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