a new post for ya'll

ok, well lets see: where to start.

my last blog was some time ago so i will try and cover everything thats happened since then.

well i got back from pure pwnage which took some time. the next couple of days i rested i believe, or maybe i snowboarded. cant remember either way, me, roman and antony were having a good time livin it up in the hostel. we'd go boarding, cook diner, have a few beers, play some pool, watch tv and then go out to the BnG or explorers most nights. fun fun fun times.

then rosy left - what a sad day. she has since then had EVERYHING of hers stolen - bummer. that includes all her clothes + passport etc... etc.... so yeah.

then erm, sometime while all this was happening amitay also left - he had hurt his leg and couldnt board any more.

then antony left, then it was just me n roman chillaxing out. ooooh and this other french fellow who i couldnt understand at all left sometime HAHAHHA he boarded with us aswell..

anyway the last 2 days i was at lake louise the snow was amazing. lots and lots of snow!!!! it was insane. did some jumps, rode in the powder, generally had a freakin amazing time. the last day of the season it looked really bad out so neither me or roman went up. then i went to banff and was at the hostel there for 4 days. i was feeling pretty sick so i didnt board for 3 days but then i went up on the 4th day when i was also catching a plane to montreal that night. anyway what a day!!!!!! 17cm the day before and then 7cm over night. lots of powder, did some fresh lines through the south chutes off of goates eye mountain - wo0o0oo0t double blacks ehheheh :-P

erm yeah, just generally had an awesome time but i did get sunburnt cos i had forgotten my balaclava - i looked completely freakin rediculous the next few days.

erm then what, yeah i packed all my stuff up, checked out, played hacky with some fellows from belgium i believe. then some pool all while i was waiting for my bus to the calgary airport. the bus came, but it was a realy boring bus ride - i tried to liven things up.

i would sing loudly and poorly to the songs on the radio. i spoke to the other people on the bus, i offered everyone in the back half of the bus (thats 4 people) my dental floss after i started flossing my teeth myself. i offered people my nail file after i was done with it. just generally livenin up the mood and stuff LOL.

then i had a 4 hour wait at the airport. holy shit the calgary airport sucks and 1am flights suck. esepcially when you loose 2 hours traveling across time zones and hence only get 1.5 hours sleep on the plane. got off the plane at 7am in montreal.

got coffee and my bags. yay for tim hortons (a place similar to starbucks for all you who dont know :-P )

then yeah, got on a bus downtown. go to the hostel around 9 BUT!!!! i couldnt check into my room till 1pm. holy shit i was sooooo tired but i had to wait 4 hours.....so i skated around the city and checked stuff out.

erm lets see the next 6 days i have done:

1 pub crawl
1 thai cooking class thing at the hostel
been out a few times
went to the botanic gardens here - completely shit house
went up mount royal (mont royal) - the mountain montreal is named after

met the single most anoying girl in the world. me and my aussie mate paul who has now left :( spent 2 days trying to avoid her. we plotted trying to kill her, changing hostels, sleeping all day so she couldnt find us etc... etc.... no words canm describe how anoying she was. a dutch fellow we met said she is very 'and this one time at band camp' (she is infact exactly like that girl from american pie)

erm we've done some partying. then some german dudes moved into my room. stefan, stefan (stef) and another guy. we partied with these guys aswell. germans like beer just like aussies do so good times were had.

i got a little lost on the way back from the pub crawl and it took me atleast 1 hour more like an hour and a half to do the 25 minutes back to the hostel. much to the amusement of the others who had found their own way back before me. grrrr

erm. me n paul went for a cruise in the german dudes minivan. we went to a famous restaurant/lunch place and got their 'smoked meat sandwhich'. the only reason its called the sandwhich is because they put 2 small pieces of bread on the plate which is filled with half kilo or so of smoked meat. LOL its basicly a plate of smoked meat and some bread and u throw down lots of sauce and munch away. very very very tasty. mmmmmmm :P

then erm we again went upto mont royal, took more photos, had gneerally a good time. the last time i was there i fed the squirrels with peanuts - LOL ive got a pic of one on my leg.

erm i think thats about it. oh i also got a haircut. you see i hate talking to the hairdressers back home because they talk about shit i dont care in the slighest about. but here....well i found a nice french hairdresser, made it obvious that i was an aussie (gerald's number 1 travellin tip - if you are in a country where people dont speak english, great them with a big G'day and they realise your from australia and hence excuse you for any social mishaps which are to follow) and yeah, i told him how i wanted it, he cut my hair. didnt talk to me. i walked out $14 + a $5 tip lighter and now i have a different hair cut. its kinda short. and today i died it purple LOL its very very purple.

erm lets see....

i think that about covers what ive been upto.

pics:



i mentioned in my last blog that i crashed at some dudes house in calgary downtown - this is the view. pretty damn nice




me, roman (who i forgot to mention is a chef by trade and helped me cook myself some nice meals + he cooked me a steak + potato n stuff one night. very tasty) and then on the right is antony a cool french (actual french) dude who 'shreds the gnar'




forgot to mention my 4 hour guided bike ride with this fine lass who works at the hostel here in montreal. for $20 i got to see heaps of the city including many of the things created for the world show in 1967. much fun. this is us taking a break on the litle island they mae for the world show and that has all the big crazy sculpturs and stuff.




the two swiss girls i had the pleasure of enjoying the botanic gardens with, enjoying a nice long conversation outside of the hostel one night with and enjoyed having a beer and talking to 'vladamire' a kenyan man studying politics and diplomacy here in canada. good times



the view from up on mont royal look out thingy. they have good ice cream there too. yummy



isnt it cute!!!!! im sure feeding them doesnt help them at all and all the other squireels i had seen in banff just ran away but i think its cute!!!



the view from saint joseph cathedral - the big one on the all the post cards. yes there is like a gazillion billion steps to walk up. the inside is actually pretty shitty compared to the roman catholic cathedral just down town. oh well what can ya do??

the last and best photo:



thats me, the german fellas and paul sitting on the steps yesterday outside of the hostel enjoying a Haka (sp). those indians or chinese??? are onto something with their crazy flavoured tobacco that is somehow smoked without a flame even touching it. awesome day, awesome weather.


so yeah, thats about it. oooh and gotta mention brutopia. worst bar in montreal. u buy their house beers which have terrible flavours like raspberry or apricot and shit like that. its $6 after a tip per pint and the beer is always flat. but its down the road and everyone seems to go there because its famous for their beers - who knows why. anyway yeah, after chilling on the steps we went there.


anyway lets see. i leave here in 11 days. i habe 5 planes to catch in 2 days.

montreal - vancouver, vancouver san fran, san fran to auckland, auckland to sydney, sydney to adelaide.
YAY YAY wo00o00ot lol cant wait. shit, what a 2 days that will be.
thats about it.

tooodles for now
gerald

p.s. just scanned this quickly and as always there are millions of mistakes and such but just battle on through - im sure you can all understand. im outa time here now :(

its taken me a whole hour - apperciate it.

toodles

the best day of my life??

well some of you will know how much i love purepwnage.

some of you wont, and some of you wont even know what it is.

www.purepwnage.com

anyway thats the site, its a bunch of people who make a video series which you download off their website and the series is about how they play computer games.

ive been a fan for quite some time. anyway its wicked. last night they had the premier of their latest episode. ep 13 in calgary.

so i hopped on a bus after a few hours of snowboarding to check it out.

well i walked into the cinema in downtown calgary only to see 'jeremy' and 'doug' there right away. shit yeah, i was stoked. i had a little talk with them and yeah, then we started watching the series. first we watched the last two episodes so we were all up to date with what was happening.

then we watched the new episode which was freakin awesome!!!!!!!!! holy shit it was good

then i got a t-shirt and got it signed by jeremy, doug and kyle (the director).
got to learn their actual names. doug is called joel in RL, kyle is actually called jeff and jeremy is jarret.

anyway after getting my t-shirt signed and some photos, i sat around for an hour or so until all the noobs had left and i could find out what the plan was afterwards. anyway they were going to a bar called the black swan so i got a lift with one of the dudes who helps with the soundtrack. i went along, had a few beers with jeff and jarrey....joel wasnt out :(

anyway yeah, while i was at the bar i was talking to another fan who had tagged along and i told him i was from adelaide, he said he had studied there for 6 months while he was in year 11. turns out he went to glenunga and he knew mr.marino, mr.knight and our old PE teacher who remembered cos he drove that yellow subaru LOL!!!

awesome times. anyway i ended up crashing at the soundtrack dudes flat in downtown calgary, it had an awesome view of the town - pics later and such i hope.

and yeah, then in the morning i skated at millenium park and came back here with a stop off in canmore and banff


what good times. here are the pics:

me n FPS doug pwn nooobs together.



jeremy does actually pwn in RL, i watched him pwn at big buck hunter!!!! lolzor

this is us pwning too:



cyuzz
gerald

wow, could my luck become any more amazingly wicked?

ok, well its been a while since my last blog entry, mainly because i now have to pay for the internet. to those who aint getting myspace comments and e-mails as much as before - my apologies, but then who actually reads this besides my family, jackie, martha, rita somewhat and other people who i direct to it.

anyway been living in Lake Louise. its pretty nice here. the hostel is nice, lots of fun people. there are 2 bars in LL, explorers - really relaxed. and the BnG (bar n grill) which is a bit more roudy.

lots of fun things to do,

karoke nights once a week
bon fire nights,
pool nights,
etc....

anyway here is my latest cool story.

was hitching back from lake louise ski resort with some nice people. hop out the car at the shops where they dropped me, went in and got some vegies for dinner, then come out and realise my bag is in the car and the car aint there anymore....AAAAAHG. then i realised my camera with all the photos is in there, some of my diabetes stuff is in there, my goggles, gloves and helmet are in there etc.. etc..... actually thats about it. anyway yeah, i was up shit creek in a barbed wire boat without a paddle....as some put it. it wasnt your usual shake n bake scenario.

so i went about my hunt. my english chef buddy roman was with me and he had seen the driver around before so we knew they were locals. so the nxt day - sunday (LL's biggest day of the week) i set about looking into the back seat of every SUV in the carpark. 1 hour later, no luck. so i left a note on a black board down the bottom of the gondola explaining to who ever read it that i was at the hostel. later that day no luck. i went to the police and got a report so i could claim it on my insurance and at the same time asked if anyone had handed it in. no luck. today i did the same thing, looked in cars, went to the police. walked around town trying to find the car. then i get back to the hostel this evening and i guess the person had seen my note and dropped my bag off with everything in it.

it does pay to live in a small town of only a few hundred. YAY!!!! anyway thats my amazing story. besides that i went to banff today and yes dad i did get the package. yippy. anyway i hitched there with some cool chinese bloke who practises acupuncture and he was pretty interesting.

on teh 26th, just 3 days away now i will go to calgary and meet my buddies:



and




wo0o0ot im excited. while im there im gonna crash at the downtown hostel and then the next day check out this place and have a bit of a roll as i purchased myself a skateboard the last night i was in banff.



so yeah, thats about it. the snow is still fun cos it gets slushy and u can hit stuff in the park. right down the bottom of the slope near the beer garden there is a BIG puddle which ive hit but it keeps getting bigger each day. after a long day snowboarding its enjoyable to relax with a beer and watch all the little kids and the people who dont know how to board/ski attempt it and fall in. anyway tomorrow, if its nice and warm i am going to try and hit it wearing nothing but my snowboard boots and some boxer shorts. should be fun!!!

pics to come of my attempt if i make it or not

toodles for now
gerald

go see this movie

ok, well according to my research this movie comes out on may 10th. and that is why on may 10th everyone who reads this, because i am telling them to, is going to go and see the movie GRINDHOUSE!!!!

yes its 3 hours and 10 minutes long
yes its actually two movies strung together
and yes the two movies are made by Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0462322/

yep its ranked number #108 on IMDB and it got an 8.6 wo0o0t

the end to this movie is freakin' awesome. Well the end to the second feature is awesome, the first one is just weird but its pretty freakin awesome! during the course of the movie the audience applauded 3 times!!! just erupted into applause. it was brilliant. The only other time i had ever witnessed this was in year 9 when the year level went and saw master and commander.

anyway i cant convince you all to go see this movie anymore. of course its not for anyone under 18, but the only people who read this who are under 18 are Jackie and Martha....so, well just disregard this.

cyuzz
gerald

me and my uber 1337 snowboarding skillz.....

thats about it really.

cyuzz
gerald

easter and stuff

So, since I've stopped working I've been boarding heaps more. its wicked! went out some 5 days in a row - not full days every day but enough to satisfy my cravings. last two days have been taking it easy but i might go and do some night boarding tonight as its Friday, its free, easy to get it and the snow at Norquay has improved a bit since they got a fair of a snow the other day.


NOW......


As I have everyday now to do what I want, Ive been putting a bit of thought into my next blog (this blog). I've always done a fair bit of reading and this topic has always interested me. Anyway as it's in the middle of Easter I figured I would try and write a few words of my own (inspired by what I have read) about the religion which Easter has budded from.

Many of the articles I read are to do with Christianity and the most recent one I read explained how Christianity has changed. Changed from a religion which is supposed to spread love, compassion and teach caring for your fellow man, into a religion where people enjoy spreading words of hate, at the moment, specificly on 2 issues - Abortion and Homosexuality.

Now I know it is a little different back home, because for a while I was involved in a group - st Vincent de Paul - which went out to feed the homeless, cared for them and weren't judging of the people who came to them for help, even though I am sure it was made up of many non-believers. But, living in North America I have been slightly more exposed to the Christian extremists.

From what I can see, hear and read, many Christians are more focused on spreading hate; hate for homosexuals, hate for people who are pro choice and hate for people who might have different believes and opinions to them, and you can be sure they will make life difficult for them. E.G. have a read about this branch of the baptist church

This makes me really annoyed, more so than normal ;-) Now I know lots of lovely Christians, they don't try to convert me - partly because they know they wont get anywhere - they don't spill words of hate and tell me I am going to hell. But it seems the people who represent Christians on tv, radio and in newspapers, aren't these people. The people who represent Christians through mainstream media aren't the ones who go out and help the poor, the homeless and the anyone who needs a hand. Instead they are the ones who argue about issues which really shouldn't be the centre point of their religion.

Now this is all coming from a person who has for quite a long time not budged on his opinion that Christianity is based on a bunch of things which didn't happen . And while I will never be able to believe the bible word for word or that Jesus did rise from the dead or that God even exists, I have come to find a wee bit of religious tolerance inside of me :-P So much so that I'm going to agree with my mum (yes my mum gets a shout out here) that the bible/the word of Jesus yada yada yada does have some good points namely the one which goes "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." This is what Christians should be focusing their energy on, helping others and treating them with dignity, not arguing stupid debates and forcing their ideas/believes onto everyone else. (and if they don't get their way, they go to extremes, read this)

So, even though this is hardly going to be read by any christian extremists, just keep it in mind that Christianity shouldn't be and isn't about spreading hate but sharing love. And its just unfortunate that the people who represent Christians alot of the time are idiots. And if anyone repeats these words to someone who tries to convince them that being gay IS an abomination because it is in the bible. And the same person refuses to listen and learn and spread love and compassion to those in need like they should; then just explain that if they want to follow those specific words of the bible, they best make sure they follow all the words of the bibles:

exodus 21:7 allows parents to sell their daughters into slavery

or

exodus 35:2 which explains that Sunday - the seventh day is a day of rest, BUT those who don't rest are to be put to death :-O

or

leviticus 15:19 which we all know warns us not to touch a female for a week after she has had her period or we will be unclean. :-S

the BnB: A.K.A the Blue Mountain Lodge

so moved into the new place which is a tiny little room on the top level of this this:



its a pretty cool place even if it tiny. there is 1 room with 3 beds and then a really really small shower/toilet room thingy-ma-gig.

its cheaper than the hostel at $145 a week each. we get breakfast served each morning which includes:

juices, cereals, yoghurt, fruit, criosants, boiled eggs, milk and muffins. its SOOOOO good, but then ive been eating the staff cafe food from the banff centre the last 2 months so everything tastes good. if you eat breakfast at 10:30ish and grab a muffin + piece of fruit to go, then you can go the whole day till dinner time without having to eat anything else. it really is a solid breakfast.

now for some pics of the room: (cos words cant describe this thing LOL)



thats my corner, yes i sleep under a bear :-S it is actually quite freaky waking up under it. oh and having a sloping roof like that sucks ass, its impossible to store stuff properly in that corner ><



thats the other side of the room. yes there are two fox skins hanging by the couch! also in the room are some old saws, 2 sets of antlers from what i think were deer, an axe and some of those weird oldschool snow boot things which look like tennis rackets!

anyway it hasnt snowed in a few days but ive been up 3 days in a row now. went night skiing last night which was chilled but the snow at norquay is really really slushy. went to sunshine today and did a few runs and found some nice snow with tim. wasnt a bad day at all considering we were there for only 3 hours.

anyway thats about it, gotta go grab some fresh baked cookies from down stairs ;-)

toodles
gerald

Gerald leaves the Banff Centre - Shit yeah

well, it is a dream of many, those captured souls who start work at the banff centre only to find them selves hopelesly poor and un-able to escape this wretched place. But i am not one of those, for today i am moving out. Yes thats right! I am leaving the banff centre. I told the staff housing folk yesterday. I told james just then and after posting this i will tell the library staff!

much to my amusement a slight vocal stutter made me avoid a nice lecture from James my superviser.

I went to hand in my nicely cleaned dark blue polotops, the ones which have the banff centre logo stitched into them. and i explained,

'Yeah, im sorry but i'm leaving today' - even though i had three more shifts rostered on for thursday, friday and saturday.

James replies, 'You told me you were leaving at the end of the month'

this is where i say, accidently, 'planes change....*realises mistake and corrects self*.....plans change'

James believe that my plane has changed and hence i have had a change in plans. LOL, so he shouts, ' This really fucks me up' and leaves it at that.

god if he knew i was really just sick of the job and was leaving cos i couldnt stand working there another day, he probably woulda let me have it. But tis for my own health, you see everything in this place is made for people who are 5-10, for 6-1. hence my back hurts every time i leave the place no matter how careful i am and the last 2 weeks i havent even been out boarding as much as i could cos its been hurting too much.

anyway, i have to go clean my room so i can get my $50 deposit back when i move out in some 3 hours and 50 minutes.

i am moving into some room with tim and adam for the remainder of my stay in Banff. The room is working out cheaper than the hostel and, after taking the walk up to the hostel i realised i would much prefer not to be hiking up there twice a day - it really is a long walk.

so yeah, im there for a couple of weeks, then to lake louise where i WILL stay in the hostel. then back to banff for another week of the ski season. then off to quebec where i will have lots of fun times talking with the crazy french folk who inhabit the area.


toodles for now
gerald

pics of the dishpit to come

erm ok lets see......

well lets see,

on tuesday, Tim, Adam, Rupert (hugh), Christian and myself all hopped in the hutch wagon (tim n adams van thingy) and cruised to kickinghorse. the next closest ski resort to banff after lake louise/sunshine/norquay.

the reason for the visit? they had recieved some 75+ cm of snow in the last week and the day we went, they had recieved 17cm over night! perfect conditions. so we got on the highway pretty early. just after 7, but a truck had compeltely jackknifed just next to the BC border so we sat around for 30 minutes while the police did their stuff and moved the vehicles waiting to pass through the narrow gap that was left.

awesome we were on the road again, we got to kicking horse, got our first run in, and then the gondola - which is the only way up the mountain and every run is serviced via it - stopped due to high winds. 90km/h at the top. bummer, we stood around for ages, then got our second run in 45 minutes later. these runs are really long and with all the AMAZING snow that was around it was just bliss. then it was 2 more hours before our last run of the day :( oh well each run was awesome and we got a half day ski credit thing cos we only got 3 runs in. COOL!

while we were stopped on the freeway we met Alex, who had the car infront of us. She had these two awesome huskies aswell, we ended up boarding with her for the 3 runs we got. anyway yeah... *pic below*

then the next two days - wed/thursday - i spent at sunshine which recieved 10cm/8cm respectively. it was awesome awesome. snow was just brilliant everywhere. neato.

anyway lets see, its friday evening here and ive gopt 1.5 more hours before i finish work. then im cruising to the cinema to finally watch 300 :-D yippy. i believe this movie is coming out pretty soon in aus aswell.

erm anyway yeah, pics



that is:
Christian (this cool german dude who used to work at the Banff centre), then rupert, adam, myself, alex and tim.

then this my wound from the lake louise staff ski day last week. i havent been able to upload it till now cos the 1 computer in the whole centre which has a working USB drive died on everyone ><




and finally, this is Donny. he works at sunshine village as a lifty. he broke a rib in the terrain park and cos everyone is so god damn poor around here, he had to hitchhike from sunshine to the hospital. we picked him up on the side of the road in the cool bus and dropped him off at the hospital.



cyuzzz
Gerald Thomas Richard Wiblin (just for a change)

lake louise ski day 2nd part of story + security guards are idiots.

ok, so the second part of my lake louise ski day which i didnt mention before cos i didnt want to write it before i knew the whole story is.

last run of the day, im in the terain park. i hit 2 jumps and get some decent air. then i hit this pretty decent sized ledge which a nice drop at the end. that was gonna be my whole run but down the bottom of the terrain park is this tiny little roll on ledge thing. i had hit it many times before so i cruise upto it, roll onto it, and just at the end i catch an edge. i smash my shin against the metal edge. my knee on the other edge and i roll onto my shoulder ><

i have a nice big gash in my leg - pics later

my knee is kind of bruised but my shoulder felt really really bad. so the next day, worried that i had maybe fractures something, went to the hospital. the hospital charges fees which are somewhat similar to that of an expensive lawyer. just to see a doctor right away would cost me $380 + the doctors fee and then if i wanted it x-rayed that was another $110. i politely told them i would go to a clinic in town. did that and anyway my shoulder is fine and i will be out boarding next tueday.


anyway the second part to this blog:

Last night i finished work at 12:50 after 50 minutes of overtime *frustrated look on face* So I hopped on the computer in the staff cafe (there is only 1 cos the other 1 is broken at the moment) anyway then this security dude comes in. the only people around at night are the security and the cleaners.

anyway the chefs usually make them food and put it in this 'altosham' which is like a big steel cabinet thing which keeps the food warm. usually there are 4 or 5 plates in there but the chef must have forgotten and only put 1 meal in there. anyway the cleaner who was doing the kitchen had got there first and scored the only plate of food. so the security dude comes along, tells the dude that he took the only plate of food (pretty much stating the obvious as the fellow had to have known this when he took it) and is all pissed off cos of it. He goes on about how there are 5 people working tonight and he got the only meal. Then he looks over at me and says, 'ive told u before ur not allowed in here after 11'

i explain i finished work just 5 minutes ago and am just shooting off an e-mail to my dad.

he says, ' i dont care, your on the only working computer and if somebody else wanted it, you would have to get off'

i again say, 'i just finished work, and if you want to use the computer then just ask'

he then tells me to get off the computer.

so i ask him if he wants to use the computer.

he doesnt answer

I again enquire if he wants the computer.

no answer.

He then asks me to leave. so I close all my windows. get up and offer him the seat. he doesnt move cos he clearly never wanted the computer. no one else has arrived in the room yet. only the cleaner eating the meal which the security guard didnt get, me and the security guard himself. So as im walking out I say,

'in the other dudes defence, if there are 5 people working and 1 plate of food, then its pretty obvious that 4 people are going to miss out yeah? and if he got here first, and he got the plate of food, then its his good luck and everyone elses bad luck ya know, thats just the way the cookie crumbles. also there is no point kicking someone off the computer when the only other people who might want to use it either dont want it, as you have demonstrated or too busy eating.'

As i walked out he had plenty of time to reply but didnt bother cos he was totally owned. security guards are idiots and are mostly sad because they are too overweight to became police officers.


cya
gerald

staff ski day at lake louise

Ok, lets see.

got up nice n early after 6 hours sleep. got some food, hopped on the bus only to be told they had to put the chains on the bus cos it had snowed over night.....20 minutes later get back on the bus. we drive really really slowly for about 5 minutes (like 4 blocks or so) and then we spend another 10 minutes sitting around as they took the chains off....

then we were on the road. the 45 minute trip took closer to an hour but it was sooo worth it. when we got to lake louise - which had recieved a nice 8cm of powder over night - the whole backside of the mountain was closed. the only thing open was the gondola but as i got to the top of the gondola, the backside was just being opened up. this meant i got to make first tracks down quite a few of the runs over there. :-D it was bliss!!!

anyway then as the day went on, the beautiful fresh snow was getting trecked out, so i went out of the ski boundary on my search. I found this beautiful hill side, that had stacks of fresh snow, and it just lead you down this gully, through these trees which has like 30cm of fresh snow around them, and then down another gully. this is where i was thoroughly lost and got freaked out when i saw FRESH BEAR TRACKS!!!! scared the hell outa me, they were facing the direction i had just come. so i got the hell outa there by climbing down this cliff, doing some more sweet boarding in another powder bowl, then doing a 15 minute treck through a forest :-D LOL. easily the best run ive ever done. was soooooo good. anyway yeah.

if you look at the post bellow I've stuck in a nice friendly counter to tell you all how long untill im free!

anyway
toodles

p.s. ashton u wanted a crazy snowboard story - thats the best i can do.

I LEFT THE BANFF CENTRE SHIT YEAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!

that is all, no need for a counter any more

the things i miss about home:

So I seem to get asked this a fair bit, so I figured I'd dedicate a post to it:

*note, not in any particular order*

1. I guess I miss all the people back home that make adelaide fun and exciting - but thats pretty boring and im not going to list everyone.

2. I miss my stupidly large music collection which allowed me to listen to any song i wanted when ever - plus the ability to download songs/movies etc when ever I chose.

3. I miss not having to type in all my passwords when I want to do something online - MSN, e-mail, myspace, toymods, reddit etc....

4. I REALLY miss driving my rolla - I was always happy when I was slamming through the gears of the old girl listening to van halen, or what ever was going in my cd stacker. Many a good times in the old rolla were had and I miss having the freedom of being able to drive her when ever I want. I hope michael is looking after her :-P

5. I miss the Exeter. Just cos it was such a banging bar. unfortunatly there aren't any bars quite like it here :( there were always people you knew at the ex.

6. WOMAD is coming up and im going to really really miss that :(

7. I miss MY computer and all the programs on it - photoshop where are you when I need you?

8. I miss not being able to phone/txt my friends when I want their attention/what ever

9. I miss having a job that pays you a decent wage

10. I kinda miss my bed/room

11. oh and the showers here suck - so I miss the one back home.

12. A well stocked fridge is always an advantage and the only thing in the fridge that I share at the moment is - cheese rolls, yoghurt (I realised I missed yoghurt so now I buy it everytime I go shopping) beer and I have some chips + 2 minute noodles, in my rooom.

*dont despair mummy and daddy, I get most of my food from the staff cafe which is where I also grab fruit so I am eating alright ;-) *

erm yeah, I guess thats it. I have no idea how many times I wrote 'I' in this post but its far too many and now i feel like a self absorbed little whore.

cyuzzz
Gerald

All the photos i have promised

Ok, the photos will be on chronilogical order - not in the order i mentioned them in my blog.

Two photo's from an outing to Lake Louise, just sat down for 10 minutes and snapped some photos of these shredders hitting this prettty decent sized jump :-P

There is a Gondola just out of Banff that takes you up Sulphur Mountain and gives you a view of the whole town + a great view of the surrounding area. a few photos from the top + vid

This next photo shows pretty much the whole of banff, the Banff Centre is just to the right of the end of the photo. So it is a bit far out of town compared to most places.

This next one is a car i walk past on a pretty regular basis. the first few weeks i thought it was amusing that someone would keep a convertible outside with just a plastic sheet covering it to keep the snow out. Well i walked past it the other day and the thing had caved in much to my amusement :-)

Next one is a snap from the french party downstairs which i mentioned. There were a whole lot more people in the hallway and outside.

The elk that came grazing past Becker and around the banff center the other day:

Then me looking so un-photogenic as in every photo (just look at the one above with me in it) with the elk thingies just behind me.

And finally Sebastian, who left yesterday, was trying to get a lift to Calgery airport, while i was just trying to get a lift to sunshine village. figured we had better got a photo for good times.

I'm pretty sure that covers everything - photos of steak night werent any good so they were left out.

cyuzzzz

gezzaaah

stuff....

been boarding the last couple of days. been alright but yesterday it was 8 degrees and today it was pretty warm aswell ><>< this makes me very very angry. none the less i was still hitting the slopes and enjoying myself. - pics to come

There has been a few happenings around here lately. Lots of the frenchies have been leaving - there was a BIG party which was organised without the consent of the staff housing folk and thus was closed down at 11pm. it then moved to DCH (donald cameron hall - where the other bunch of staff housing is) and was shut down there, THEN on the way back to becker from DCH all the find party goers were questioned by the police and 1 was arrested. I found this all rather amusing as i finished my partying at 11 and watched tv instead. - pics to follow

last night was 'steak night' down at the elk n oarsman. u get a fine steak sandwhich for $8 which aint bad. we made a booking - definitly necassary - and we had a full table of 14 i think. this was, me, adam, tim, rupert, billy, lucy and clair who are back in town (the two irish girls who i think i mentioned in a much earlier post), then some girls from the hostel we stayed in ages ago, jess, rachael and sarah, then two of their friends. and then a friend of clair's rocked up with a buddy of her's. so it was a full table. I got my steak, was enjoying cutting the big thick piece of meat only to find out the edge of the plate which the steak was resting on was hanging off the table and quite a comical situation which ended with a plate of chips, calamari rings and my steak sandwhich all on my lap..... ><

pics of that night to follow too i guess.

yesterday walking back from the staff cafe to Becker, after snowboarding and dinner and such, there was a group of 7 elk (maybe/i think) wandering around the Banff center. they had made their way from behind the becker building down towards 1 of the hotels. they were quite calm, and didnt get alarmed with all the people watching them. this said some of then had tags on their ears which means they had attacked people before. i snapped a whole bunch of photos - will put up the better ones aswell.

besides that its the 7th which means all of 24 more days till i leave this place,

hope you have all been enjoying reading 'this thing' (that better ritz??)

remember u can leave comments yo!!!!!

erm i think thats it, i will chuck all the photos ive been promising, from my days on the slopes at lake louise to all the ones ive promised in this entry.

oh, and on a sad note, Sebastian left this morning - those of u who ever look at my myspace will remember him as my number 1 friend for a day or two. He was one of the french canadian house keepers. anyway last i saw of him he was trying to hitch a ride to calgery airport to catch a 1am flight tonight LOL. hope he catches it, before he left he said if i come to quebec and need to stay somewhere he will happily put me up so thats one more pro to going there - its looking more enviting.

anyway best be off now

toodaloo all

gezzza

Did chesty bond get a new job?

So thats the logo for Mr.Clean, a Canadian detergent. And just for comparison, here is Chesty Bond

another humorous packaging label thingy-ma-gig ive found is by the chip company - Old dutch. They are pretty decent chips ya know - probably around the same quality as Kettle chips. anyway heres a pic + link.

http://olddutchfoods.ca/products/categoryProducts.cfm?typeid=1&Page=3#

Yes that flavour is called Buffalo Wings, its quite common over here but i still find it amusing, the concept of buffalos having wings :-S



cyuzzz
Gerald

a few things ive noticed/things which make me smile/dedication of this blog

1. chocolate bars arent your typical 60g, they are 58 grams here :-S

2. your run of the mill 600ml coke, here is 591ml :-S

3. speed limits are just a sign on the road. if you go the speed limit people will get angry. on the road to sunshine village/lake louise the limit is 90 but most people sit on 110-120 if the conditions allow it.

4. I was waiting to get on the gondola at Lake Louise and I hear the lift operator (aka, lifty) say,
"why should i do it, i wanna do the minimum amount of work possible, thats what being a lifty is all about"

at this point ive reached the front of the line and i say to the lift, "nah dude, doing the minimum is what being an australian is all about"

he replies, "im from melbourne mate"

5. today i was on a lift with another fellow whos name is luke, he asked me where im from. The australian accent really sticks out here and it brings a smile to my face when i know i can say, " Adelaide" and they will know exactly what im talking about. turns out Luke is from Brisbane, used to sell insurance, got sick of it, now works at the HI hostel in lake louise (the town not the ski resort). once i quite my job at the end of the month, im gonna be staying in different hostels and im sure to spend a week or so there. he says its quite a nice place.

Lastly 2 days ago my Opa passed away. Unfortunatly I'm not around for the funeral so instead, this blog has taken on a new title and is now dedicated to my Opa, who i described earlier as, A Vogelzang through and through. to those of you unfortunate souls who dont know any vogelzangs then you wont get that but im sure the family will enjoy it.

Pics from my lake louise outing to follow

toodalooo
gerald

a few more pics + stories

hmmm lets see, i have a few pics and i guess i will just anotate them as i go:

this is me decked out with all my shizzle gear yo - excluding my gloves. the boards upside down but oh well. the door and stuff in the foreground is tim and adams car. tim took the photo while sitting in the driver seat LOL.

up the top of the larch lift - i think that is what its called. anyway its the last run of the day. its just passed 4pm (which is when all the lifts close besides the one needed for you to ski/board back to the carpark) anyway its the last run and i see this fellow just standing around all strapped into his board up the top of the lift. naturally i had to get a photo :-D again i dont have gloves on cos i took them off to get the camera out and turn it on. anyway yeah, dude was a total champ.

now from a dude dressed up as local wildlife to actual local wildlife. another photo of a deer that was next to the staff cafe. i spotted it when i left the staff cafe and was walking into town.

i know ive posted pics of deer before but they really are such a magestic animal :-P u can see how taim they are with the dude in the background who just drove up and got out his car and the deer only ran away when i started walking towards it - i did still need to get through and head into town.

this is claud. he is one of the french canadians (easily the nicest people here besides the aussies) whom i work. he also lives in becker. i snapped this photo of him before he went to bed. its in the communial kitchen in becker. hes a pretty interesting guy. he works 4 months a year and spends the other 8 'clensing his soul' in India. he reads books about hinduism and he is currently teaching me french - i know about 10 words and i forget most of the ones he tells me. but it helps pass the time in the dishpit.

this one im sorry to say you will have to open up nice and big despite it being a big file. i dont have an image resizer here so if u wanna see the images nice and big, you gotta download the whole 1.5mb i think. anyway onto the photo -

in banff they used to have bears wandering around the town as its built in the middle of a wildlife park. bears came here for the food and so to try and prevent the bear attacks and the bears wandering down Banff ave they put this bins all around town which bears cant open. they have these fancy little handles and stuff. on each bin they have the sticker which says, ' keep bears wild use this bear-proof garbage bin'. thats all good but who ever decided on that particular photo of bears to be stuck on every single bin around town is either really neive or did it for shits n giggles and probably still gets giggles about it today.

anyway thats about it from me. its 11:21pm here and theres about 3-4cm of snow outside and ive got my weekend coming up (my two designated days off in a row which can come anytime in the week) im pretty stoked cos it probably means the snow up on sunshine will be banging. will try and get some photos and such while im up there

toodalooo for now
gerald

EDIT: well i only posted this a few minutes ago so no one will have seen it yet hopefully - I am sticking around washing dishes for another month and then i will be moving back into one of the hostels. dishwashing sucks and even though i get out to board a minimum 2 but sometimes 3/4 times a week i was having alot more fun in the hostel. you meet lots more people, its closer to town/everything and you dont have to work. although this means my money will disapear much quicker the 2 months ive spent here not paying for accomodation and raking in a bit of cash each week will be easily enough to support me. so the count is on. i think its 32 days and im free. boarding more, going out more, meeting more people and enjoying myself more. wo0o0ot :-D

a bunch of photos

so i have some photos of some wildlife that i spotted wandering around the Banff centre.

that same day I went upto sunshine and started boarding with a whole group of people from Edmington/Calgery. they were pretty cool and the last run we did a few of them hit this little kicker down this 2m drop/cliff - got some photos of that too.

and to top things off. heres one thats been on my camera since i was Taiwan. We were cruising from the airport to our hotel at the golf/country club and i spotted this weird sign on the road, i think it means there are piano players ahead.

cyuzzzz

gerald

another quick one:

jsut figured if pop up this photo:



was hitching to sunshine the other day, we do this about 1km out of the center of banff. u keep walking down wolf st, past the 2 servos, past the hospital, past the train tracks and thats where u stand cos pretty much anyone driving past there is going to one of the 3 resorts....anyhoo the other times i had hitched a ride it took no more than 10 minutes but this time it took ages, there were 5 of us all lined up and so i got chatting to the other two fellas going to sunshine. ended up cruising there with one of them 40 minutes later. anyway here is what it looks like when ur trying to get a ride - note the people in the BG who were going to lake louise :-)

EDIT: figured I'd throw this one in. the states of alberta and saskatchewan are the only ones with the 'statutory' (public) holiday called Family day. and its coming up. this monday is family day! anyway yeah, i found it kind of amusing.

I almost died

nah, just kidding. but yeah, not much to say so i had to get ur attention somehow.

i was at the safeway buying some stuff and i had to pick up some superglue. they call it crazy glue over here. this is the packaging.





NOTE: thats glue inbetween his legs :-S

i found it amusing. another amusing thing ive noted over here is one of the local calgerian radio stations - Cjay 92 - are giving away a full sized grand piano as a prize.....this is quite odd. everyone is ringing up. u ring up and u get entered into teh draw and every couple of hours someone is added to the draw and they all go on about how much they want this grand piano. its a raelly special one made by some famous piano maker and there are only 5 in the world. The thing i find amusing is, I doubt anyone who has rung up knows how big a grand piano actually is, and i doubt even more that any of them know how to play or have a room big enough for it. meh, lots of canadians are stupid.

cya
gerald

i think my 10th post yeah???

ok, so i just wanted to note down a few things.

1. if you want to escape the song 'chasing cars' by snow patrol. then dont come here!!! its played every hour...just like back home

2. for some strange reason, joke and the thief gets played a heck of a lot here :-S as if its just been released! ca-razy

3. I am thinking of sticking with my stupid job still 2-3 weeks before the end of the ski season, at which point i will quite, use the extra money ive saved, stay in a hostel up on the slopes and then just do some hardcore boarding for the remainder of the season. sounds pretty swell doesnt it :-D

im boarding the next two days so will hopefully get some pics up of me killing the slopes :P

cyuzzz
gerald

snowboarding yesterday

went boarding yesterday, was lotsa fun. the sun was out for a few hours and it was just spectacular.

i took a few snaps and a short video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ECoy_ULCTp0

4 Reasons why being a dishwasher sucks - besides the fact that its generally a crappy job:

1. you are constantly lifting dishes from this conveyer sort of thing and by the end of the day, your back is killing you

2. so much food gets wasted. it goes down the sink usually, but sometimes the sink gets clogged up, and all this food just sits in this steaming water next to you and it stinks. thats not the only source of the disgusting smell thats wafts up to nose...there is a bin where you are sposed to scrape food from plates into and the combination of 20 odd different meals, scraps from pans and the oil also stinks!

3. yours hands are constantly being beaten by water, this dries your hands out and no one has thought to put a little a hand cream dispensing unit near the joint.

4. the only people who work as dishwashers are men...surprisingly. all the attractive young lasses are servers or chefs :(

that is all.

gerald

a funny story

ok, so Ive told a few people this lil story of late and they found it funny so its gonna go in here:

this blog is slowly turning from a specific one about my travels to just general things.

anyhoo.....

i was over at my good friend martha's house many months ago. There, they have this gorgeous little dog called wilma!

anyhoo, i was trying to pick wilma up and sara (marthas mother) says,
"be careful, she is bleading..."

me, being the considerate guy i am, and worried that perhaps poor little wilma has stepped on some glass and her paw is bleeding asks, "where is she bleeding home?"

sara looks at me and says, "where do you think?"

thats when i stopped trying to pick wilma up

hmmm today:

woke up early - bit earlier than expected. 1 of the dudes in the hostel room decided he had to pack everything at 6:30am and get out. why he didnt pack the night before i dont know ><>< his board copped a slight scratch and thats about it.

oh well. what can you do. i have some awesome photos taken around sunshine village and will post them sometime.

besides that i moved into my new accomodation. i am in a room with some french dude....was bound to happen. i dont mind, $35 a week is a good price. there is plenty of room, the people are nice. we share a fridge, sinks/mirror + toilet shower with 2 other people. 1 of whom knows me as the dude who put the trolley thing at work infront of the door which she tried to open. yep it was my bad but she just knows me as that - i hope she learns my real name. shes nice as is the other girl in her room.

im just across from hugh and his room mates massive flat plasma screen YAY. so can watch snowboard films there and play the x-box. kewl.

anyway thats about it.

oh, and the van tim and adam bought broke down yesterday - broken fan belt. when this cool South Aussie mechanic we had met had a look at it he also found that the alternator wasnt doing its job very well - had to be replaced. and when the fan belt broke it messed up the power steering. bummer. cost them $400 ish i think to have it all fixed.

cyuzzz
gerald

a few pics

well tim is out at the moment - with junior (tim and adam enjoy naming things)

a few of the names:

junior - his little camera

senior - the video camera

goose - one of the tripods
maverick - another tripod

the stables - their house back in aus

mojo - battery. as in, austin powers has mofo and u get power from a battery

yes they are stupid and abscure. anyway he has his camera which means most of the photos taken so far are not here atm. i just snapped a few:

a pic out of the plane flying out ov VC

my stuff.

my snowboard, boots, all my junk with my jacket on top. my ski pass hanging from a binding.....ya

well more pics - hopefully some of alll the people we have met so far.

oh. and just a few more things to add:

had some randoms stay in the room

- some asian lady who we didnt even get to see. only saw her when she woke us up and left this morning.

nick - an english civil engineer who is here with a few mates for a week. he is pretty cool. went to some english pub with them last night.

erm, today watched the superbowl at the banff center local called props. they had a big screen and i thoroughly enjoyed trying to understand why it takes 50 minutes to play 20 minutes worth of the game....

thats all for now

cyuzz

wo0ot got a job

ok, so i wandered over to the banff center. its where they have confrences and stuff like that. there are heaps of restaurants and cafe's and what not. they have a massive kitchen area where they make food for aroyund 1000 people each day.....in the kitchen i work as a dishwasher :-D YAY

its $11 an hour :-P not bad here in banff. i get staff accomodation for $35 a week - a great price considering the hostel was $190 a week. they employ over 200 people here of which a large majority are australians. its pretty sweet. i get a few days off each week to go snowboarding and i get free food while im working. there is a large buffe for the workers. YAY.

will try and post some pics another time. im on my break atm using the free internet here for staff.

catchyas
gerald

my 3rd blog entry - imaginative, i know

ok, wow. lots has happened. some of you have been kept upto date cos u r on MSN at 5am when i log on here.....you guys know who u are. others have been blessed with personal e-mails. the rest of you schmucks who read this - sorry. if you send me an e-mail i will try and reply to it.

got free wireless internet for the next 5 days so hopefully will be able to keep people updated a bit more:

i guess the best place to start is the start :P

on the 27th - got up at like 5am. got plane from adelaide to sydney. pretty un eventful

i got a bus from the domestic terminal to the international. this took a while but with some help from ritz bitz i got there :D not that she knew the place just yeah. what ever.

then bummed around for a while, spoke to some canadians who said i would have a blast. they are right

then on the plane to taiwan. watched a movie - the 4th time i have tried to watch pirates 2 and failed - fell asleep. and i watch the guardian which was good.

taiwan was awesome. we stayed in the number 1 golf course's country club hotel thing. rooms were sweet.

we hit the town later - the night markets and a club called carnigies - http://www.carnegies.net/

what a great time. i danced on top of the bar and shook my hair around. decent music and twas fun. we stayed out quite late to set our body clocks to canadian time - it worked somewhat.

we got a cab back to the golf place and it took the taxi driver twice aslong to find it as it did the first taxi driver to find town from it. needless to say 2 hours later we jumped out the cab, abused him somewhat in english and gave him half the cab fair.

then we had the flight to vancouver. unfortunatly no tvs :( we slept the most part and when i couldnt sleep i read alot of 'next' by michael crichton. good book :P

tim and adam popped sleeping pills so they were out for most of the flight.

then we arrived in VC which is where me madeour biggest mistake but ended out to our advantage.

we didnt get our work visas finalised at the airport - bummer. more on this later.

tom picked us up - a mate of adams - and he became our tour guide for the next 3 days.

he drove us around and took us to the local hill where people ride and ski. we had a look around and from there u can see right to the USA border - oh and also alll ov VC.

then we hit some snowboard shops and went to bed.

the next couple of days were filled with buying snowboard gear, sorting out working visas and havin a good time.

we went to a couple of pubs and bought lots of stuff.

for those who knows about snowboarding stuff (billy)

ive got some salomon boots and bindings. spyder jacket and pants and a nitro board. - pics to follow

the interesting story of the trip so far is the working visa story. after travelling to a few places to sort it out - we found out we had to leave the country and re-enter if we wanted them. we figured we could do it anywhere when we came through the airport (we did look and the immigration office was shut at the time)

so we hopped on a bus down to the US border. here we met james. james is a top bloke. 21, in real estate, ex snowboard instructor. he is rolling in the cash now cos he deals with alot of property. he just started talking to us and offered us a lift from the bus stop to the boarder. we were most grateful. then he said he would pick us up once our visas were sorted.

we cruised across the border - took some photos with the "welcome to the united states of america" board. got "flagpolled" in the US. then came back to canada and got our visas sorted no hastled.

then james said he would take us and show us a couple of snowboard shops - sweet. now this dude is realy busy. he canceleed some appointments and showed us around. we all got boards and bindings and he saved us a bunch of money. his real estate bargaining skillz saved me $175 all up off the board and bindings. saved tim $225 and adam $175. we also got some bags cheaper. kick ass!!!!!

he said all he wants in return is for us to show him round our subsequent cities if/when he comes to australia. i have no doubt he will has he has lots of money and from what he was saying he wants to invest in more property. anyway moving on

we had a crazy morning on wednesday. early early start cos we had to walk quite a way, catch the skytrain (monorail for those simpsons watchers) and then meet up with toms mate who drove us to the airport.

we got there intime. customs gave us all shit and made us late for our plane though >< they were calling our names over the intercom when we were walking on.

we got to calgery, got the bus. and we are now staying in the samesun hostel in banff. :D

banff is a wicked place. tims mate came and showed us around, we did an 'ammbasodors' course teaching us about banff which was interesting and we got $300 off our season pass for the big 3 - sunshine, lake louise and some other place which isnt so good apparantly.

anyway after all that we sank some local brews - they have well priced alcoholic beverages here - with some of the crew back at the hostel.

today we hit lake louise for a while and it was great being back on the board.

its now almost 4pm - time and adam are out trying to find jobs, sorting out a phone and a bank account.

phones here are expensive. $70 for a sim and to connect to a network and NO CREDIT!!!! :O:O:O:O
oh well i dont think i will get one :P

anyway i desperatly need a shower, my feet are very cold. we have a couple of room mates from ireland who are pretty cool. claira and i dont know the others name.

we have met so many people on the way. *tries to remember them all*

our two room mates now

the two room mates we had in VC (each stayed 1 night and we saw very little of them)

tom, and his mate

fayme - this chick from a ski shop we bought some stuff. she came out and had dinner with us.
she also owns a nice is300 lexus which i told her all about :P
a few other randoms from snowboard shops.

james - top bloke.

eathen - a ski patroller from the states who is here for a few days doing some comp. he is in the same sun and is pretty cool.

tim's friend here whos names i have also forgotten (all my name forgetting is a problem, cant call everyone ur mate)

oh and james's girlfriend who we randomly somehow met on another bus and we were talkking about james and she said, "james.....*insert last name here*???"

we said yep and she said wow, i used to date him. was a very randoms meeting.

anyway im babbling now. will try and get some pics up next entry of all the stuff i have mentioned here.

cyuzzz
gerald

p.s. sorry for the spelling, i CBF'd re-reading and fixing it all i know its terrible.

pp.s sorry if this all seems like blogarea to you but oh well

cherio

At the brew house

So many of you will know that I have been working at one of Adelaide's breweries (just a hint its not the one that makes everyone's favourite green labeled ale). Ive been working there on and off for close to a month and a half. Almost all the money is being saved for Canada hence why this is being written.

Anyway when I first started working there I was surprised at the amount of wastage. They seem to enjoy throwing away the alcoholic beverages they bottle... (just a note they bottle probably more than half the beverages you see at bottle-o's). Now as I was saying they throw alot of stuff away. Along the production line there are certain machines:

a filler (fills bottles and puts tops on them)
the pasturiser (cleans the bottles)
the labeller (labels them)
the 6pack machine thingy
the packer (puts 6 packs into cartons)
and then a machine that stacks cartons onto palletes (usually between 90-110 cartons on a pallete) this thing is sometimes called the palletiser


This is a photo of the pasturiser, its hard to see it inbetween all the conveyer belts that carry the bottles around.


All along the line the bottles are being checked for weight, and to see if the labels are on correctly and a bunch of other things I am not entirely sure of yet. If there is the slightest thing wrong with a bottle they get kicked out by a machine and then put in big bins (located all around the place). These are finally emptied down this thing (often with 200+ bottles being thrown down it at any one time)



I usually cant see whats wrong with the bottles but you gotta dump them anyway. One side is for clear glass and the other is for coloured glass.

This is the view when you walk down the stairs and see where it all comes out:



OK. now that that is all out of the way and you understand a little bit about the brewery. Here is the good bit. I filmed 35 seconds showing what happens to the contents of the bottles after they are thrown down the chute. This happens around 10+ times a shift. You hear all the bottles being smashed on the way down and then the stench of beer or bourbon and cola watfs across to where I work. Enjoy.