The Littlest Hobos

So today we experienced our first greyhound bus journey. And by
experienced of course I mean we had our very souls sucked out of us in
the greyhound depot, like being attacked by the death eaters from
Harry Potter (well I suppose they have to be somewhere between
filming). A quick look at some of the other travellers collected there
was enough to know it was already too late.... They might just as well
have been locked up in Azkabhan prison.

The depot (in downtown Calgary) is worth noting if not least for
it's choice of ambient music at 6:00am... First we were treated to
some 70s light jazz (i didn't appreciate at the time that this would
be the highlight but at least it accompanied the decor of the diner
quite well); it was followed by a compilation of tunes which I can
only presume was entitled 'music to annoy people by'... It worked.

People are strange. No more so than at 5:30am in downtown Calgary. The
one that sat next to us looked like he might well have been one of the
founding fathers (think a wrinkly Elmer Fudd complete with hunters hat
and jacket). I can confirm that he has given up trying to catch that
pesky wabbit but has instead taken to drinking pepsi and then
producing deep rumbling belches... with every sip! There can't be
that much gas in a pepsi?!

We also underwent the most pointless security search so far. The level
of searching appeared to be inversely proportional to the difficulty
the security officer (see, I know all the lingo) would have in re-
packing the bag. And since my bag was something like a puzzle from the
crystal maze, I ended up just telling him what was inside! But what
made it even more pointless (and something you could not have known at
this stage, a bit like an agatha christie novel always leaving a vital
clue until the end) was that we had already been on a greyhound for
the previous two hours just to get to the depot!

Now I know that all sounds very negative but as I write this final
paragraph it is 11:00am, we're one hour from our destination and we
are surrounded by snowy pastures & farms with chilly horses and in the
rapidly approaching distance are the magnificent rocky mountains...
We're very happy and excited :-) but not as excited as the bus
Windscreens wipers which seem to have a crazy independant life of
their when switched on. And we're not talking normal. Wipers here...
These babies are pneumatic!! They just have to do everything bigger
here!

Well, that's enough for this blogette, normal service will be resumed
shortly with katy at the helm... Oh, and for those who know him, Les
says 'Hi'.

The long walk......

So valentine's was nice, we went out to Earls one of our favourite places when we were in Banff before, Tim got free pint from the waiter (Frank) who took pitty on us with our dime watching, he knows it's not easy to live cheap in Banff. So a very happy valentine's for Tim :) and I had chicken so everyone had a good evening.

We've only had a couple more days on the mountians and it's not great so we have booked our next port of calls, we're off to Ferni at 3.30am Thursday morning for a 9 hour greyhound coach journey, which will be nice! then after 6 days there we're heading to Nelson a laid back hippy town, so hopefully less "youth" and more snow *******for 7 days then we'll see where next.

Tim's ill, i fear i may of broken him, he thinks it was because he was smug about not getting ill on the plane...either way i have snotty, sleepy husband :( so today i went for a walk, a long walk as it turned out. I left Tim at 10am and didn't get back until about 4.30pm, he was going to give me another 30mins before he called the park rangers! I did walk for miles or kilometres if you will. I did the Marsh Loop, The Sundance Canyon & Cave & Basin, got lost in the woods for a while but ended up at the Banff hot springs for a dip in a very hot pool, some great people watching oppurtunities to be had. I didn't come across too much wildlife on my walk or hike lets call it, apart from a squirel, but i did feel i was being watched from the trees, luckily i came back unharmed or gnawed!

That's all folks for the time being, i've put all the pics up on facebook if you want to view the album so far :)

big loves K&T xx

Happy Valentine's Day

Hello,

Today is Valentine's day and as I let my very tired husband catch 40winks i've been allowed to grab Tosh and tell what we've been up to before we head into town for a slap up (cheap) meal.

So what's happened since we last chatted, well incase you're not aware it's the winter olympics over here and the Canadians LOVE it, as do we which is good :) We watched the opening ceremony with random cheers from different nationalities here in the hostel.....GB had quite a big one as did the Aussies and Kiwi's, honestly they're everywhere!

We've been very active since we arrived so much to do, Timmy doesn't know what's hits his poor body, it's been constant activity since we landed (apparently it's like being married to the duracel bunny!), and tomorrow where off hiking up "tunnel mountain". He's loving it really. The boarding has been great sunshine and lake louise still have enough snow there area few patches that catch you out, although today at Sunshine was a "family weekend" which translated is a bloody busy mountain and busy eating areas, but everyone be very polite, which was nice :) with far too many children for my liking, especially as they are all great at ski-ing and boarding so no hardly no paniful wipe outs to be seen :)

So yesterday we had a lovely skype chat with the white juniors and white seniors all very funny, although the juniors did sound like they we're on an old bbc radio broadcast at times....it's the time delay i think, and me getting used to the PC after all i'm a MAC through and through. If anyones randomly up in the middle of the night and fancy a chat please feel free to ping an email and hook up with us online ;)

I had a great run, big birds again but also a herd of Elk which was lovely :) We then headed into town with our package lunch for a wander, and thought we would walk, laong the river where went last time we were here only to find it completely frozen over with an ice hockey pitch in the middle and an ice rink round the edegs! Now that was some good viewing, honeslty you can spot the Brit a mile away they are usually on their arses while all the Canadians just skate past, it's in their blood after all. We also saw a lady deer hit a car, yes she hit the car, they just roam in the streets here you see and she was scared by a couple of (stupid) young girls and ran away right in to the side of the car, rolled over the bonet and carried on running into the woods, (poor thing) the car luckily was made a mostly plastic and Tim assures me will just pop back out, thankfully it wasn't one of the many HUGE trucks most people drive around here. So that was a nice end to the day.

We're going to be moving on from Banff on Thursday (like the littlest hobo) heading to Nelson down south a bit where the snows been falling. On our first long bus journey think it's about 14 hours!

Right time to wake a sleeping Tim my tummies rumbling,

big loves, catch up soon.

K & T xx

we've got us a tosh!

hello all

we'll as you can see we're netbooked up with Tosh our friendly Toshiba :) he's going to make keeping up with us a lot quicker and easier, that is until he get stollen! (that ones for you Nerys).

so what have we been up to? well we left old Blighty, Tim's filled you in on that one, we have pics now for you to view. So Canada, we'll what can i say? people are lovely, hostel is lovely, snow could be better ******* like the littlest hobo we'll be moving on to the snow soon.

We've boarded for 2 days so far, lake louise yesterday which was fab and sunshine on monday (a great way to spend a monday) was good but not as good as last time, oh last time fluffy pow!!! anyway today was a rest day so we went on a hike down the Hoodoo trail, lovely walking along the frozen river, i went out into the middle scaring Tim as no elses footprints had gone that far :) it was fine......so off boarding again tomorrow to try and find some snow, the patchy ice is no fun on the baords, thank Dakine for impact shorts.

Our dorm sharing is great!! I'm in the pent house, at it were and Tim's in the basement flat. We'renot the oldest people here but we are in minority, there's a snowboard school of 75 "kids" here so that's nice! it's keeping us young and down with the kids, Tim's even thinking in joining in and shaving all his hair off, it's what they do!!!!

So far on the wilderness hand book we can tick off an Elk and a Coyote. Bear are sleeping until end of March so ssshhhh!!

I went for a great run the other day making packing my running kit a justifiaction and my gps watch it was great if a little lonely just me treesand very big birds, like crows but more like a small aircraft...honestly they are huge!

Right time to add some pictures for your pleasure and say a farewell from me and him :)

Ruislip to Canada, eh

So, where's all the updates?!

Ok - here's the deal: we haven't managed to get a netbook yet and whilst this iTouch is all cool and trendy it does not lend itself to multimedia presentations! So until said laptop is purchased we're keeping things brief and without photos!! Hope to find a shop which sells more than souvenir t-shirts and keyrings (basically anything faintly Olympic) soon so we can do this properly!

Leaving ruislip: crazy, last minute, manic, emotional. I didn't think it was possible for such a small flat to hold so much stuff! But after throwing out forty bags of 'rubbish' (tim's stuff) and storing all the valuable remains (katys stuff) we now have a flat that you could swing a cat in (so long as he doesn't mind some bruising on his extremities). The feat was only acheived with the help of key family members (who are also storing yet more stuff)... You know who you are. Oh, and the hitherto thoroughly reliable Peugeot chose the day before we left to detach it's exhaust from the rest of the car... Katy thought it sounded like a lambourghini - I'm not so sure.

I will skim over the goodbyes at the airport for fear of welling up again (katy, not me you understand). A nine hour flight and two hour transfer later and we we're in Banff. We started off in our own private room which was pretty much like a hotel room but we figured that wasn't in-keeping with our adventure so we have fully embraced a multiple occupancy dorm... Not as bad as it might sound... Time will tell.

Been boarding for a couple of days but no powder like the last time we were here so thinking of heading to kicking horse or fernie next week.

Ok, I can't face any more typing on this playskool keyboard so this is me signing off for now. Miss you all... A little... Somtimes :-)

t & k
xxxxx

Bags packed...

3 more sleeps.......

So today was banks, Nerys viewing and more packing. We went and chatted to the banks today to tell them of our soon to be departute and not to stop our cards while we're on our travels, thank you very much. Then onto see lovely Nerys, who is laughing in the face of breast cancer, as it were, well what else can you do?An absolutely delightful afternoon of coffee, cakes an a good old laugh :), (thanks to the MOW for the cakes) I look forward to the which wig images she promised to share. She also told us to get our arses into gear go pack and blog, so as promised here we are, now how does such as a small flat hold so much stuff?

Right the night is still young and there are more boxes that need to be filled..........