Jalapeno-Flavored Happy Meat Salami

Short Version:
A tantrum on the Tantrum, weird stuff on the Trans-Canada, Rubberhead at Salmon Arm, Happy Meat incomprehension

Long Version:
When we drove in to Revelstoke the first time around we saw people on mountain-bikes riding out along the highway south of town. Turns out they were heading to the local XC Ski area which is, when there's no snow, the area's main offroad bike trail network. We decided to go ride there.

We parked at the bottom of the Tantrum trail and rode up the road to the midway parking area, then rode into the woods and up trails to the top trailhead. Soon after setting off up the Black Forest trail we were on bear alert, as we heard some big noises, but there was something not quite normal about them, and we found out why pretty quickly when a posse of teenage girls came running down the path towards us, ski poles in hands, chattering away merrily. Soon afterwards we ran into another group of pole-equipped runners, this time younger and mixed-gender. We accosted the middle-aged man who was running sweep for the group, and he confirmed our suspicions of XC ski training before recommending a trail called Ridge Walk and disappearing off into the trees after his pre-teen wards.

Ridge Walk turned out to be steep enough to justify the second half of its name, and pretty much no fun at all, but it led to a trail called TNT, which was probably the pick of the day for flow, although that's not saying a heck of a lot. TNT dropped us onto Root Canal, which had a fun top half and a difficult lower section, and popped us out at the top of the Tantrum trail. We soon found out how it got its name; riding it was absolutely infuriating! Every time you got some flow going, an unrideably-steep upwards section appeared, and pretty soon both of us were cursing. Bits of it were fun, but for the most part it was just hard work, and for not enough reward. Kind of like the whole trail network.

We were pretty pleased to get back to the Reaper and get on the road, although that was at least partly because that meant we got to eat foods. We saw a bunch of slightly weird stuff on and near the roads: a train passing through three tunnels at once, like a needle pulling thread through flesh; a truck carrying on its load deck a pair of tyres so large that "Oversize Load" signage and a pilot vehicle were warranted; a billboard depicting a smiling, happy anthropomorphised pig, dancing around with an Indian feather headdress on; a blue spruce farm, with huge fields of trees that looked really unusual seen en masse; a town called Grindrod.

Salmon Arm was almost normal by comparison, and provided the best info centre staffer of the trip so far, by far. She had the answers to all of our questions, and a small moustache. The riding at Salmon Arm was great too, with some incredibly fast and flowing descents that were so good we rode back up and did the downhill all over again. The only downside was the group of shuttling riders who drove past us several times as we rode laboriously up the hill; not an issue in and of itself, but the knowledge that every time they passed us indicated that they'd been and done another complete downhill run was galling. Not galling enough to spoil the ride for us, though, and Rubberhead Mountain earns a definite "must revisit" rating on the chart of places we've ridden; a surprising amount of really good riding, especially given that a year ago there was only one trail there.

Then we hit Vernon, and the Happy Meat butcher shop, where the nice lady totally didn't get what I was on about, to the point where Nene had to play translator. "Are your Mennonite sausages made with fresh Mennonites?" got a look of complete incomprehension, and even the simple "We're here to get some Happy Meat; meat from critters which had nice lives, and deaths which weren't horrible, insofar as death can be not horrible," was combined in her head with my appearance to somehow add up to Islam. In the end I demanded a jalapeno-flavored Happy Meat salami, and went and sat in the van.