Last Thursday my husband and I kicked back in a Jasper, Alberta, pizza parlor, drinking pale ale and watching the wait staff move in time to "Thriller" while we waited for our spaghetti.

The beer was as cold as the mountain mornings. The service as laid back as Trans-Canada Highway 1. And we had nothing better to do - or bigger to ponder - than why "Billie Jean" was on the playlist, again and again.

Jeez, we thought, these Canadians must really have a thing for Michael Jackson.

I hadn't touched a remote control in nearly two weeks. Hadn't glanced at a newspaper, either. I'd gone straight from 320 miles of highway bicycling through northeast Nebraska to a five-day scenic slideshow, where cell phone service was hit and miss, mostly miss.

I was riding the coattails of the end of my third week away from work.

It had been heaven.

Then we phoned home. A five-minute conversation that centered on the spectacular colors of the Kicking Horse river and the unexpected passing of a pop icon. (Oh, and in passing, the death of Farrah Fawcett and, by the way, Ed McMahon, too.)

For the first time in my travels I felt untethered and out of touch, like I wanted to reboot a laptop and find out more. (How did he die? When? Who might Larry King have rounded up at short notice?)

Since we'd landed in Calgary, my major concerns had been ridiculously few. Where could I find coffee? Would the clouds ever clear over Mount Robson? How many bears would we see by noon? And would they be brown, black or grizzly?

On my Tour de Nebraska bike ride, there was even less to clutter my little mind. Which way was the wind blowing this morning? Did I remember my sunscreen? What were the folks in Ponca serving for dinner tonight?

Seems like someone famous always dies while we're on vacation. JFK Jr. one year, Jerry Garcia another and Mickey Mantle a third.

In my travel journal, the King of Pop was an addendum. A paragraph in parentheses.

He arrived at the end of three pages of a scribbled account that began with a hike to Overlander Falls, followed by the pumpkin walnut muffins at Coco's, a bumpy mountain bike ride along the Athabasca River and the family of campers we saw at dusk - men with long beards and leather hats and a wild-eyed son with a "Deliverance" sort of look who scared me more than the bear we nearly bumped into on the road to the trail.

"Michael Jackson died today," I wrote. "We were at Jasper Pizza and people sang along to his songs in the open-walled kitchen.

"It felt strange later, knowing the reason, thinking about Jackson and his strange, twisted, talented life and the 24/7 media coverage we are blessedly missing. Or rather not missing."

The next day in our rental car on the way to British Columbia, my husband and I talked about the bizarre, sad world of the boy/man of Neverland who we watched as kids, an almost-peer talented beyond measure, transformed into a circus freak show by fame or biology or upbringing. Or some odd combination of it all.

Were we sad? I guess. I felt worse about the lost Charlie's Angel. The idea that even the most beautiful people can't escape death.

But mostly we snapped photos, debated our next hike and took turns spying wild things out the window - a mountain goat, a family of geese, a mama bear and her cubs.

I took a peek at a tabloid in a corner newspaper box. All black space and a single sparkling silver glove.

And when we got to our hotel that night, the last stop before the Calgary airport and home, I turned on the television.

There was Larry King. And Deepak Chopra. And a Jackson brother. And Liza Minnelli, looking like a marionette, her face pulled into a bizarre mask. Maybe she and Michael shared the same plastic surgeon.

It had been a full 24 hours since Jasper Pizza and Prince Michael was still dead.

We watched him slide across the stage, an image from the '80s, debuting the moonwalk. It was dazzling.

And it seemed like enough.

We turned off the TV and thought about dinner.

Reach Cindy Lange-Kubick at 473-7218 or clangekubick@journalstar.com.