Fluorescent Friday

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When I left you last I’d just finished my Euro trip, flown back to London and then caught the train up to Barrow. Once in Barrow I had a few hours to pack all my stuff for our trip to Canada. It was difficult because I was exhausted, but more so due to Euro 2008 football being on TV downstairs. I finally finished around midnight, got four hours of sleep and awoke having not an idea in the world where I was. We biffed our stuff into Frank’s (Nicola’s Dad) car, picked up Jenn (Nicola’s Mum) and headed for Manchester airport. I think I was asleep about two seconds after I’d put my seatbelt on.

Jenn was flying with us to Canada as she had a two week vacation planned. This timing was a big help for us as it meant we could get her to take some of our gear. Even though we had used a fair chuck of her luggage allowance we were over the allowed limit and had to fork out about £50. We had to just bite the bullet and pay as it was all stuff we needed. Wonder when they will bring in the weighing of people along with their luggage to make it fair for us lanky skinny b*stards.

After forking out the £50, I wasn’t in the best of moods so that was exacerbated when the lady checking me in started grilling me about my visa and why on earth was I flying out of Manchester if I’d been living in London. Perhaps my lack of sleep brought out my terrorist face? Once I’d evaded her evil clutches it was smooth sailing, or flying I guess is the better term. We arrived into Calgary and didn’t have too many problems getting our work permits issued, well not for me, Nicola got the evil witch this time round. There only seem to be two kinds of people working in those jobs, extremely nice people and power tripping a-holes. But that’s enough of a rant, we were in Canada!

Nicola’s sister Tina, who lives in Calgary, picked us up at the airport. It just happened to be her birthday so was nice that she could spend it with her Sister and Mum. On the ride back from the airport I got to see first hand how big and spread out Calgary is, everything in Canada in fact seems big: the cars, the roads, the houses, the food and even the sky, it seems silly but because Calgary is prairie land you can see for miles because it’s so flat.

Once back at Tina (& Scott’s) house I met Scott - Tina’s boyfriend, he is a Canadian, and has lived all over the show but calls Victoria, BC home. He, like his father and uncles works as a driller on oil rigs, so spends 28 days working and then has 28 days off. Tina works in the environmental field and when we first arrived was working at a job that saw her testing various sites to see if they were viable places to build or whether they were contaminated.

After a quick kip to recharge the batteries, we donned outrageously bright clothing for Tina’s ‘Fluorescent Friday’ themed birthday party. There were some cracking outfits, my favourites was Chad’s (one of Scott’s best mates) who had a beautiful purple number. Scott cranked the barbecue up and cooked some brilliant food. He used to be a chef so we always get great meals! Although his Jerk chicken kebabs on that first night were crazy hot, I could only handle a couple of bits of meat before breathing fire onto the curtains and getting kicked out. Well not quite, but man were they hot. Some of the partygoers made it into town for a few more drinks, and apparently some outrageous dance moves drew a bit of attention, well either those or the beautiful/hideous* costumes.

*I’ll let you decide from the photos

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