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