Benched...

I love to cycle but admittedly bicycling can lead you to be tired, sweaty, and looking for a more comfortable place to park your tush than a hard leather saddle. I've done a lot of extended bike tours such as Ride the Rockies and doing those events made me a connoisseur of comfortable benches. Far and wide, high and low, if there's a comfy bench nearby I'll find it. I remember one day, long ago, on a Ride the Rockies segment that took us over Rabbit Ears Pass into Steamboat Springs. By the end of that ride I, my wife, and friend Rich were so pooped we spent the remainder of the afternoon on a nice downtown bench doing nothing but resting and people watching. No amateur bench warmers were we, we actually had pizza delivered to said bench for dinner. At the end of the evening all we had to do was crawl back to the campground and into our sleeping bags.

See the Beaver symbol on the chair? The
official mascot of Parks Canada

On this trip to the Canadian Rockies we were far from sedentary with lots of hiking, biking, and kayaking in the mix. And I'd be remiss to not admit that along with all those activities there was a fair amount of bench warming. There are a couple of major advantages to Canadian benches - many are quite creatively made and lovely to behold, most are in some very picturesque spots, and all were very welcoming and comfortable on a hot summer's day. And on this trip you'll be proud to know that we expanded our repertoire to also include lawn chairs as Canada offers seemingly just as many of these as they do benches. In fact, Parks Canada (akin to our National Park Service) has a unique "Red Chair" program where they place - you guessed it - red Adirondack chairs strategically throughout the parks and entice tourists to find them all and of course sit in them. Well hit me over the head - they didn't have to ask twice...

It was my wife who actually found most of the Red Chairs which was nice as it gave me more time to focus on my penchant for the majestic bench. As you'll see, I found some very nice ones and I can attest that they have all been cheek tested and butt approved with the Mabry Seal of Approval. So if you find yourself in the Canadian Rockies, from Waterton to Banff, Lake Louis to Jasper, keep your eye out for some of these places to park it, at least for a while. Sad to say though, we never did test out the pizza delivery option...