"Nobody is ever met at the airport when beginning a new adventure. It’s just not done."   ~Elizabeth Warnock Fernea. A View of the Nile

Air Transport and shuttling to the start point. 

YES, A PASSPORT IS REQUIRED TO GET INTO CANADA!  A friend dropped me off at DIA early in the morning and no, I didn’t sleep much the night before.  I anticipated a possible hassle with the bike box at the airport and arrived two hours early.  No hassle at all, actually some alert airline employee picked me out of line and took me to a special check-in area.  No issues, Frontier charged me the expected oversized luggage fee at check in.  The rest of check in filtered out okay and all was cool.  Something was wrong with the overall plane booking and they bumped me to first class no charge.  Cool.  Good things were happening. 

I flew into Calgary, linked up with the bike box in luggage claim and passed through customs.  The guard in Customs half heartedly asked me what was in the box and when I told him, he asked me if I had mud on the tires.  No mud.  The next step was to link up with the shuttle to Canmore, the Banff Airporter.  I found the Banff Airporter booth easily and they secured my bike box and bag in a back room…allowing me to roam the airport for awhile before the shuttle left.    In this period of time, I changed over some currency and using the open wi-fi in the airport, laid on my FedEx pickup for the bike box online the next day.  Just a side note: I established an online FedEx account (I shared the account info with my folks and some friends in case they needed to ship me something on my account) and got a 20% new member discount.

A few nuggets of info here:

- The Banff Airporter only drops in one location in Canmore and (I think) two locations in Banff. Before booking your hotel, ensure the drop off point is close to your hotel.  My hotel was fortunately right next door. 

-  I priced hotels over a period of a few weeks about 60 days out from launch on Orbitz and other sites and found lodging to be much cheaper overall in Canmore.  It’s only about a 15 mile ride on a big shouldered highway to Banff from Canmore.  It was worth the gamble; Canmore is a really cool town with everything I needed to get moving.

- If you are planning on using credit cards in Canada, check the fine print and see what the FTF (foreign transaction fee) is and if you can get your plan modified so they don’t charge you the FTF (it adds up, believe me.)  Also make sure you have a few different cards, some places will only take Mastercard and some will only take Visa.   I used Canadian cash exchanged at the airport most of the time and had some left over when I hit the border.

-  Also, avoid using your cell phone in Canada unless you have an international plan, as my carrier charged me foreign roaming fees, which also added up nicely in their favor.  Also, the calling cards that say “international” on them may very well not be.  My calling cards didn’t work and I had to buy a calling card in Canada.

An interesting timelapse video someone else made detailing the drive from Calgary to Banff.  Cool music.  The shutttle van didn't move anywhere near this fast.  Enjoy: 

Anyway, the Banff Airporter shuttle arrived on time.  Loading up was okay other than the driver, a somewhat tired British guy, not being too thrilled about my big bike box.   I wasn't in the mood for a hassle, so I moved Higgins aside and loaded the box myself.  No big deal.  The shuttle ride was well over an hour and a half and the drop off was no issue either.  I checked into my hotel (Mountain View Inn ) without significant issue and the folks there had no problems with my dragging the bike box into the room.  I think I requested a bottom floor room when I booked and one was available when I got there.  Super sigh of relief on my part when I pulled all my stuff into the room.

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