The best laid plans...

We got to hang out more with Geoff's friend Nikki today, that was entertaining. We hadn't gotten in to Whitecourt until later yesterday so we took the opportunity (We have a plan laid out for getting back into NB for this Friday) to just take it easy today. Geoff wasn't feeling too well so we hung around Whitecourt swapping stories with Nikki. We also got to see the inner workings of an air tanker base so that was pretty exciting as well (Complements to Nikki).

So when we finally got on the road it was about 3pm, but that was OK because Edmonton was only about a 2 hour drive away. After an uneventful drive down we arrived in the capital of Alberta without much fanfare. We decided to pay a visit to the West Edmonton Mall before we checked into our hotel since it was in between the highway and the Travelodge. I have to say, it was a pretty big mall; I've been in huge malls before (I'm thinking Vaughan Mills) but this one takes the cake. It had an indoor theme park, an indoor water park and an indoor undersea adventure world on top of having a hundred bajillion stores (That is barely an exaggeration, it had two floors of wall to wall shopping and it felt like we were walking around in a labyrinth). Did I mention it had an indoor skating rink? It had an indoor skating rink. That means that summer or winter, you could go and swim in a wave pool, travel in a submarine and go skating all in the same day.

This place had it all, the roller coaster was in a special section of the mall with a raised roof:

Great, now I can get those stelleto's AND do the loop de loop

The skating rink was somehow cooled from the bottom, mainly because it really wasn't that cold in the surrounding area until you were practically leaning over the rails:

Skating: As if your feet didn't have ENOUGH to do with those bajillion shopping destinations

The Undersea adventure was really neat too, right in the middle of a section of the mall. It had a pirate ship, a bridge and a sea lion exhibit, although thankfully there was no piracy in this adventure:

This undersea adventure has 3 working subs, the Canadian Navy has 2, that's what I call scary.

Finally the wave pool was in another specially designed area of the mall. It's temperature was so different than the mall, it created a pressure vacuum when you opened the door to the observation deck:

You can call your friends in Florida in January when it's like + 10C there and say 'Ha! It's -30 here and I'm STILL catching the waves, wooooooo"

To give an impression of the size, it had a regular food court for the people who were just there for a few hours to shop, but then it also had a restaurant court where about a half dozen full service restaurants were clustered to service the general public who decided to make a day of the whole thing. Geoff and I checked out a few stores but after about two hours we decided to go check into the hotel.

I should have known things weren't going to end well when we got lost trying to find the hotel the first time. Using our GPS we managed to blunder into a subdivision where all the streets were the same name (Donsdale was the place, and it was a subdivision where all the roads were named Donsdale, so there was Donstale Road, Donsdale Street, Donsdale Crescent, etc). So we called the hotel and got proper directions. Once we found the highway to take us there it was all f'ed up from construction so there was traffic and construction and closed lanes everywhere. We manage to survive that and get off at the appropriate exit.

This is when I thought I could have sworn I saw the hotel from the offramp. Unfortunately it was the wrong way up a one way street so I just kept going straight. I turned onto the first side road I could find to make my way up so I could turn the proper way up the one way street to the supposed hotel. Well unfortunately it was the middle of an industrial park and all the roads were awful.

This road looks so innocent, little did we know it harboured a secret, a deep, dark, watery secret.

Before I could see what was going on I drove into the worlds largest pothole (Or what could be a good contestant for it) and blew up my transmission. Well, it probably wasn't that dramatic but we definitely scraped up the pan that holds all the transmission fluid and it leaked out all over the road.

That line down the centre there is my car's lifeblood that leaked away as I drove from that cursed pothole

I didn't want to risk starting the car so we got on the phone with CAA to call a tow. Apparently it was a busy night so we waited, and waited... and waited. About 40 minutes later the sun is starting to set and we're still in the middle of this industrial park where no one is there (Due to it being Saturday) and no tow. We're about the leave the car in search of the hotel when we finally get through. We get the tow all set up, but it's going to be about 3 hours before they get to the car. So we walk over to the hotel and... it turns out it's not the one I thought it was.

Fortunately for me, not all is wasted because our hotel is actually just down the road from the faux-tel so it's about an extra 5 minutes. Once we get all checked in and settled, the phone rings, it's the tow truck driver saying he's almost there. So we have to run all the way back to the car to meet him, he hooks up the car and tells us where he's taking it, a Canadian Tire which is also fortunately about 10 minutes down the road from the hotel. So that has all been settled, I confirmed the Canadian Tire garage is open tomorrow so hopefully we won't have any delays from there.
It's funny because I was commenting to Geoff that I wasn't going to have much to write about in the blog today, but this isn't what I meant to happen! Hopefully that'll be it for misadventures, Geoff got a speeding ticket and I frigged up the transmission fluid, at least there are supposedly only six days left in the trip, what more could we do to ourselves at this point? *Fingered crossed that the answer is nothing*

The Angry potholes desire more car parts! Om nom nom nom