"Ooh it's fresh outside". Funny about that Penny. Had we been exiting the airport terminal in Hotandhumidland, an expression of surprise would have been appropriate with the mercury tipping 10 degrees. On the other hand, even if you knew Jack diddly squat about Iceland before arriving, with a name like that you really should have some fleece locked and loaded. The touchdown in Reykjavik was perfectly synchronised with a glowing sun nudging the Atlantic horizon, right on cue at 11.40pm. The light pink hues of that sunset morphed 2 hours later into a soft, pastel orange as the sun poked its head back above that same horizon. In between, the sky never turned completely black. At 66 degrees north, the days are long come July in Iceland. Those long daylight hours sent our body clocks into ... read more

Position Position Position. I can visualise the real estate spin now had our Montreal apartment been up for sale. It even spells the same in French. The apartment was advertised as "a 30 seconds walk from the festival de jazz". I timed it at closer to a minute, more if you include the locking and unlocking of the front door. "Homer Simpson, this is the worst case of false advertising since The Never Ending Story." Get the picture? Montreal is Ground Zero for the jazz world this time of the year and we were headquartered within smelling distance of the prime action. For lovers of music, the Montreal Jazz Festival is anything but the sole domain of bebop savants perched in their pseudo "too cool for school" ivory towers. Nor will you be rubbing shoulders with ... read more

For weeks we layered up and bunkered down against the crisp, cool air, absorbing any window of sunshine in an attempt to give the bodies a snippet of respite from the bracing conditions. This week it's been shorts, t-shirts and the quest for shade from the sucking heat. Admittedly we drove in the right direction but the Wyoming/Utah border was like a barrier between winter and summer. I don't know what happened to Spring but it must be stuck somewhere around the 41st parallel. A few days in the south of Utah the mercury hit 42 degrees. The 2% humidity made it bareable but the extremes can reek havoc with the body thermometer. Prior to entering Utah, a smidgen of pre planning needed to be addressed. Trying to snavel a drink in this state can be ... read more

Prepare yourself for a paragraph or two of irrational whining. Starting with: GPS - Getting People Stranded. Our special edition Tom Tom has a fetish for gravel roads leading to dead ends. Why direct the WHOW down a highway when there's a perfectly rutted piece of dirt track finishing at an impasse. Resorting to the tried and proven method of map reading, we found ourselves at our final destination in Canada, The Waterton Lakes National Park, a place where: "rugged windswept mountains rise abruptly out of gentle prairie grassland, interloped with around 200 klms of hiking and bike trails, all with uninterrupted views of the tranquil waters of Waterton Lakes". That's a brochure's spin and it's probably true for those rarish days of the year when conditions cooperate. Bringing us to: Canada, I love you and ... read more

There's a near intangible sense of a kindred spirit between Canada and Australia. It's not that we didn't see eye to eye with the folks down south and in fact the overwhelming majority were inviting and jovial, but across that northern border there's a covert sentiment that the locals look upon us as Canadian sons of beaches from a hemisphere far, far away. On the contrary, I prefer to view our Canadian cousins as alpine Antipodeans but i guess that's a mute point. Listening to the accents in Whistler and you'd swear we were back home anywhere. Literally half the workforce are "fair dinkum Dingo Dundees". Now for a riddle. What do you call a cold, wet, windy winters day in Sydney? Summer in Vancouver. Over a couple of visits now to this town and we've ... read more