current, Regina, and Brandon. At the end of my trip, I arrived in Winnipeg near 10:30 PM and my foot was severely sore. I was fairly exhausted and went to bed shortly after arriving. This trip would be rather short: I would arrive in Winnipeg on August 15th and leave the next following Monday morning. I did not want to leave my girlfriend alone longer than that due to health concerns.