Stuck in Traffic

As we cruised through Crowsnest Pass on Friday night on our way to Montana, we came upon a long line of cars. The weather had taken a turn for the worse as we reached the mountains. It had begun to snow and it was evening, which was quickly turning into night. I was riding with my sister and we were ahead of my parents, who had stopped in Lethbridge. We came to a stop on top of a very big hill, with cars all the way down. The truck in front of us had tried to stop but was unable. He swerved into oncoming traffic to avoid rear-ending the car in front of him. He still couldn’t stop and there was a car coming up the hill. I thought we were going to see an accident. Luckily, he was able to stop and get back into the proper lane before the other car got there.

Once we came to a stop, we didn’t move for a long time. After a while people started getting out of their vehicles to see what was going on. We figured that there must have been an accident up ahead somewhere. We sat there for at least an hour and a half. There was no cars coming the other way except people that had turned around. We saw two ambulances come up the hill, one with lights flashing, the other without. A little later an ambulance came the other way with its lights flashing, which we thought was a little strange. We thought there might have been another accident. After at least an hour and a half, we started moving. We only got about a kilometer before we came to a halt again. We sat here again for a long time.

We finally started moving again and got on our way. We sat there for at least two and a half hours while they investigated the crash. We had heard that someone had died, but didn’t know that for sure. We found out yesterday that a woman had died in the accident. It was a head-on collision involving two vehicles and seven people.

My parents were nine kilometers behind us and the accident was about two kilometers in front of us. That means at the very least there was eleven kilometers of stopped cars, semis and buses. My mom said there was lots of cars behind them, so it was probably bigger than eleven kilometers. That is pretty crazy.

Meeting Collective Soul

Wednesday night was the Collective Soul concert here in Calgary. If you know anything about me, you know that Collective Soul is by far my favourite band. This was exciting stuff. They played at Flames Central and I didn’t think it was going to be very big. For those of you who don’t know where Flames Central is, it is basically on 1st Street and Stephan Ave (8th Ave). If that doesn’t mean anything to you and you really want to know where it is, go look at a Google Map. Anyway, we drove down 2nd Street hoping to find a parking meter, which I didn’t actually expect to find. As expected, we didn’t find one. We did, however, find on on 3rd St and about 7th Ave. Anyway, that isn’t the point. As we drove down 2nd St we noticed the people lined up to get in. Both Cassandra and I thought that that many people surely couldn’t fit in Flames Central. By the time we got parked and walked down there and got in line, we were basically at 9th Ave. That’s a long line.

When we finally got inside, we were both very surprised at how big it actually was. It is a really cool place. We had VIP tickets, which meant we got to meet Collective Soul. We really weren’t sure how it was all going to go down, because the email I got about it was pretty fuzzy on the details. We decided to ask someone, but got sidetracked by the merchandise. I decided to ask the cashier lady, but she didn’t know anything. I bought my shirt and we decided to just wait until 9: 30. That didn’t happen. At around 9:15, we decided to go find someone else. We found a security guard to ask, and he thought I was asking about the band when I said “Meet and Greet.” When we finally got him to understand what we wanted he directed us to the guy by the door who we wanted to talk to originally. We talked to him and he told use where to go.

After some waiting we were led upstairs to the VIP lounge-type area. When they came in, we still weren’t sure how it was all going to work. I had heard that it was like a wedding reception and that was exactly what it was like. We were one of the first people through. We just went through and introduced ourselves and said hello. After we went through, we noticed that everyone else was taking pictures and getting autographs and stuff. We felt pretty ripped off, so we went through again.

We got to stay up there for the rest of the concert, which was awesome. The concert was really good. We had a lot of fun.