Highway to death..

I am officially employed, and so is Anna, although not by the resort, by ‘partner’ companies…which give you no benefits at all, but how can I complain I have a job, and I am dam well grateful for it, wages are enough of a benefit for me. I am a hostess/waitress for the Lizard Creek lodge, and I’m hoping that what I make in tips will be able to purchase my ski pass…yes yes I have changed my tune about tipping since I got here...please tip away, the balancing act I shall be performing with food laden plates I now consider worth an extra few dollars, and maybe even a few more dollars after that for my award winning ‘it was such a pleasure serving you’ smile. Anna, with her keen eye to detail and her mother as her apparent role model (as she stated in her interview) managed to get a job in housekeeping, I would normally say that she would be very good at this, but I am looking around our room and its definitely not just my side that’s a little messy….I’m sure she’s scowling as she reads this. Anyway we both have jobs, and Anna started a couple of days ago, because she had started work it meant that she was unable to come on our very exciting road trip to Calgary, to pick up Mill’s other half, Babs. But before I get onto our trip…I will first tell you about the legend of the Griz.

Fernie is well known for its amazing powder, which over the last few days I have experienced as I trudged through the fine snow on my way to and from the flat… as that’s right, the snow is finally here. But what is responsible for this amazing snow, and when it arrives? Air circulation? Altitude? Latitude? No, no, no… a better question is WHO is responsible? Who decides when the sky opens ups and lets powder fall….. The Griz, that’s who.

As legend goes, deep in a cave of a grizzly bear, high up in the mountains of Fernie, a baby boy was born, he was born in the cruel and hostile winter of 1879. Sometime later, the bear awoke, and a battle to the death occurred between the hungry savage bear and the child, but surely the child would have no luck against such a creature? The noise of the battle was heard by the towns people, and the next day they set out to seek the source of the noise, they found nothing, but one man swore he saw a child playing in the snow and rocks, with the skin of a bear draped around him, but no one took his claim seriously and the incident was forgotten. Years later a group of ski-tourists were climbing around what is now the resort area, and when they looked up towards the summit of the mountain they saw the frame of a massive man, shoulder 6ft across, draped in the skin of a grizzly bear and in his hand he held a giant musket, which he shot towards the sky, the more he shot, the more powder fell. This wild bear man, is the Griz… and he is responsible for the snow.

Now this legend is all very well, and I am very excited by the knee deep snow which I can see through my window…but I would have appreciated if the Griz could have held off the snow just one day, because the Griz’s antics very nearly killed us. It is really unfair of me to put all the blame on the Griz, the decision to drive to Calgary in the snow and ice was after all our own.

Milly was always going to go to Calgary to pick up Babs, and what type of awful friend would I be if I made her do the 4 hour journey on her own….and a road trip sounded quite fun. The trip was perfectly timed for me as Fernie does not have a phone shop… and I required one, as on Monday I accidently dropped my phone down the toilet… while it was flushing. Now in English toilets, I’m quite sure that the main issue would be that the phone would have sucked up loads of water, and that it had been at the bottom of a disgusting toilet, but here I didn’t even have a chance to have these concerns, as the crazy powerful flush took my phone away as I just watched in drunken awe, a dead fish couldn’t have disappeared faster. Now if anyone in England would like to test this at home, I would be very interested to find out the results.

Back to our trip to Calgary…we borrowed a friend’s 600 dollar car, obviously equipped with everything we needed… except winters tires, a rear window screen wipers, and oh yeah it had dying headlights, but it would get us from A to B…safely? We prepared ourselves the night before, the roads were clear, the weather was cold…not yet snowy. But overnight, the Griz struck, he shot his musket in the air, and we woke to find everything covered in snow… and it was still falling, this did not deter us though, what’s a little snow? Milly’s driven in snow before, it’s all good. Within the first 10 minutes we had encountered our first hitch…we didn’t know how to put petrol in the car…no not because we are women and incapable of such tasks, but because the car was old school, somewhere in the car was a button which let us open the petrol thing (I say thing because I am one of those girls who doesn’t really know car stuff…but Milly isn’t) so we spent half an hour looking like fools while the petrol pump man watched us fuss around, when the task was finally done, we went to pick up the girls, Kate and Rachel, two English girls who we have been hanging out with. In all honestly the drive on the way wasn’t that bad, we drove past cars that had obviously been abandoned on the sides of the road because of the snow, but we were going okay, the roads were icy, but Milly handled it well, a few sharp stops here and there but we made it to Calgary. We were planning on having a bit of a shopping day while we were in a big city, however our errands seemed to take 3 hours and I achieved nothing apart from getting a new phone and it was time to get Babs.

Of course Milly and Babs had a beautiful reunion, and I’m sure it was made even better by the crowed car of girls who weren’t his girlfriend also greeting him, everyone loves a third, fourth and fifth wheel in romantic moments. With Milly and Babs reunited and loved up, Kate began the long drive home which we soon realised would not be as simple as the drive there, the safety of daylight had disappeared.

The first 45 minutes went well, beside the petrol light flashing for a little longer than we felt comfortable with, so we headed off the highway in hope of finding fuel, which turned out to be easy enough, and we even had a little pit stop at MacDonalds (of course road trip and maccas go hand in hand). We and the car were all fueled up and ready to go, the difficulty came when we were trying to find a way of the 2A and onto the 2 in a homebound direction, in our map muddle, and the on-and-offing of the car lamp we suddenly swerved of the icy road and found ourselves door deep in a snow ditch…with not a chance of getting out. Milly, Babs and I got out of the car, in hope that lightening the load would maybe make it more movable….Rachel… who we hadn’t realised was stuck in the other side of the car without the option to get out, meanwhile merrily carried on with her knitting in the front seat, as if this was a perfectly reasonable situation, although I understand her reasoning, because if you don’t knit.. you can only cry… we were stuck in minus something conditions, surrounded by door deep snow,# 3 and half hours from Fernie….I would have loved some knitting to distract me. A passer-by did stop and attempt to help us lug our car out of the snow but to no avail…matters were then made worse by the Police. PC Grumpy-stiltskin was horrible, flashing his torch in our eyes like we were reckless youths, who clearly must have been speeding, high, or drunk, and not the innocent responsible(ish) young adults that we are. After some questioning on why we were driving a car which wasn’t ours, and if the owner knew we had it, oh and some more torch flashing, he eventually helped find a tow, and informed us that they were backed up for hours so we were likely to be stuck in the freezing cold till then…. Thanks mate. Luckily grumpy was wrong, and a tow arrived within half hour…. This however was long enough for me to start losing feeling in my fingers because of the cold, and then the tow man, to get us out of the way, made us stand in the snow ditch, I initially didn’t mind this as I have recently purchased snow boots for -40 conditions… and this was nowhere near -40, but it seemed standing in the snow ditch for another half hour was too much for my shoes to handle and my feet were become increasingly unhappy, in fact I’m pretty sure my toes had frozen inside my boots and were threatening to snap off. 86 dollars, 50 frozen toes and me getting chucked out of 7/11 for loitering later… we were back on the road, and the snow had started to fall again. As we drove further out of the city, darkness descended more as the street lights got taken away from us, then we saw a light....a flashing light… red and blue in colour….the police…and it was our favourite officer, officer Grumpy-stiltskin, who greeted us with ‘Oh you guys are having a bad night aren’t you, I hope you know what you were doing wrong!?’ Turns out our headlights weren’t even coming on anymore! He left us with instructions to leave full beam on and sent us on our away again. I don’t know if he thought he left us with advice that would improve our journey, because he certainly did not. Driving in complete darkness, with full beam on, and snow falling towards the windscreen, absolutely does not improve visibility, if anything, it causes more panic, because all you can see is snow hurtling towards you and nothing else, Milly’s driving was amazing, and she coped with having our lives in her hands very well, but I can honestly say that I was quite sure I was going to die, it was terrible. Hours passed with us driving at the fastest pace we could manage and not being able to see anything until we decided to stay in a motel, which I never thought I would really experience unless I was married woman having an affair or… a prostitute, it was quite nice though.

The next day we set off again, although our journey hardly improved in the daylight, as dusts of snow meant we could see nothing, but a 360 spin on the highway, and the swerving out of the way of 3 cars coming towards us later… we made it back.. nerves fried, but back and unharmed.

We have been in Fernie for two weeks now, so I should have heaps to write about…but I don’t. The end of October/November are dead months in Fernie. We all had our interviews, Milly successfully got a job at the Lost Boys Café as a waitress/’greek chef’, but Anna and I have still been waiting on our replies…. I unfortunately found out this morning that I was not successful, even though I was definitely VERY charming in my interviews, this basically means goodbye free ski pass, good bye half price rentals and good bye free lessons. This should put in a worse mood than I’m in, but handily having been here two weeks I have collected enough friends in each department at the resort that this will hopefully not end up being the most expensive problem in the world and there is still the chance that I may get a job in housekeeping aka toilet cleaner, the dream job of every university graduate.

Our two weeks here have basically consisted of watching a lot of films, pool, spending far too much money on going out, and desperately seeking jobs. Even though we have guaranteed jobs in Vancouver, desperation is still the word I would use for our job search, because we are most defiantly not leaving Fernie because a. we love it, and b. because the over-confidence we had in our ability to get jobs resulted in us signing a 6 month lease and giving up 800 dollars of our non-existent money for our first month’s rent and security deposit.

I originally though that Fernie would be lacking in many vital attributes required for city folk, but i turns out I don’t need a lot, give me a swimming pool, a couple of bars, an amazing bagel shop and Canadian Tire the all-purpose shop and I’m good to go, oh and not forgetting a supermarket. The supermarket here however does unfortunately, or fortunately, have the unusual ability to make you regret your porky decisions even before you enter… it goes by the name Overwaitea… yes like fatty put down those biscuits before you become over-weighty. Although the supermarket has discouraging name, everywhere else is happy to provide me with an insulating layer be it through Rocky Mountain Beer or through amusingly named bagels e.g ‘please brie mine’; I’m just waiting for the romantic moment where prince charming buys my this bagel as a gesture of his love.

Talking of prince charming… or just men in general, I very embarrassingly got taken away by a Fernie ski season regular while innocently talking to a male friend, and told ‘not jump on the first guy I see’ as the ratio of men to women is 3:1, I believe she mentioned the words ‘sausage-fest’ and with those parting words of wisdom she sent me back to go awkwardly go finish my conversation, with the paranoid feeling that she was watching me, making sure I wasn’t whore-ing myself, and considering herself the guardian angel of promiscuity.

Halloween has also come and gone, and was more successful than our previous attempt to throw ourselves into ghoulish state-of-mind, we crafted, we dressed up, we sung karaoke (badly) and we danced… then I ran-away back to the hostel because ‘I needed a sandwich’.

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Seeing as we are in North America we wanted to embrace their cultures, you know massive pizza, Starbucks and the very important October holiday of Halloween. Walking around Vancouver we were inundated with flyers from costumed theatre groups, for the many, many, month long Halloween events that were happening, there were parties, haunted houses and ghost trains, some of them looked like they could be truly frightening… some not so much. I was very enthused to try out one of these scary delights…my choice, and I will take responsibility for this bad decision, as I do remember the words ‘Come on guys, this will be amazing!’ coming out my mouth, was the Stanley Park Alice in Wonderland Halloween ghost train. We timed our journey to the park so that we would be able to get the last train which was at 9.30, quite an early finish time for a spooky ghost train really...hmmm. Although we did managed to make the train, we had a dramatic journey there, as we think the bus changed numbers and location while we were on it without telling us… that must have been what happened, because there no way we all mistook the number 6 bus for the number 5….yes that must have been what happened. When we finally got there we realised that this haunting, spooky event….was for the under 7’s but with the huge amount of effort it took to get there I was insistent on wasting the 8 dollars the train cost only to realise the error of my ways when the majority of the set was floating ‘scary’ cardboard cut outs, and an actress playing Alice who has a short battle with a dragon…using her trusty lightsaber… must have been the Lewis Carrol-George Lucas Version.

In other news... we also went to Capilano Bridge, “Vancouver’s top tourist attraction”, which is a 450ft suspension bridge. From my childhood memories I remembered the bridge as a death trap made of rope and wood, with huge gaps in so children could fall off, but it seems in the 18 years since being here my memories were greatly exaggerated as it is very sturdy and made of metal...so I was pretty safe, my scary description did however result in a massive anti-climax for Milly.

Then it was time, time for our 18 hour trip to Fernie… woe.

The not so scenic views of Victoria....

Our Fernie interviews weren’t till the weekend, and although Google images showed it to be a picturesque gem nestled in the middle of Rockies, it did not sound like it had a great deal to do until the season started, so instead of heading straight there we had a little mini excursion to Vancouver Island. Despite its name implying it is in close proximity to Vancouver… it is not. It takes 3 and half hours, or 4 and a half if you’re us, who apparently have an inability to run on time, even with Anna, the most punctual person in the world. We went for one night, which hardly sounds worth it when you consider we had to get the bus, sky train, a ferry and another bus to get there, all with massive gaps in between them due to our bad scheduling. We eventually arrived in Victoria on Vancouver Island, after a quick walk round, we realised there wasn’t actually a lot to do here. Victoria is very, very British, it proudly advertises ‘ English style fish and chips’, a English sweet shop, and very English grand hotel, basically the entire placed oozed quintessential British charm, which meant we has flown 5000 miles, got a bus, sky train, ferry and bus for an excursion to a Norfolk-like seaside town. Our intention was to have a night out, but as Vitoria wasn’t particularly ‘banging’ we put ourselves to bed early, only to be woken by midnight by the apparently raving club opposite our hostel.

The next morning we woke up early thinking we should make the most of our day in Victoria before we had to get a various modes of transport back to Vancouver, it seemed we had forgotten there was nothing to do. Over hearing our grumbles about the lack of activities an aging hippy came over and imparted his wisdom of Victoria on us, he suggested we take a nice RELAXING scenic bike ride along the something-or-other trail (I forget), which would take us through forests and lakes and along the sea, oh how wonderful it sounds. This is what we did. It was not wonderful. It was not relaxing. All started well, there were trees and there were lakes, even horses and racoons came across our path, oh what a great first hour, and then an excellent picnic lunch (Hungarian salami sandwiches, crisp, apples and biscuits…if you’re interested), and we still had of couples hours to spare to get back to the hostel, and catch our ferry. Then we got over-confident, we went off the trail. Never go off the trail. There is nothing pretty of the trail, there are roads, scary roads, with speeding cars, and hills, lot of hills, which for a girl who never really got taught to use her gears properly were an exhausting feat. What makes these cars and hills even worse is that they were not supposed to be there…or to put it better, WE were not supposed to be there. We were lost, our map was crap (because we went of the trail!), and cars were hurtling past us in a manner which suggested we would soon be road kill. It was terrible; we eventually found a route back, riding along the not-so-scenic views of concrete roads, and houses. This 4 hour ordeal resulted not only resulted in a few scrapes and bruises due to falling off the bikes in panic and fear for our lives, but also missing our bus and ferry meaning we had to wait 2 hours for the next one, which of course added to the obviously joyous moods we were in. So my tip for bike riding in Victoria is; STAY ON THE TRAIL.

Overdressed and Over-keen

We have jobs! Although we are not sure if we are going to take them...yes that’s right, three days into a new country we get a job very easily in a rough job climate and we feel we have the option to be picky, perhaps a little over confident? Our new potential jobs are at Cypress Mountain, we like to think that it was our smart attire that got us the jobs, but in actual fact they were being handed out like sweets at Halloween, all you had to do was turn up. We did stand out though, as the overdressed girls; while everyone else on the free shuttle to the mountain were denim glad we had dug out the ‘smart clothes’ from the depths of our bag-packs, of black trousers and smart shirts – which were even crease-free ( benefits of the rolling packing technique). Me and Milly got jobs in the food and beverage department, while Anna, with her very low knowledge of skiing equipment got a job in rentals… we don’t understand how this happened either. As the orientation isn’t till November we are still going to head up to Fernie for our interviews, to see if the middle of nowhere life is for us….currently I’m feeling the isolated lifestyle may not be for me as I love Vancouver.

As a treat for easing so smoothly into an almost working member of the Canadian society we celebrated as all English do… with dinner and drinks. We decided to go to the Mongolian BBQ as the smell had been wafting down the street for days with its come-eat-here aroma, and who were we to refuse such temptation ? For those of you who aren’t familiar with this type of restaurant, it involves filling your bowl with a selection of thinly sliced, slightly frozen meats (it’s a lot more appealing than it sounds), vegetables, noodles and sauces, which all then gets BBQ-ed within 5 minutes for you. It is however still a normal restaurant, therefore you go in, get seated, and then go fill your bowl up for the BBQ. We were a little over-keen and forgot the normal rules of restaurant etiquette, so in this very full restaurant, which at that present moment in time had no possible place for us to sit, we marched in, headed straight for the frozen meat queue and started filling bowls with as much as we could carry, this was until we noticed the people behind us who hadn’t forgotten the normal rules and were waiting patiently to be seated… this queue continued to form behind them, so we were left standing randomly in the restaurant with our bowls of meat, it was embarrassing.. We sheepishly had to admit our mistake to the staff and were forced to the back of the queue, still clutching our bowls as the contents slowly defrosted in front of us, with even the people in front of us making aren’t you stupid jokes to us. After our embarrassing but delicious meal we met up with the Canadians that me and Milly knew from Monash for some drinks. They took us to the Cambie, we had mentioned to a few Canadians we’d met that we were heading there, and they all seemed to respond with a face which we read as ‘ohhh you’re going there, why!?’ and referred to is as ‘interesting’ /’hick’ place. We got there, and my personal feelings to these reviews were… have these people ever been to a bar in England!? In fact I personally through it was an even a bit more civilized than a English uni bar, although it was rammed, the queue for the bar, was in fact just that, a queue, a long orderly line up of people waiting patiently to be served, there was no shoving, no elbows, and nobody trying to spread their body out as much as possible to hinder other peoples efforts for bar space, I was impressed, I felt more like I was waiting to buy my groceries in a supermarket. With this orderly manner resulting in very quick service, the night ended as expected with many drinks consumed, and a drunk Anna, who when sober is an excellent navigator, trying to lead us the wrong way back home, and refusing to listen to my direction.

Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do.....lalalala You'll look sweet on the seat, of a bicycle made for two!

15th October

My overall feeling in the last couple of days have not been excitement or joy, it has mainly been distress. Distress at non-included sales tax for ALL purchases. Distress at ridiculous phone contracts which charge you for caller ID (+ tax) and all incoming phone calls (+tax). Distress at banks charging me £10 a month just to have a bank account. Distress at the extreme tipping culture, one drink (+ tip)…another drink (+tip), oh look you have opened my beer, why should I give you an extra 50c for this!? EVERYTIME! Basically distress at my money being sucked away in very subtle but VERY frequent occurrences. This distress has of course been accompanied with MASSIVE appreciation for the UK, and has left me with feelings of why on earth have I come to this sneaky country, which likes to trick me at every purchasing opportunity? Is this a plan that should be added to my ever increasing pile of not very good ideas!?....No, today, distress was lifted (well new distress, my previous complaints are still very much valid, and will definitely remain a constant gripe throughout the year).

We spent the morning preparing for the Cypress Mountain job fair tomorrow, but after that we FINALLY did a fun and non-sorting-our-life-out activity and this I feel is exactly what the Dr.Homesick would have prescribed. We decided to do a little exploring, and what better way to explore than by bike, AND which better bike to use than a ‘bicycle made for two’. As there are 3 of us we had to opt for one bicycle made for one and one tandem. Me and Milly started out on that tandem, although it was going against all my instincts to agree to share control of this contraption with Milly, especially as she was in the front, blocking my view of everything as I rode blindly with her producing just enough sudden swerves to keep me sufficiently nervous for the first few minutes. I had images of us crashing into a wall with me flying of the back of the bike and head first into a shallow rock pool…always best to expect the worse. Amazingly we got into a rhythm, and I quickly started to wonder why tandem bikes were not more common practice, forget cars as the mode of family transport, a multi-person bike is all that’s needed (benefits: tackles obesity, pollution, traffic, fossil fuel depletion…. I think I may be hearing the noble prize in solving the some world problems in coming my way). We rode to Stanley Park, which is not only massive but perfectly positioned to remind me why coming here was a good idea. We rode around the edge of the park along the seawall where we could see across the sea to the tall buildings of North Vancouver with the backdrop of pine covered mountains backed by blue skies and all with a sunny glow being reflected from the sea, we passed small beaches, monuments and light houses…yes we are still in the same massive park, and I felt completely contented about coming here for our very long term excursion……although my bum was experiencing a bit of an ache from the saddle. Milly, Anna and I, did a bit a bit of a switch around with the bikes, although this mostly ended with disastrous crashing and panicked screams with the only working combination being with Milly at the front of the tandem, with either me or Anna behind…. Me and Anna couldn’t even make a meter together so clearly the trust is lacking from our friendship, and Milly’s one previous experience on a tandem was enough for us to hand over bike control to her. So overall the day was great and I am currently much happier.





On a completely unrelated note to Canada life, I have actually had a minor distress today and am fearful I may be being haunted….I’m typing this in the dark and even this is making me a little nervous. Milly and Anna had left me alone in the room while I sorted my purse out, whilst pulling out my cards half a broken driving licence flew into the air and landed at my feet and I was greeted with this staring back at me: (This does not really give justice to how creepy the photo is).


This is not mine! WHY THE HELL IS THIS CREEPY PHOTO IN MY PURSE!? Who the hell this woman!? This is completely a you have to be there type of thing, but I am very upset to have a photo of a most likely dead women jumping out of my purse when I am left alone. I have had this purse over a year, and now it seems the ghosts of owners past are haunting me. Woe and now this will be the thought staying with me as I try and drift to sleep. Distress.

To Eat or Not to Eat? That is the question.

14^th October, 6.30 AM UK, or 13^th October 10.30 PM Canada

We are here. So tired. Bed.

The Experiment

Recently there was a TV programme on the BBC all about sleep, the how to guide to deal with insomnia, very early mornings, sleepwalking, and my main concern, jetlag. The apparent way to prevent the bodily time-zone confusion all lies in food… unfortunately it’s the NOT eating which is meant to help, not stuffing your face as i have now learnt. The experiment involves eating your last meal in the country you’re leaving at its normal time, not eating at all on the flight and then eating your first meal in the country you’re going at its proper time. My appetite seem to anticipate that I was planning to deprive it for the 9 hours flight or it knew that I was about to enter a country where temperature can drop to bloody -50, and therefore I must require a polar bear style roll of blubber (sexy), and so in the week leading to leaving I seemed to be eating everything I could see, I was uncontrollable, instead of excitement or nerves I was completely preoccupied with food, glorious food. I expected that me pre-travel binge would have kept me satisfied on the flight, unfortunately the hungry side of me seemed to have a stronger will that the scientific experimental side of me, and I failed seeing the jet lag investigation through as soon as the first meal was offered. I place most of the blame of the menu, it was beef cobbler, and since I have only just starting eating beef this year, the 21 years of deprivation has resulted in my complete inability to say no when it is offered… it’s just to dam good. It turns out this first meal was a my spiralling down fall, and I continued with Milly’s digestive biscuits, a sandwich, a Kitkat and anything else of Milly’s that she wasn’t going to eat. Handily Anna had heard of the same experiment and was a lot more successful in the non-eating, and so I changed my claim instead stating I was investigating the befit of over-eating….turns out there aren’t any. Three days later I am still suffering tiredness, but Anna on the other hand is perfectly fine and alert, and so it seems the experiment worked, but I am just too weak willed to try it.