Last weekend myself and a few other Focus owners from Calgary and Edmonton met up for a mini meet in Red Deer, Alberta.

For those that aren’t familiar with Alberta, Red Deer is located roughly in the middle of the two cities which made it a great spot for the meet. Rather than hosting it in either Calgary or Edmonton and making some drive 3 hours, Red Deer is about 90 minutes from either location which made it a nice day trip. Driving 3 hours each way would have been a bit much but 90 minutes is easy. Turn on some music, set the cruise control, and before you know it you’re there.

We met up early in the afternoon at one of the shopping malls. We didn’t really have anything on the agenda apart from hang out and have a relaxing Sunday, so some of us grabbed some drinks or snacks and we caught up. With winter coming fast (Calgary received its first snow fall the next day in fact) who knows how many more meets we’ll be able to fit in this year?

Readers should recognize almost all of the cars, depending on how long they’ve been following. It wasn’t a big meet by any means but that’s not important.

Andrew had his silver Mk1 out, with a new exhaust giving him an alternative to the radio for his driving music.

Ian had the V6MISTAKE, the V6-swapped Mk1 with the European exterior conversion.

The differences can be subtle but when parked next to a Focus with the North American-spec parts you can spot how the Euro front end is smoother and cleaner.

My sedan; you may be wondering why there’s blue tape on the E-Glove splitter… Some say it’s pretty low to the ground – and some say that it scrapes a lot. All we know is it was partially ripped out of the bumper on the highway recently and sustained some minor damage. Heh, whoops. Until I have time to fix it up the blue tape will work fine. I blame the epic amount of downforce it generates…(not).

Alan brought his ST, and I was doing my best to blend in next to him. Day 190 and they still haven’t noticed mine isn’t an ST….yeah right. I also apparently forgot to take a shot of the front of his car. Fail. Sorry Alan!

Jules arrived from Edmonton with her family in her two-tone Zx5, sitting on BLQs. Once again they had made the trip to this year’s Sunday School but we unfortunately didn’t get much of a chance to chat then. Hopefully next season we can head back to Edmonton for their season opener as we have the last couple of years.

Finally we had Daniel in his Mk2 – this generation doesn’t seem to get modified much around here so it was cool to see one. Note the Batman overlay on his front emblem!

Being a huge fan of the Portal games I appreciated this (You’re seriously missing out if you haven’t played them).

Being a quiet Sunday afternoon, as you can see finding space wasn’t really an issue… we retreated to the trees to find some shade for a bit, and sat on the grass as we chatted.

A few more random photos now, no captions really necessary:

Later in the afternoon we heard that some rain was coming our way, so we said our goodbyes and the Calgary folk went to head south, but not before we opted to make one more stop.

Ian suggested we head over to the Donut Mill and grab some donuts before hitting the road, and we liked that plan. I had never been so I was curious to check it out, and it was worth the quick detour. It was hard to pick from all of the flavours they offered but we all grabbed a small assortment to take back with us and then hopped on the highway to hopefully beat the rain. The upside was that the incoming storm provided a nice tail wind for the drive back and my mileage went way up!

I’m really hoping that we haven’t seen the last of the clear, sunny days this season as this Saturday is supposed to be the annual Quarry Park and Polish. If it’s a nice day we’ll be there! We normally attend as a small group representing the UCCarClub and it’s a great way to end the season here in Calgary. Fingers are crossed!

-Bill