Category Archives: around home

around home, Canada

Work Changes

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Just a quick update for those (or the one person) wondering how I’m supporting myself on my travels at the moment.  After five months working for a temping agency doing all sorts of things (mostly low paying & not all that interesting) & the last two months here at the cement plant for the same temping agency, today is my last day for PPP for a while.  For on Monday, I start as a temp employee of the cement company.  This is great as it gives me five months of the same job & a large chunk of what the company is paying is no longer being siphoned off by PPP – therefore I get a nice bump up in my pay checks & I will be able to save more.  I’ll be doing the same sort of little projects for a while (at the moment I’m working on the equipment downtime reporting – quite like those many hours I spent working with & redesigning the OEE system in the Iron Plant) until those projects run out & then I’ll just be general (but well paid) labour helping keep the place tidy (there’s a lot of dust & spillage around – as I found out during those exhaustive safety & equipment audits).  Now that I’ll have a decent amount of money coming in (well decent compared to the last year and a half since I left shift work), I must start budgeting & saving well if next year’s three month MTB roadtrip around the western USA is to be everything it should be (more about that another time).

ll this means that I shortly won’t be baking bagels on Tuesday & Wednesday evenings – can’t say I’ll miss the two double-shifts & 55 hour each week.  I definitely didn’t come to Canada to do that – although, it was good for a time to learn something new & different & it helped me buy the Outback off Megan & Alex.  This weekend is Halloween – a much bigger deal over here than it is back home.  Still, I won’t be dressing up or anything – but this self-portrait of me trying not to fall to my death off the top of the Clinker Stacker in the dark depths of the Storage Hall is not my usual get-up & worthy of posting.
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around home, Canada

Cement visitors

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We never had these guys wandering around the steel mill back in NZ – bighorn sheep apparently.  I’m told with the combination of hunting (bows only, no guns) & mating seasons, these males are down from the hills for a bit as it’s safer & there are better prospects.  But that does mean that there are more cougars wandering around Exshaw now.  Still, I suppose it’s better than the grizzly bear visitor we had a month or two back.

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around home, Canada, friends, hiking

Three Sisters Pass

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Somehow Alex & Megan managed to find a short local hike that they hadn’t done before.  Shortly after noon today we headed up the Spray Valley (about twenty to thirty minutes drive) to walk up to Three Sisters Pass.  We found the deserted trailhead & proceeded up; not too sure of where the trail was, we found it eventually next to the (dry) drainage for the valley.  We followed this up, mostly on our left of it & sometimes on the drainage & occasionally on the right.  This trail doesn’t get a lot of use it would seem, but there were just enough cairns for us to find a good route up.  Once out of the trees after the first third we on a lot of rocks of varying stability.

A brief section had us choosing to go straight up & a through a small, and mostly dry, canyon – this was much easier than negotiating the loose rocks above it.  In the bottom of the drainage for a while we could look back across the Spray Valley until it disappeared as we followed a corner around some rocks.

There was some nice slickrock around & we displayed our different mindsets – it wasn’t steep enough to climb for Megan & I thought it was a little to steep for me to ride comfortably.  We chased the elusive sunshine up the valley & eventually struck the golden light – & of course started complaining about how hot it was (must have been all of 10ºC) & shed some layers.  The final twenty minutes or so of climbing up to the pass was through the trees, and ninety-five minutes after setting out we were at the pass looking out over the east end of Canmore & the Three Sisters.  The wind picked up a little here (it was slightly exposed after all), but we hung around taking pictures & feeding our faces.  Finnian had been quiet the whole way up – apparently being carried up big hills in a sling is quite relaxing; after his feed he was not so thrilled with the wind, so we headed down.

Of course, heading down was a lot trickier with all the loose rock in places.  We were keen to get down quickly as the ranges in the distance were now obscured by clouds & it looked like it was rolling towards us pretty quickly.   Thanks to Megan talking about the distant future and the year two-thousand we all quickly had Conchords’ songs rattling around in our heads – at least we now have some compulsory background noise for our game(s) of Settlers tonight.  After a little slipping, we managed to get through all the rocks without damage to anyone’s head and then it was easy to get back to the car in sixty minutes.

around home, bikes, Canada, friends, MTB

Gondola & a bit of snow on the G8

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Last Saturday was locals’ day at the gondola on Sulphur Mountain in Banff.  As I apparently qualify as a local now – at least my Alberta Driver’s Licence says so – I thought I would go & check it out as the passes were complimentary (“yeah, they were for free”).  We’d had a little snow on Friday morning in the Bow Valley (quite a bit more out at work at Exshaw), but as the rest of Friday was pretty clear there wasn’t a whole heap left on the surrounding peaks.  I joined the line & then played guess the accent as I shared a gondola car with some tourists.  I find I’m not so good at picking Canadian accents – as Megan said last week while we were watching The Trotsky, “this must be a Canadian film – they don’t sound unusual” (or words to that effect) – but other accents are a bit easier.

I was a little under-dressed with only three layers on & it was chilly so early in the morning at the top.  There was a lot more up there than I expected – I think I thought there would be a food outlet of some description & not a lot else.  There was a bit of a paved trail to the summit, that took about ten or fifteen minutes & heaps of boards pointing out various peaks, flora, fauna & some history of the summit.

There’s Banff in the bottom left.  That small lump near the centre is Tunnel Mountain (the trail I rode the previous week, Star Warz, is on the back of that hill).  In the distance in the centre Lake Minnewanka – it’s been a few months since Alex & I rode there a bit.   Cascade is the mountain on the left & you can see the Bow River running past Tunnel Mountain & off down to Canmore & then Calgary.

The light’s not great, but that is Mt Rundle running from left to centre – Canmore is behind the far end of that.

Amusing Asian tourists obliged with this photo – up the Bow Valley on the left, the summit over my left shoulder.

After only getting a pair of cheap skates at the local ski swap, we mooched around town a bit on Saturday afternoon & I finally relented & bought Settlers.  So of course Saturday night was spent teaching Alex & Megan how to play, getting beaten a couple of times before I finally got on the board in resounding fashion.  It’s nice having Settlers again – reminds me of many good friends in Pukekohe, Warkworth, Kenya, & London.  I wonder how long it will before Knights & Cities becomes necessary.

Returning home after a car maintenance & shopping trip to Calgary on Sunday, I finally remembered to pack my camera for a gentle loop of the G8.  This is easily the trail around here that I have ridden the most (up to eleven times now) – that’s probably because it’s usually the driest (gets more sun & is more open than the others) & it’s the easiest to complete if you don’t have a lot of time.  The first part of the 8 still had a fair few patches of snow lying around, but the far section of the 8 was really dry.  We had a cruisy loop (it’s been a while since I’ve done just over an hour door to door on this trail) & it was very enjoyable stopping to take photos & appreciate the views.

Alex riding off down the valley.

The other side of Mt Rundle – & me, of course.

Probably the jump I’ve hit the most in the Bow Valley (not that you can really see it) – just beside the path on the side of Benchlands Trail.